Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Revelation VS Obligation

Many teachings invading the bride of Christ today are based on out-of-context scriptures that seem to command believers to do certain things or live in a certain way, or make the believer responsible "to keep" their own salvation. This is the exact same issue that Paul aggressively wrote against in many of his letters.

Your ability to respond to the Gospel must only based on your revelation of what Jesus satisfied on the cross. Without a personal Revelation of the “Good News” revealed through “Jesus Christ and Him Crucified”, your “ability to respond” will only be man-empowered and therefore, doomed to end in failure.

If this Radical Gospel of Grace is not Clearly understood, the results will be no deferent from dead religion:
Satan says, “Yes, you’re under grace… but if you sin, you give me permission to come in and mess up your life”….. Friends, If we believe that, then we have just made Jesus death of no value to us.

If the message you are hearing has Fear attached to it – you have either misunderstood the message or you have understood the WRONG message because the Gospel has got NO fear attached to it. (1 john)

God is pleased with you because HE is pleased with JESUS
All of your faithless actions – which is sin (Rom 14), Has been declared, “paid for!” and “atoned for” ALL our disobedience – past, present, and future has been SWALLOWED up in the OBEDIANCE of JESUS on the cross.

Our understanding the Gospel is the sole Key for you to be Who God made YOU to be.

1Co 15:56 The “sting of death” is sin; (The thing that leads to DEATH is sin….. its like a deadly scorpion sting. That’s a "sting of death". There is nothing you can do in your own strength to stop it, working its poison.
The “sting of death” is sin; ("sin" here, is a Noun. It is our position in First Adam)
and the power of sin is the law:
The Law is what empowers sin - DO’s and DONT’s to attain Gods blessing.

You may say, but I’m not trying to be justified by the 10 commandments or the Old Testament LAW.
But If you believe:
That you need to have a QT to stay in Gods favor – you are under the LAW.
You have to be here today (in a Sunday meeting)to keep God Happy with you, you are UNDER the LAW
You have to pray for the sick to keep Gods favor on you, you are UNDER the LAW.
You have to share your Faith to Keep Gods favor – you are under the LAW.
Now, These things are all good, when they are out of a place of Holy Spirit given REVELATION!

The scorpion was disarmed at the cross because the LAW was fulfilled by Jesus on behalf of mankind.
The power of that poisonous "sin-sting" was made null and void. However, SATAN STILL ILLEGALLY tells those still laboring under Law OBLIGATIONS, that it’s really sore, and paralyzes them with CONDEMNATION.

“If you are Laboring under OBLIGATION instead of REVELATION, you will end up under CONDEMNATION because you will always fail in your own efforts.”
The Law will empower your failure (Under Obligation)….. To show you your need to walk in what Jesus has already done on your behalf (Gal 2:24)

If your Christian walk is more “HAVE TO” than “GET TO” then you have not yet fully understood the GOSPEL of Gods Grace. The Solution of FINDING rest is not to try harder in your own efforts, but to keep feeding on his Grace so that this REVELATION gets deep inside us.
This knowledge of His Goodness will allow you to receive and encounter Holy Spirit like never before. We wont be offended by Him, because we now know His NATURE. HE IS GOOD, and Only Good… ALL the time


Rom 10:4 "Christ is the end of the Law for righteousness for all who believe.
(there is no more righteousness to be attained via the LAW. CHRIST Ended it and has become “OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS”

God always intended for you to live in victory over sin. His Grace (undeserved, unmerited favor)was given to empower us to walk in victory.
Rom 6:14 For sin shall not have dominion over you: for you are not under law, but under grace.
The only reason sin will dominate our life is because we don’t know the truth about GRACE and are still living under the Law. Not the other way around….. Grace does not stir up sin.
The Law stirs up sin.


This Gospel, which is the Good news about Gods Grace was the sole subject of Paul's preaching, and nothing else. When we read his letters to churches, we MUST be sure to know the historic context into which he is writing. That, in most cases, he had already spent time sharing the truths about the Gospel of "Jesus Christ and Him Crucified" with them - A Gospel, that it seems, so many have no idea of. This is not spoken as an accusation, but rather as an observation - (including me up till a short while ago!!).

Our "job" as believers, is to believe the finished work of Jesus. The rest (works of Faith) will flow out of a REVELATION (not obligation) to this truth.

