Your life is now hidden with Christ in God.
Colossians 3:3 NIV
Funny how often we can be thinking about something. We can't find the answer and then it's laid out for us right after. I can remember on several different occasions at the dinner table, growing up having family discussions and not really coming to any conclusion that we were all willing to accept. We would end the discussion and start our devotions and what we would read from the
Bible was like a response from God. Anyway, it happened to me again. I was just taking a shower thinking about this- basically what I wrote to myslef in a few blogs ago and not really being happy with my own answer. The issue was this idea about how God gives us choice- it's for us to decide if we want to follow him so where do we draw the line...
Max gives me such a great response to this question. "Christians are like their ancestor Abel. We come to God by virtue of the flock. Cain came with the work of his own hands. God turned him away." As colossians says, when we come to God, there really isn't a choice, we don't need to make decisions anymore. We "set our sights on the realities of heaven". I guess the point is that yes we're going to make mistakes because sometimes we loose focus but as long as we keep our eyes focused on Him and we're living a righteous life- because our life is hidden with Christ- it's not us making the right decisions, it' not really even us
being righteous, it's Jesus' grace bestowed upon us.
If I've really given my life over to him, he
takes away all of the difficult decisions.
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2 comments:
Love it!
Set your sights on the reality of heaven.
Let heaven fill our thoughts.
This acronym was shown to me and I have always thought it did well summing this big word up.
G.R.A.C.E.
God's Redemption At Christ's Expense
How great is it that we are accepted by faith and not by our own merit. This is what truly separates Christianity from all other beliefs. Our salvation has been taken care of and is sealed by the precious blood of Christ. He is our righteousness. There is no reason for self reliance and all the more reason to rely on Christ. He is alive in us AND sitting in the throne at the right hand of God, victory is complete.
Romans 8:1 There is no condemnation in Christ. The power of the life-giving Spirit has freed us through Christ and we are no longer under the power of sin. Since the power of sin is death, then we are no longer bound to death but free in Christ.
Learning Gods grace can take us deep into the knowledge of Him and will have a heavy impact on how we live our lives.
I would not want God to see anything but Christ when He looks at me, for He alone is righteous!
thanks for that Nate. Great verse. This is something I'm struggling with...I mentioned it to you before- spiritism is a strongly followed religion/practice here..to the point where it's integrating itself with the catholic church. While the spiritists follow the Bible to some extent, well..I guess that's exactly it, those words "to some extent"...drive me nuts. They don't believe in the part about accepting God's sheer grace..they believe we are morally evolving. I will have to explain it all to you in purpose but to me it's such an arrogant belief system and I can't understand how people can't see the impurity of it. When talking about any religion or moral code, if anything relating to one person being better than another is mentioned, to me, seems to completely discredit the religion right there. It really is what sets us apart. I just finished reading Max's message for today about brotherly love- how regardless of whether or not we like each other, we need to love each other as brothers in Christ because we are all equal. Here's the quote: "You didn’t pick me. I didn’t pick you. You may not like me. I may not like you. But since God picked and likes us both, we are family." The verse is Romans 12:10...throughout that chapter, he really drives home the humility..we are no better than anyone else. We need to strive to be like Christ and humility is such an important part of that because if we have humility, we won't do those things like seek revenge or look down on people. It's a hard fight you know...we're fighting against our human nature but agian...his grace is what saves us...it really is a big word...so powerful!!
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