Welcome Back To The Future

Been hearing this lately..."When are you going to teach on grace again?" I love that question every time I hear it for a couple reasons. I love to teach, and I love to teach God's grace. Nothing excites me more then the message of God's grace and nothing is more important to every believer than to hear the grace message time and time again for the first time.

Why? Because we forget so easily what we have in Christ. what was purchased on the cross. The all to simple, nonreligious reason for Christ's death and resurrection.

We love the grace message but we can't seem to keep the truth of it in our minds for very long. We back peddle to the "Your sins are forgiven, but..." message we've all been exposed to.

We pick up the burdensome yoke of performance and race to some imaginary finish line where we think righteousness awaits us. How sad it is to arrive at one finish line just to find the starting line on yet another and another and another race to nowhere.

We begin to judge others actions, words, dress, hair style, etc. in the light of performance salvation. We become judge and jury pronouncing judgement and sentence one anyone who might not be "as saved as us". We're only to happy to jump in and lend a hand when it comes to assessing another's eternal destination.

Thankfully, God doesn't hear our verdicts. He doesn't hear them because our judgment is Pharisaic.He passes no judgement; He doesn't hear us because of His grace.

Why can't we keep the truth of God's grace in our hearts and minds? Why can't we understand that our sins, ALL our sins, EVERY sin past, present and future is completely and eternally forgiven?

It lies in the last sentence...Past, Present and Future thinking. We can't get it into our heads that our eternal reward was purchased in the past, is not for the future, and belongs to us right now, this very second. Because of Christ, all our past sins are gone, all our present sins are forgiven and all our future sins are forgiven.

Every future moment becomes a present day reality. If Jesus is Lord of your life you rest with Him at the right hand of the Father. Your sins were forgiven the moment you made Jesus your Lord. That forgiveness, that transformation, that rebirth didn't remain in the past when you first came to Christ. It remained powerfully active in every present day step you into your next future moment.

Ephesians 2:8-9 "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast." NIV

2 Corinthians 12:6-10 "Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say, or because of these surpassingly great revelations. Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." NIV