God wants you to be true to your own personal revelation of Him, not somebody else's. Be free to be you.

God blessed you!!
Andrew

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Is Grace Simply a License to Sin?

"Is Grace Simply a License to Sin?
This topic has presented itself in the form of numerous questions and statements in the past, such as the following:

• Does preaching Grace lead to a careless lifestyle?
• Won’t people run out and sin recklessly if they get too “deep” into the Grace message?
• We can not preach Grace to a new believer because they are not mature enough to be trusted with such freedom yet.
• Taking the Law off believers gives them a license to sin.

All these statements fly straight in the face of what the Bible teaches about Grace:

[Tit 2:11 For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, 12 teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age].

Firstly let us consider how Grace influences a person’s thinking. When we comprehend what the message of Grace is all about (how God pardoned the sins of the whole world (Heb 10:17), abolished the written code of the Law (Col 2:14), set people at liberty to live free from the fear of judgment and punishment (1 John 4:18), how believers are encouraged to have boldness when approaching God (Heb 10:19-21), that we can be confident that God will never be angry with us ever again (Isa 54:9-10) and many other truths like these), it is clear that a proper understanding of these matters will in fact NOT encourage a person to want to sin, but rather inspire such a person to be more thankful towards God for all He has done, to live a life worthy of the sacrifice made by Jesus and to deny ungodly conduct as stated in Tit 2:11-12 (above).

Mostly the arguments and questions against the Grace message, such as the ones we mentioned above, come from people who are not necessarily afraid that they themselves will be deceived into wanting to commit more sins, but their arguments are for other “weaker” Christians who in their opinion do not yet have the “maturity” to handle the responsibility that comes with such freedom. Therefore they encourage that the truth of the Grace message be taught with a healthy dose of Law mixed in to warn these “weak” Christians against the perils of sinning. How ironic isn’t it then that the Bible teaches us that sin doesn’t increase through Grace, but rather through the Law: [Rom 5:20 God’s law was given so that all people could see how sinful they were. But as people sinned more and more, God’s wonderful grace became more abundant] (NLT). Grace actually came in and removed the sins that were made more abundant through the Law!

So for someone to say that Grace is a license to sin, it simply serves to expose such a person’s ignorance to what Grace actually means and stands for. It reveals that they don’t understand that the power of the Holy Spirit inside a believer (reminding them of their complete 100% righteous standing before God) is an infinitely stronger empowerment for “good behaviour” than threatening someone with the Law. As a result the legalists can all relax and come to terms with the fact that the Holy Spirit can be trusted with the transforming work in the life of a believer: [Phil 1:6 being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ]. Nobody appointed us as each other’s moral policemen, so how can we ever try to assume that function?

The truth is that Grace can never be reduced to an “acceptable” level to compensate for the insecurities of legalists. Due to the extreme nature of the Law, Grace needs to be preached in its purest form as well in order to free people from the poison of “works based” mindsets"

By Andre van der Merwe

"Priesthood of All Believers"

This was written by my good friend Troy Thackwray on his blog "His Goodness Revealed". Its Good!!

"Priesthood" of All Believers

For centuries people have pointed fingers at preachers and teachers of the word of God, labelling many as hypocrites and for being two-faced because their lifestyles don't actually line up to what they are preaching (does this sound like a familiar accusation to you?).

What is wrong with this picture? Does the fault particularly lie with those accusing the preachers?

Maybe to a degree it does, but when man starts preaching "Perfect Lifestyles" as something to attain and maintain, they set themselves up for unnecessary abuse in the ministry.

How, then, is it possible for ALL to be a "Royal Priesthood" and effective ministers of the word of God, if ALL have sinned and fall short of His Glory?

The answer is simple: When we find ourselves established in and preaching Christ's perfection and not our own, we will discover how easy it is to preach the word of God.

Although we certainly do encourage each other to walk in Christ, no one is "qualified" to preach perfection as the gospel - only Jesus has the credibility to change our behaviour,and praise God He does it graciously and peacefully.
However, EVERYONE is "qualified" to preach the goodness, perfection and love of God, and no one needs a perfect lifestyle for this!

I'm not denying that integrity and a godly lifestyle are influential attributes that show credibility and respectability, but when we find ourselves preaching these attributes, we effectively preach condemnation, and we also unknowingly activate a personal "time-bomb" that will go off as people begin to notice discrepancies between what we preach and how we live."