O What Needless Pain We Bear
I’m overwhelmed at the love and mercy in the sweet, compassionate comments from my last post My Story: Masked to Truefaced. Thank you so much for your kind words.
My blog friends make my life brighter! Thank you for your unconditional love. (There is a difference between unconditional love and unconditional approval. You don’t have to approve of one’s actions to love them). Thank you for following Jesus. Most of what Jesus taught people was concerned with how we love other people –in kindness, justice, and mercy.
Score Keeping
A lot of ladies related to the post. The battle of trying being good enough and trying to earn approval from God is wide spread in the church. We speak of “not earning by works” but there seems to be a lot of score keeping going on. Our busyness and volume of our good works can drown out the still small voice of God. Adam and Eve lost sight of God’s love and made a real mess. The thing is, we can’t make God love us any more or less. He loves us with a perfect love. Keeping our eyes on His love–Christ is what it is all about.
Religion offers us the illusion of earning acceptance, but it is only a cheap substitute for the reality of life in him. God’s desire is to engage us in a life-changing relationship. He knew the ‘life-changing’ would come only out of the relationship. Thus he demonstrated his love for us before we did anything to make ourselves worthy of it.
By doing so, he wanted us to stop trying to earn it and just live in light of it. What would you do today if you knew God absolutely loved you? God knows the answer to that question will lead you further into his life than the strivings of religion ever can.
The key to living a productive Christian life is not waking up every day trying to be loved by God, but waking up in the awareness that you are already his beloved... As you grow increasingly certain that his love for you is not connected to your performance you will find yourself released from the horrible burden of doing something for him. You’ll realize that your greatest ideas and most passionate deeds will fall far short of what he really wants to do through you.–Wayne Jacobson, He Love Me.
Jesus Didn’t Come to Give Us Guilt and Shame
Jesus paid for our sin. We have to stop trying to pay twice, we need only accept His sacrifice. (1 John 1:9).
“…that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. —Phil 3:8-9
Our disobedience need not become the permanent road for the rest of our lives–this is a deception. God can use our failures for His purposes. God is able to use our weaknesses, mistakes, and sins. When we can fix our eyes on Christ, accept His forgiveness then we can enter His rest. When we remember we are His beloved, even while we make mistakes, He will forgive us, lead us, heal us, and bless us as we abide with Him, the Alpha and Omega, the Author and Finisher of our faith.
Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform [it] until the day of Jesus Christ. Philippians 1:6
I continue to learn to turn off the voice of condemnation, listen for the promptings of the Holy Spirit, and the joy of resting in Him. Thank you again sweet Sisters.
