Come As You Are

God made the world and everything in it. He made heaven and earth. He does not live in temples built by human hands, nor is he served by human hands. He is a God who needs nothing (but desires a relationship with us). He gives breath to our lungs, life to our body and everything else. From one man God made the nations, that they may inhabit the whole earth. He marked out our appointed time in history and the boundaries of our lands so we would seek him, reach for him, and find him, though he is never far away from us.

We live and move and have our very being in him (because of his grace). We are his offspring. (Offspring of the one and only Holy God). As offspring we should not think that he is like silver and gold or stone - an image made by human design and skill. God once overlooked our ignorance but now he commands ALL people to repent. God has set a day he that he will judge the world by the man he has appointed, (Jesus Christ). He declared this promise when he raised Jesus from dead.

Friends, there is nothing that can separate you from the love of God. There are consequences to our sin but you need to know deep in your heart that there is no sin that is too bad, and no choice that can’t be redeemed. There are not levels of sin, although in our humanness we would like to qualify sin into categories or hierarchy. It is hard to fathom that some of the atrocities we see and experience in this broken world are no different in the eyes of God than the sin in our own lives.

Yet there is a God who is waiting in great anticipation to welcome you

with open arms just as you are.

This notion that we have to clean up our life before we approach the throne is a lie from the devil. It is a trick he uses to try to convince us that we are not worthy of God’s grace until we clean up our act. God says, “come as you are and let me cleanse you by the blood of the Lamb. My son, the Lamb, who I sacrificed on the cross for your mess so you may have life eternal.”

Come as you are friend.

There is no broken or mistake that God can not redeem.

He brings beauty from ashes when we repent. Even the ashes you and I create when we rebel and fall short.

Much love,

Chrissy

Reference NIV Bible: Acts 17:24-31

Photo Credit: Mikail Duran, Unsplash

Wrestling With Forgiveness

Forgiveness is hard.  It is especially hard when it calls for us to forgive people that left deep wounds on our heart.  Wounds that may still be so very raw.

These past four years have challenged me to dig deeper into the practice of forgiving. What I noticed was that as I was walking through the layers of hurt and forgiveness, I began to try to find logical reasons of justification for the actions of the people who hurt me.  My heart and my head just could not take the intense pain of the reality that people I loved immensely would destroy our relationship and in the process shatter my heart for personal gain and self centered motivation.

I wrestled with God over releasing these relationships. I wrestled with my heart and tried to find any and all justification for their behavior. 

What God has taught me through this season is that I do not have to find reasons of justification for the actions of people that hurt me. I am not always called to reconcile those relationships but I am called to forgive.

In hindsight, I can see where God was removing these people for my protection.  Protection from the things that live in the dark recesses of their hearts.  God began to show me over and over again patterns of behavior in these people that should have been a glaring beacon of warning for what was to come.  What He knew about me was that I would continue to throw down the door stopper every time he tried to remove them if their hearts were not revealed in a way that I couldn’t justify their behavior anymore.

Forgiveness does not excuse the behavior of those that have wounded us.  Forgiveness releases control back to God allowing him to bring about justice. It also releases untold blessings on our own life when we choose to forgive and allows God to fill the space of hurt with immeasurably more than we could ever ask for.

Friends, I am not minimizing the hurt you may be walking through. I am not justifying or excusing the behaviors of the person that hurt you.  I just want to remind you that God calls us to forgive just as He has forgiven us.  His ways are higher. Revenge is His alone.  Releasing those that hurt us through forgiveness releases them to God so that He can make things right.

Releasing those that hurt us through forgiveness opens the doors for Gods blessings on our life and makes us whole again. We regain control of who we are and whose we are.  Forgiveness means those that came to kill, steal and destroy no longer have the power to do so in your life.

Much Love,

Chrissy

Gifts Bestowed by Grace, Part 2

Who is man to apply worldly standards to Godly gifts?

In my last blog I wrote "Our spiritual gift are given to us in full measure by the grace of God. I like to think of it like this...It is the good pleasure of God that bestows these gifts on us with unmerited favor even when we don’t deserve them. Our spiritual gifts are given to us to build up the body of Christ. To bring life. Eternal life.”

It was based on these two scriptures:

1 Peter 4:10

Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.

