July 17, 2007

God's Grace? What about it? There is nothing I can do about God's grace. I'm not going to dwell on it. I am very thankful for it. It is real, and I believe in it. But it is God's gift to give. How He uses it is His business. I know He will be fair with it. He knows whats in our hearts and minds. But personally, I'm not willing to go through life freely sinning in hopes that God's grace will be my "get out of hell free ticket". And on the other hand, I'm not going to fill some good deed quota that will be my "get into heaven ticket" either. If we are in Christ, then we will be doing good works until the day we die. There is no quota to be filled. We can't meet a good works quota to earn a ticket into heaven, then once we have the ticket, be free to throw His commands out the window and freely sin.

I don't worry about God's grace very much. It is there. What else can I do about it? I have faith that if I have sinned, God will be graceful and forgive me if I confess my sin and ask for forgiveness. I truly believe that even though I may not deserve it, He will forgive me if I am honest about my sin, taking responsibility for it, repairing the damage it has caused, being truly sorry for it, and am doing everything I can to make sure I don't do it again. Other than that, there is nothing else I can do about God's grace. So, I'm focusing on what I can do. I'm focusing on what Jesus told us to DO to be saved.

Grace... Works... We can't use works or grace to beat the system. Regardless of the lies you may have heard, there are no loopholes that allow us to freely sin. There is no way to beat the system. And we are not helpless victims of predestination, unable to make decisions of our own either. Notice that Jesus told us to OBEY His commands. He didn't say to TRY to obey His commands. Seriously, how hard is it to refrain from such things as murdering people, lying, stealing, having affairs, and using God's name in vain? Our society tries to make us believe that it is impossible to obey His commands. With sayings like; "As long as I have a pulse, I will be lusting after others. I'm only human." Well, it is possible if we focus totally on God and keep our thoughts pure. He knows our thoughts and our hearts. We have sinned even if we are having sinful thoughts. We better do all we can to put a stop to our sinning and start OBEYING His commands. We need to stop worrying so much about seeing just how far we can push our luck with God's grace, and focus more on what we can do to please Him and make Him happy with us.

Do what you want. But personally, I'm not going to intentionally push my luck with God. I have read in the Bible about what He is capable of when He gets angry enough with someone. It didn't sound too loving to me at the time. Regardless of how our society has tried to make God look, we are not dealing with an old, white bearded man handing out candy here. God is the greatest supernatural entity that ever was and that ever will be. He is capable of wiping us out of existence or worse if He gets angry enough with us.