57. Reminders of What God Has Done for Us Through Christ

I'm part of a fairly new Facebook page called Religion Free Movement on which various grace teachers share nuggets of grace, and start conversations that help us to build one another up in the love and grace of God.  I recently asked the group to "remind me of what God has done for us through Christ and His mercy and grace," with the intentions of using their comments to make an uplifting, encouraging podcast.  Well, here is the podcast with all of the encouraging comments about what God has done for us in Christ!

By the way, if you're not a part of this group on Facebook, feel free to join, and invite friends as well!


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56. What Does It Mean to Believe in Vain?

Paul wrote to the Corinthians about the gospel that he preached, and he told them that they are saved by this gospel - "if you hold fast that word which I preached to you - unless you believed in vain." (1 Cor 15:2). This is a verse that scares many people, causing them to worry about whether or not they have believed in vain.  Later in the chapter, Paul also used phrases such as "our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty" and "your faith is futile."

What did Paul mean by all of this?  Was he laying down conditions to having true faith?  Was he questioning the faith of the Corinthians?  Should people who have believed upon Jesus worry whether or not their faith is futile or in vain if perhaps they have fallen or sinned to much?

Fortunately for us, there's this thing called "context."  If we keep on reading, we can see exactly what Paul is talking about.  Good news for those who worry about this:  This has nothing to do with a person having faith and yet failing in their behavior.  Paul was not addressing sinful behavior in this passage.  Take a listen to this podcast as I show how Paul was highlighting the resurrection of Jesus.  Everything in this passage in 1 Cor 15:1-19 is centered around whether or not Jesus rose from the dead.  Everything about preaching in vain, believing in vain, holding fast to that which Paul preached, etc, has to do with whether or not Jesus really rose from the dead.


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55. What's Right With You?

Much of the teaching and preaching in the church today is focused on telling you what's wrong with you, and they will give you all kinds of rules, laws, steps, principles and plans so that you can fix all those things that are wrong with you. Of course, it's not only preachers and teachers, but other people as well.  Parents to this.  Authority figures.  Even friends do this, as well as other church people.

Is this what life is meant to be about?  Focusing on what's wrong with you and always trying to fix, fix, fix whatever is wrong?  Is a focus on sin the focus that we're supposed to have in the church?  When we focus on what's "wrong" with us, it generally yields the opposite of what we intend! We hope it will yield changed lives, fruit, righteous living, etc, but all it really yields guilt, despondency, fruitlessness.

What about focusing on what's right with you.  I don't mean the various things that you do right.  Rather, I mean focusing on the reality of who God has made you to be - righteous, holy, blameless, His beloved child, precious, etc - all apart from anything you've ever done.  What if you believed these things about yourself (just as God believes these things about you), rather than fixating on fixing what you think needs to be fixed!


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54. Hebrews - A Contrast of Covenants

These days we may take many things for granted regarding our understanding of Jesus and the New Covenant, but 2000 years ago the Jews were faced with quite a challenging decision to make. They had to choose between the covenant that they had known and had been walking in for centuries, which was based upon their promises to God to keep various laws, rules and rituals... and a brand new way in which the laws, rules and rituals were made obsolete, and replaced with faith in a Person, Jesus the Messiah. The writer of Hebrews called this way "a new and living way." He said it's a "better" way. He wrote his epistle to the Hebrews to explain the New Covenant to them, and to contrast it with that old way in which they'd been living for a long, long time.

The writer explained to them how the old way was was merely a shadow. Laws, circumcision, rituals, etc, were all merely shadows, but had no substance to them. The substance would be found solely in this Person - Jesus, with their old way being done away with. The centuries-old Levitical priesthood, with all the offerings and sacrifices that went along with it, had ended, and was replaced with the superior Priesthood of Jesus. Their precious covenant was said to be "weak" and "useless," and the writer was telling them of "a better hope through which we draw near to God."

All of this would be difficult for many Jews to accept. They had a choice: remain in the old way that didn't work, or choose the new and living way. They would be familiar with everything the writer wrote about. The Jewish and law-based terminology, along with all the covenant talk, would be very well understood by them. But they were faced with which way they would go. Which covenant... which way... would they choose? If we can understand some of this background regarding the circumstances that the Hebrew people were in back then, then we can better understand the message of the book of Hebrews.


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53. God Designed You to Be You

It's very important for you to be who you are. God has designed you the way that you are, and He placed you exactly where and how He wanted you to be in the body of Christ. He has done this joyfully and with great care! So you get to be who He created you to be, and you don't need to be who someone else is or who others expect you to be, and other people don't have to be who you think they should be! The body of Christ is a very diverse body, made up of many, many different parts. Rest in who you are. Look to God to work in and through you, and to be faithful to accomplish in you all that He has set out to do.


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