Walk
340. Take a Grace
Break!
Wow!
With all this “walk stuff”, you might be getting tired of trying to
remember all the things that are your responsibility before God. It is time for a “Grace Break”.
Remember there is a
balance. First, we learned to SIT
before we can WALK. You may have
been reading 40 or so lessons about WALKING and perhaps you have forgotten some
of the SITTING. Well, sit back,
relax, and take a break.
God does not want you to
get all worked up about all the things you must DO for Him in order to earn His
acceptance. You are already
accepted. Ephesians 1:6 (KJV)
says, “To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us
accepted in the beloved.” Notice that
HE has made us accepted, not the things that we did.
You might ask, “Then why
did you just give me 40 lessons on walking?” The answer is that we need to know how
to make choices. Even though we
are saved by grace, we have choices to make daily. We need to know that when we make the wrong choices, we should
come and forsake them, repent, get cleansed, and the life of God in us will
take over. The commands in the New
Testament are like a model or a plan to show us what the ideal is to be like. It is like a mirror to show us when we
do not live up to the pattern. But
the solution is not to try harder.
The solution is to turn to God and allow His life to be lived in us.
We don’t have two
natures like some Christians declare.
Some say we have to carry around a sin nature all our lives, struggling
against it. They even show
Scriptures to prove it. Well, this
is not true. Our old nature has
been crucified. Read Romans 6 and
you will see the truth of this.
Then why, you might say, do we feel this old nature? Our old nature is like a tree that has
been cut down, but some of the leaves have not died as yet. Our brain has memory waves, or actual
electronic waves that tell us to act a certain way. But these are only old memories, or tapes that play in our
mind; they are not really our nature.
Our real nature is the life of God that has been inserted in us when we
were born again. In order to be
born again, you would have had to die first. Otherwise, you would be a freak! God did not make us freaks, but sometimes we act that way.
Which was first,
the chicken or the egg? John 14:21 (KJV)
says, “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me:
and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and
will manifest myself to him.” John 14:23 says, “Jesus answered and said to him,
‘If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We
will come to him and make Our home with him.’”
So many Christians take
this verse as a burden. They think
that they must obey God in order to prove their love for Him. But, actually, it is just the opposite. The proof that they really love Him is
their strong intense desire to obey Him.
If you do not have a strong desire to obey Him, your problem is that you
have not fallen in love with Him enough.
More obedience will not cause Him to love you more. You must fall in love more, then
obedience will just naturally come.
Our flesh and the
devil try to keep us in a performance mode. Work more, rededicate more, crawl on
your belly like a good-for-nothing worm when you mess up and sin. No, no, that is not the way the Father
received the Prodigal son when he came home. He ran out and covered him when the son saw his foolish
ways. The son was already
forgiven, accepted and received, but didn’t know it.
The problem is in
our thinking. We feel that we must
clean up our flesh, our old nature and make it holy in order to please God. No way! The only solution for our flesh is for it to die.
And actually, it has
already died! Galatians 2:20 (KJV)
says, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ
liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of
the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” God is just waiting for us to reach the
end of our self-sufficiency in order to get us to realize this fact. Our life probably will be a series of
difficulties, which God designs for “breaking”. Breaking is coming to the end of ourselves so that Christ
can live His life in us and through us.
Only Christ can live the Christian life. We must realize we are dead!
The answer is to
fall in love with Jesus more and more. Jesus wants an intimate relationship with us, like a husband
and a wife. Look at the Song of
Solomon in the Bible. It describes
the most intimate love relationship between a bride and a husband. Both have a strong intense drive to
find the other so that they may enjoy the relationship. Well, God wants you to strive all
right, but not to please Him, but rather to find Him. When you find Him, you will fall in love with Him; there is
no other choice.
Take some time pursuing
Him, but not with your works and performance. Take time to just sit with Him. Get into “The Flowing River” lesson, and get into His
presence. Maybe you are not
accustomed to this kind of relationship with anybody. Maybe your marriage has been a harsh legalistic thing,
consisting of “you should do this, and you need to do that”. Well, this kind of relationship with
God will change your human relationships also. Once you have a grace relationship with God, you can have a
grace relationship with your spouse, your children, and your friends.
Get into the Word of God
with the attitude of “I am accepted, I am forgiven, Jesus wants to just hang
out with me and love me”. Practice
His presence. Go to His Word as a
love letter, not as a rulebook.
Our enemy the devil
deceives us. Paul was coming against
the Galatians when they got saved by the Gospel of Grace, but thought they had
to get into legalism to please God.
He told them that they have been bewitched, by a demon, to feel this
way. Galatians 3:1 (KJV) says, “O
foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth,
before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among
you?”
God does not expect us
to live the Christian life. He
expects us to die to our old life and allow Christ to live HIS life through
us. This takes the burden off of
us and puts it on Him Who can do it.
The burden we have is to take time to nurture
the relationship.
The one commandment that Jesus gave us was in
Mark 12:28-33. “Then one of the scribes came, and having heard them
reasoning together, perceiving that He had answered them well, asked Him, ‘Which is the
first commandment of all?’ Jesus answered him, ‘The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear,
O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one. And you shall love
the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind,
and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: ‘You
shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is
no other commandment greater than these.’ So the
scribe said to Him, ‘Well said, Teacher. You have spoken the truth, for there is one
God, and there is no other but He. And to love Him with all the heart, with all the
understanding, with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as
oneself, is more than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices’” (Mark
12:28-33).
The problem with
marriages, with children, with Christians, is not our failures with what we
do. No, the problem is that we
don’t give enough value to relationships and intimacy. We don’t take time to develop love
between us. Doing more is never
the solution. The solution with
God is for us to rest in His love.
When we really find out how much God loves us, how much He desires to
supply our needs, how much He desires to be our all in all, we will stop
worrying about rules and regulations and will take more time in His Word and
fellowshipping with Him. This will
lead to less of us, and more of Him in us. It will lead to good works, but from love, not from
obligation. It will lead to a holy
life, much holier than the legalists can work up. But our clean holy life will not be our flesh trying to
imitate God; no, it will be God in us, the perfect One living through us.
Matthew 11:28-30 says, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My
yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you
will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
This verse speaks for
itself, except we might miss the “come to me”. Coming to Jesus can take some time and work on our
part. If you notice in the Song of
Solomon, the Maiden in this story sometimes had to go and use effort to find
the Lord.
God wants us to rest from our efforts to
please Him, but wants us to double our efforts to find Him.
What has stripped the
seeming beauty
From the idols of the
earth?
Not a sense of right or
duty,
But the sight of peerless
worth.
Not the crushing of
those idols,
With its bitter void and
smart;
But the beaming of His
beauty,
The unveiling of His
heart.
‘Tis that look that
melted Peter,
‘Tis that face that
Stephen saw,
‘Tis that heart that
wept with Mary,
Can alone from idols
draw:
Draw and win and fill
completely,
Till the cup o’erflow
the brim;
What have we to do with
idols
Who have companied with
Him?
Anonymous
This lesson is the sole property of
ISOB. It may not be altered or
edited in any way. It may be
reproduced only in its entirety for circulation as "freeware,"
without charge. All reproductions
of this lesson must contain the copyright notice (i.e., "Copyright (C)
1998 by ISOB."). This lesson
may not be used without the permission of ISOB for resale or the enhancement of
any other product sold.