GIG 191 - God Doesn't Need Us To Serve Him

Do we have a duty to serve God? Is God looking to us and our strengths and capabilities to serve Him? Is there something about us that our self-sufficient, self-sustaining God needs?

As if!

But the good news is that even though God doesn't need us or our capabilities, He wants us. He desires us, not our service. Although service is a part of our lives of love, God didn't save us for the purpose of making a bunch of servants. He saved us so we could know Him! Many have somehow gotten the idea - and live with the premise - that God's primary interest in us is what we can do for Him. Join us as we spend a little bit of time with this idea that God doesn't need us to serve Him (see Acts 17:25, NASB) but rather has saved us for an eternal intimate relationship with Him.

gigcast.graceroots.org

Life in Christ isn't about "not sinning."

The other day, Lydia posted a couple of quotes from Ryan Rufus. I saw one quote on her Facebook profile:

"Living a holy life should never be defined as 'living without sin.' In fact sin has got nothing to do with holiness at all."

And another quote on this blog post:

"Holiness has got nothing to do with sinning or not sinning! If that is what we think, then we think WE are the cause of our holiness and I am telling you there is only ONE person who is the cause of our holiness and His name is Jesus Christ!!"

Great stuff! Being holy has nothing to do with "not sinning." We are holy because God has set us apart for Himself and has placed us in Himself - all based on the finished work of Jesus, not based upon what we do or don't do. For a long time in my Christian life, my focus seemed to be on "not sinning." If I sinned, or felt like I wasn't living righteously enough, my focus was on "not sinning." To be quite truthful, my focus was on "not sinning" quite often! My obsession was not my relationship with God. My obsession was how to overcome sin. I now realize that that obsession was fleshly and self-focused, not God-focused.

My life has forever been changed during the past decade and a half, ever since I realized that God is not obsessed with sin! He took care of the disease of sin on the cross, and His obsession (His passion) has always been me, not my sin!

Yes, it's true that "by the Spirit" we "put to death the deeds of the flesh." But that's not the essence of our lives in Christ! It's not the root of our lives in Christ, and it's not the daily obsession that we're to have. Jesus didn't come so that we would live with an ongoing focus on sin. He came so that we could be reconciled to God and have an ongoing obsession with HIM!

We all know how Jesus, in John 3:16, said that God gave Him so that people could have eternal life. And in John 17 He said that this is eternal life: That we may know God! Eternal life is NOW, and eternal life is knowing God! Let's stop making it about sin.

Religion vs. Relationship - Part 1

This week we talk about how life in Christ is not about religion, but about relationship. Religion is man's attempt to get to God. It's based upon self-effort and performance. It puts the focus on us. Relationship is based upon faith and trust, and relying upon the finished work of Jesus.

A little leaven can go a long way. A little legalism, or a little religion, worked into our lives in Christ can blur our perspective of the perfect relationship we have with God that is based solely upon His love and grace.

gigcast.graceroots.org

Atlanta / Blogging / Community

Three days till Atlanta!!!

I'm not hopping "in my Chrysler that's as big as a whale" (see video below) but I'll be hopping on a couple of big jet airplanes (thanks Ryan and Jamie for making that happen!!) on Friday morning and heading down to Hotlanta for the Radical Sonship Conference with Steve McVey and Paul Anderson-Walsh! I exchanged a couple of emails with Paul a couple of weeks ago, and I'm excited about what's on his and Steve's hearts regarding this weekend.

I'm also excited to be meeting some friends that I've known only online up to this point! Ryan and Jamie, Matthew Campbell, John Fincher and Gary Kirkham are among those who I've enjoyed "blog" fellowship with, but now will be meeting live and in person! I'm very excited about all of this!

Did I mention I'm excited!

Many of us have come to know each other by a means that we never would've thought of, even as little as 1 to 3 years ago! The blogging world has truly opened up a whole new realm of relationships for so many of us! We all have our "real life" (in the flesh) relationships, but through blogging and commenting God has brought some of us together in a very wonderful way. Check out what nAncY said in this short post yesterday on the subject of blogging and commenting. Among other things, this sticks out to me: "...making it a place of relationship, communion, sharing." Yeah!

When the Lord whispered 'graceroots.org' in my ear 5 years ago, in answer to a question I asked Him, He didn't fill me in on whole lot of details. Some of the details have been filled in since that time, but at first I thought it was primarily going to be a place for me to share my writings about grace. I had no idea what a blog was, so I simply typed up a couple of "articles" and posted them on the website, having no idea who would read them, or if anybody would at all. Then in June of 2006, Dave Lesniak asked in the Grace Walk Forum if anyone had a blog. I didn't have one, but if I remember correctly it was within 24 hours of his asking that question that I started this blog. Again, at first I thought of it primarily as a place for me to write about grace, and I had NO IDEA how all these friendships would come out of it!!! I'm so thankful to the Lord for joining so many of us together through our various blogs. Life has never been the same since, and will never be again!

