Are you sitting or standing?

This is a good question.
Are you sitting or are you standing?
I'm not sure whether you ever read a Bible but I really want to encourage you to give it a try. You know there was a time when I was basically expected to read it. It was presented to me as a 'requirement'. Now don't get me wrong I'm pretty certain that no one specifically said to me that if I didn't read it I was I was risking eternal damnation or some such thing but it was definitely implied to me that it was a requirement for me to have any justifiable claim to being a Christian. Something happened to me and my whole view changed and amazingly the Bible that I had pretty much come to loathe just came alive. So I am really hoping that through this simple blog together we can encourage one another and we perhaps can together arrive at a place where the Bible, and the message of the Bible, that is the purpose of the Bible, can come ALIVE for all of us.

One thing I have found is that almost every verse, almost every word, can be interpreted in more than one way. I wear glasses to read...if I don't wear my glasses it is amazing what a particular word comes appears to be when I try and read it; but with glasses it all becomes clear. When we read the Bible we need to have the right glasses on.

Now I'm going to say something about Church. My personal experience with Church has been a little like my experience with the Bible. There was a time when I loathed it but today my view is different. It is a place of relationship, a place where I can connect with like-minded people, a place where I can engage corporately together with people to glorify the One who is the only One with the right to be worshipped, Jesus Christ. Today I like Church. It is my base camp for my forays into enemy land to take ground and bring back released people on behalf of my leader.
Church...the 'challenging' thing about Church for me is this. Basically Church generally has lost the plot, its own unique God-given plot, and has become an optometrist. It hands out glasses! The glasses it hands out are tinted glasses. They are glasses designed so the wearers can only see the 'slant', the dogma, the doctrinal ideas, the particlar view of the denomination. If it is a Baptist church you get Baptist glasses, if it's a Catholic church you get Catholic glasses, if it's Brethren church you get Brethren glasses, if it's an Anglican church you get Anglican glasses, and so on and so on. True? Yes, sadly, I think it is. Now you are probably thinking, what church do I go to? I go to a Baptist church but ask me please am I a Baptist. My answer...no I am not a Baptist. I was raised a Brethren...am I a Brethren? No I am not a Brethren. I don't have anything against any of them particularly but I do dislike their glasses. It's a bit like Elton John...remember the glasses he wore? I just wish he'd take them off because they made him look like a goose. (Just an opinion! Didn't mean to offend. Sorry.)
God has released me from my glasses and like the song says...I'm singing now..."I can see clearly now, the rain has gone..." That is why the Bible looks different to me today; that is why Church looks different to me today. Oh don't get me wrong please I still have my issues but one thing I know God has, and is, removing my glasses, the glasses issued to me that has tinted my view.
Man I can talk! The point of all that is this. When we read the Bible our view of it can be tinted, clouded, seen through a lense that is programmed in a particular way. I want us to see clearly without any tinted lense; I want us to see TRUTH without any 'religious' slant. I'm not a Baptist, or a Brethren, or anything else. I'm a Christian and that means I only see Christ and He is truth. The only glasses you need are Him and through the lense of Truth it all becomes clear.

I feel the need to give you an example of this. There is a verse in the Bible that goes like this...it is found in Matthew 6: 33.

"But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you."
 

The words are spoken by Jesus. Jesus is talking about the fact that we shouldn't be anxious about any of our daily needs because God looks after the birds and He clothes the lilies and He knows what we need. Don't worry, Jesus is saying, God knows and He will look after you. And then He makes the statement above.  Now I want you to think for a moment...what is your interpretation of that verse? I bet that you, like me, have read that verse and interpreted it to say that if we are to expect God to look after all the needs that we have day by day then we need to be very diligent in seeking, pursuing, chasing after the kingdom and we must be especially diligent in pursuing right-ness before God and if we don't get it right then we can't really expect God to favour us. Am I right? You may not want to admit it but that pretty much sums up the tinted glasses interpretation of a lot of Christians.
Le me tell you the revelation that God has so graciously given me about this verse and it will totally set you free.The first thing I have to say is my right-ness before God is based ONLY in the righteousness of Jesus. I have no capacity...please hear this clearly; I have no capacity in myself, in my works, in my trying, in my striving to be right with God. NO matter what I do I will fail...I tried and I did! But all is not lost because when I seek Jesus then low and behold I find total and complete righteousness, right-ness with God.

So...are you sitting or are you standing?
The answer is both but you may even be running but I want to talk now about sitting.
Just as we sit before we walk it is very important that we learn to sit before we do anything else in our Christian life.
I really am praying that if you are a Christian that you get a hold of this because this may be the most important thing that you ever read.
So listen to these words from the Bible...

"But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus, in order that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus." Ephesians 2: 4 - 7
 

I could say a lot about this but I want you to  just think about this for a while...

• We have been made alive in Christ
• We are raised up with Him
• We are seated with Him
• Where? In heavenly places!
• Why? So that in the ages to come from the moment you believe in Him He might show you 'the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us.'
• How is all this possible? Because God is rich in mercy and He loves us with a GREAT love which even when we were as far away from Him as we could get He still loved us and drew us in and made us alive...this is true Life.
• What is our contribution to this process? Work hard? Be good? Do lots of good stuff?...NO! Only believe.

Here is another question for you to think about.
What is our part in the New Covenant of Grace?
Our part in the New Covenant is just to believe. Believe? Yes, believe in Jesus.
Now listen, a lot of people believe that Jesus existed, that He was a good bloke, some maybe that He was a prophet or maybe a great leader but that isn't enough.
We believe, I believe, that He is my personal Saviour and Lord and that He is the only way to God and that when I receive Him I receive eternal life and the absolute certainty of the fact that my sins, past, present and future are remembered no more by God. I'll talk more about the New Covenant another time.
Final quote for you today.

"Therefore let it be known, brethren, that through this Man (that's Jesus) is preached to you the forgiveness of sins; and by Him everyone who believes is justified from all things from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses." Acts 13: 38 - 39.

Have a great day!