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!


Download
Get the book

37. To Attempt to Be Righteous Is to Be Ignorant of God's Righteousness

On this week's Growing in Grace podcast (#586) we talked about How to Be Righteous.  Hint: It's not about what you do!  Here's a snippet from the podcast in which I brought up how Paul talked about those who were ignorant of God's righteousness.  How were they ignorant of God's righteousness? They attempted to be righteous by their own works, as opposed to receiving God's free gift of His own righteousness.


Download