Unfortunately I'm in a season in life in which I'm not able to spend as much time blogging or commenting as I have in the past. I hope this changes, but for now I'm simply enjoying the simplicity and beauty of the friendships that have evolved in the past 2 or 3 years!

"Headin' down the Atlanta highway..."

(P.S. I think this live version needs more cowbell!)

I'm so thankful for His grace

I was just sitting here thinking about the many, many conversations I've had with people over the years that have revolved around God and our relationship with Him. I was thinking about all the ways in which I've been taught by others and the ways in which I've taught. I was thinking of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, James and all the other writers in the Bible. All the words that have been shared by them and me and others.

I was thinking about how I've got a lot of doctrine about God. So much of it is really great! I'm very thankful that I have a doctrinal understanding of God and His grace, and that I'm still learning and growing. I was thinking about this, and I was overwhelmed for a few seconds with the wonderful sensation that even with all that I know about God, and even with the way that I've come to know Him personally and relationally, I DON'T HAVE HIM PEGGED, not even for a minute! I don't have Him figured out at all! And that's a good thing.

The truth is that we've been made new creations, and we have a brand new identity in Him, and we are one Spirit with Him. We have a communicative relationship with Him, in which He speaks to us, and us to Him, and He interacts with us, and we can know Him intimately... and it's ALL good!

But yet with all that I know, and with all that you know, and with all that all of humanity knows about God, and with the ways in which people know God intimately... and with all our doctrinal understanding, no matter how true or accurate it is... there is soooo much about God that we either think we know that isn't really so, or that we just plain don't know at all, and we hypothesize and we extrapolate and we articulate and we dialog and we share and we proclaim and we lecture and we listen and we infer and we establish doctrines and so on and so on - you get the point. And all the while, even in the midst of all our God-knowledge and all our God-ignorance, He loves us unconditionally and is full of grace toward us, every single second of our lives!

By all means let's keep up the dialog! Let's keep on sharing and learning and extrapolating and all that good stuff! We can most certainly be bold with what we believe, even with the understanding that we really hardly know a thing about God! He's revealed Himself to us in many ways, and I believe He wants us to communicate all of that with one another. I think what I'm saying is simply that I'm humbled that this wonderful God, who has a billion true and false things said about Him every single day, even from the likes of you and me, continues to love and adore us, and keep us in His limitless grace!

This also gives me humility in sharing truth with others. Holy cow... anything that I know that is true isn't a result of my wonderful thinking powers! He's GRACIOUSLY revealed it to me, and I want to be very gracious and loving in my sharing with others. I want to speak with clarity and boldness, and with great patience, kindness and love... and always with my heart and mind open to what God has to say to me through others, even if that means it penetrates and cracks open my own preconceived ways of seeing and understanding things.

A couple of items about The Shack

1) Paul Young posted a link to this via his Myspace page (and I would guess in other places as well). If The Shack has affected you, Good Morning America wants to know. They're asking people to upload videos of themselves describing how The Shack has affected their lives, or reading a favorite passage from the book.

2) Over the course of a few days, James over at Idle musings of a bookseller has posted a few quotes from the book. Check out his last one, entitled "Rules!" (and while on his blog, check out the past ones too).

The whole quoted section on that post is good, but here's the bottom line: "It is true that relationships are a whole lot messier than rules, but rules will never give you answers to the deep questions of the heart and they will never love you."

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Related: Free Spirit's pithy blog post from today entitled "Religion is Resorted To..."

The proper environment for life and growth

Although I always have a wide range of things that I blog about, I've had in mind lately that I want to get back to blogging more about things such as being established in grace and growing in grace, which is really what I like writing about and discussing the most. A post from Kent this morning stirs my heart along these lines. Being established in grace, and being able to have healthy and vibrant growth, depends on several things. Using his own garden as an example, as he often does, Kent talks about how the environment plays such a huge role in all this.

He says, "Relationship with Father, Son, and Spirit is the environment we belong in and will thrive in. Outside of that environment the colors will be flat and the fruit will fade fast. Many times fruit will not even be produced. All the energy is spent on the scramble to survive."

See the whole post here.


Heb 13:9 (NKJV)
Do not be carried about with various and strange doctrines. For it is good that the heart be established by grace, not with foods [read: laws] which have not profited those who have been occupied with them.

2 Peter 3:18 (KJV)
But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen.

Col 2:6-7 (NKJV)
As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving.

Col 2:7 (NLT)
Let your roots grow down into him and draw up nourishment from him, so you will grow in faith, strong and vigorous in the truth you were taught. Let your lives overflow with thanksgiving for all he has done.

Ps 92:12-15 (NKJV)
12 The righteous shall flourish like a palm tree,
He shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
13 Those who are planted in the house of the LORD
Shall flourish in the courts of our God.
14 They shall still bear fruit in old age;
They shall be fresh and flourishing,
15 To declare that the LORD is upright;
He is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in Him.