Living Grace

It is a journey to trust the promises of God.

It is a journey of realisation that we have died with Christ and have been raised with him into his resurrected life.

It is a journey into the realisation that we are now sons and daughters of God.

And this journey is a journey in the decisions of our heart, in those little acts of love and kindness that we find our true identity.

For the faith of Christ is the faith in our hearts, the peace of God is the peace in our hearts and the trust the father has in Christ is the trust God has in you.

He holds you, let yourself be held.

God knew the enchantment of sin would entice his chosen people away from his love for them. Just before they would cross the river Jordan to enter the Promised Land he warned them “Do not bring any detestable objects into your home, for then you will be destroyed, just like them.”

God knew that what you see every day, what you accept as normal, begins to cloud your heart and starts to make God seem distant.

For sins enchantment is that it make evil normal.

God is never distant from us, he never draws away from us, we draw away from him when foreign God’s of worldly wisdom, worldly diagnosis and worldly enlightenment creep into our thinking. But there is also a more subtle foreign God that of religion. When we start to make God fit our plans by our self effort and performance.

Love is not found in self effort it is found in intimacy.

Love bears all things, it is found in a heart of compassion and mercy.

Love is the oil that runs through your heart. It has been poured out into your New Creation life. You are a fountain of the very love of Christ in your Spirit. Don’t let the world seep into your thinking and into your heart and enchant you into believing the world’s diagnosis of your life.

The great patriarch of old a man called Abraham wasn’t wandering about looking for the one true God. God appeared to him, unexpectedly and offered him an amazing invitation. A choice to up sticks and go or stay in the land of Haran.

This choice for Abraham was one of emense proportions for at its heart it meant leaving behind all that had brought him life. He turned away from every familiar place, every thing that had bought him wealth, every thing that had bought him security and every thing that gave him love. To journey into the unknown and new life offered to him by God in a promise.

Abraham faced the same choice that we face everyday to turn our hearts away from all that would attach us and to turn our hearts towards the promise.

For if your heart is truly to be free it needs to detach itself from all influences and awaken its self to the promises of God.

For Abraham had no plan, no map, and no planned out itinerary. He just had the promise of God.

It is here in Abraham that we can see that life is not to be managed but lived. We can’t remove all dangers, we cannot forsee all the twists and turns, we cannot fear the future by managing our circumstances. But we can place our trust in the promise that God holds us and is faithful to his promises.

It is here in the heart that we know God offers us all things and that as we detach our hearts from all that would pull us back we find that God is there holding us.

It is perhaps our greatest tragedy when we fail to see things as they truly are.

Death, loss, damage, iloslation, separation all cloud the radiance of love. And the question that sometimes haunts us as we yearn for answers is does believing make any difference at all?

Here in the middle of tragedy we can dimly see the drama of God’s redemption.

It is often not just a longing that obscures our view but a focus on our circumstances instead of God’s answer.

And God’s answer is that you have new life in Christ. That you died with Christ and you were raised into his resurrected new life.

We sometimes feel that God is not coming without realising that he has already arrived.

Life in Christ is an awakening to the resurrected life now alive in you.

He shouts to us through the storms of life, he whispers to us through the desperation of every perplexing situation and he pleads with us in every moment of heart break. “Where are you?”

His love is so infinite and encompassing that with a heart of sadness he allows us to choose the life we desire. His freedom is so boundless he gives us the freedom to walk away and choose our own destination and our own God’s.

But all the time he shouts out to us, “Where are you? ”

For in Christ’s intimate love is the answer to our hearts longing, the connection our hearts desire.

The goodness of God reaches out to us and says that God is faithful and he loves us with an everlasting love.

You have never been an after thought to God. You were not some annoying problem that he had to solve. You were never a thorn in your father’s side.

For God is and has always been your provider, your protector, your deliverer, your lover.

He declares that he will heal our waywardness and love us freely.

He comes to crush our disappointment, to heal our brokenness and to restore us to wholeness. To unite our spirit to his spirit and declare that we are New Creations in Christ.

Every seed of goodness and righteousness planted into your heart will produce a tree of his goodness and righteousness in your life.

This lie traps our heart into the captivity of our circumstances. It imprisons us into the oppression of the moment. It kills hope, slays faith and delays all our expectations. We start to accept our captivity and distress as the normal.

It is believing this lie when we begin to doubt the goodness of God.

For the promise of God is that he will make all things new and that his glory will be made manifest in us.

It is here in the garden of our heart that we must keep out the lie. We must catch it before it destroys the harvest. We must release ourselves from its condemnation. For it is in the heart that condemnation runs riot and destroys the harvest.

And how do we catch the little foxes of condemnation?

We believe the truth of all we are now in Christ. We believe the truth of our right standing in Christ. We acknowledge the finished work of Christ alive in us. And we release our hearts by acknowledging all good things we have received in Christ.

For the promise is that God never leaves us or forsakes us and that if our heart drifts he still stays faithful to his promises to us.

The truth is that God delights and desires us and that he loves us with an everlasting love.