Smeagol is Free!
A hermitudinal view of...stuff...


3.02.2009  

Because of Grace

"Let me ask you this: If you could obey Jesus perfectly and enjoy fellowship with God, and what that would bring, would you be happy? Would you be content? If you wouldn't you're not a believer. If that wouldn't satisfy you, you're not a Christian. Christians can't imagine anything better than His Kingdom come in their life. But if you're a believer, then that's the best thing you heard all week -- unless you heard something really similar earlier!"

-Ryan Fullerton

I posted this almost a year and a half ago, but it bears re-posting. It comes from a sermon that Ryan preached...oh...I'm guessing almost two years ago now.

If you live your days in any fashion similar to mine, you keenly feel the displeasure of your regenerate soul when you sin. Rather than sweet intimacy with God, you feel the sour distance sin brings, and you hate it. Even the numbness that comes with being in a rut of sin is just like that. But what of obedience? What of joy in Him? Sometimes, obedience is that which comes easily, that which makes more sense than the sun rising in the morning. At other times, it seems about as logical or as likely as sprouting wings and taking to the sky. Isn't grace like that, though? Isn't God's grace toward us in Christ that unbelievable, that wonderful?

The ability to obey God is one that comes to us because of grace. The desire we have to obey God is one that comes to us because of grace. The displeasure we feel when we disobey God is one that comes to us because of grace. The pleasure we feel when we obey God is one we feel because of grace. In short, the very relationship we have with the Lord has been fundamentally changed, and as such, we no longer obey Him on the basis of the Law, but on the basis of His grace to us in Christ. That, Christian, ought to make us happy, and it ought to make us praise Him, for it is praise to the glory of His grace.

posted by Bolo | 12:55 PM
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