Romans 12:3-8

For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your[a] faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.

What I want to talk about in this second post is specific to Romans 12:3-8. "For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others”

We do not all have the same function, but we form one body according to God’s word. I have heard this teaching many times using our physical body as an example of how each of our body parts make up one body but they do not necessarily have the same role. Simply, each member of our physical body is uniquely made to produce the whole body. Created solely by God and his design.

What I find interesting is that while we may not fully understand how our brain tells our heart to beat or our lungs to breathe without our conscious effort, we accept those organs and functions without question as vital to the function of our overall body. Vital to life. Physical life.

Do we believe with the same unquestionable faith that our spiritual gifts are given to us to build up the body of Christ. To bring life. Eternal life. That they are unique to us just as we each are created uniquely by God?

Have you ever found that within the church body some spiritual gifts are overlooked because they are not fully understood? As a Christians we need to be very careful not to marginalize the gifts of others because we don’t understand them. It is ok, if we don’t understand them, but it is not ok to stifle the gifts that God has poured out on our brother or sister in Christ.

What if we had as much faith in God’s ability to place the right people with the right gifts in the right place without a well versed resume or strategic planning? After all, we trust his ability to place the right organs with the right function in the right places within our body so that when we close our eyes at night we have perfect peace our heart will beat and our lungs will inhale and exhale.

There are many who are qualified on paper, but not qualified by Kingdom standards. There will be many who are lead by self importance rather than being led by the Holy Spirit. We easily fall into the trap of valuing status, degrees, experience over the unique gifts of the Holy Spirit that God has strategically placed within the church body to spread the message of the redemptive, saving grace of Jesus Christ to all of the world.

If we only coddle those we deem “qualified” based on our human measuring sticks, we miss the “least of these”. Those people Jesus himself declared qualified and justified through his sacrifice on the cross and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Gifts Bestowed by Grace

Who are we to apply worldly standards to Godly gifts?

"Over time, and I believe unintentionally, we’ve created our own criteria for those who we believe can best fulfill the will of God. We’ve placed education, organizational skills, leadership experience, communication skills, and positions of influence at a higher value than full surrender to the Holy Spirit. We’re convinced that the church’s mission cannot be fulfilled without leaders with these skills and experience. This has led to a false sense of self importance and it has marginalized those that don’t fit into that box.”

This statement was written by a friend of ours and really hit home for me and my own experience within the church body. **I have attached the original post on my Embracing The Mess facebook page if you are interested in the full article.

As I was reading his post, the following scriptures were laid on my heart. They talk about the gifts God has given each of us to build up the body of Christ as we make Jesus known to every tribe and every nation.

1 Peter 4:10

Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.

Romans 12:3-8

For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.

What immediately jumped out at me from these two scriptures is that our gifts are given to each of us solely based on God’s grace. This means there is nothing we could do to earn these gifts. They were gifted in perfection to us by the grace of God so it can not be denied that they are from God. These gifts can not be manifested in our human power; not by education, organizational skills, leadership experience, communication skills, or positions of influence. They can only be manifested through the power of the Holy Spirit. I have frequently thought of all God has bestowed on me through his amazing grace, but had never really given much thought to my spiritual gifts being drenched in grace.

In his writing adapted from The Gospel According to the Apostles © 2000 by John MacArthur, McArthur says, "One of the best-known definitions of grace is only three words: God's unmerited favor. A. W. Tozer expanded on that: "Grace is the good pleasure of God that inclines him to bestow benefits on the undeserving." Berkhof is more to the point: grace is "the unmerited operation of God in the heart of man, effected through the agency of the Holy Spirit.” https://www.oneplace.com/ministries/grace-to-you/read/articles/what-is-grace-10339.html

Our spiritual gifts are given to us in full measure by the grace of God. I like to think of it like this...It is the good pleasure of God that bestows these gifts on us with unmerited favor even when we don’t deserve them. God not only created us uniquely in His image for His good purpose, but has gifted us uniquely for His good purpose.

Our spiritual gifts are given to us to build up the body of Christ.

To bring life. Eternal life.

So I ask again, who are we to apply worldly standards to Godly gifts?

Love,

Chrissy

Part 1 of 2. To be continued….