Grace blog Pt. 1

[StriperAddict]

Gonna put some recent quotes from folks that dig deep into the New Covenant and grace right here. Credit and links included.

I hope ya'll enjoy and are encouraged in your faith!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Have you ever thought that God is a show-off? I’m pretty sure He is. It’s a sort of divine hobby for Him. And He’s not going to stop anytime soon.

God wants everyone and everything to know how incomparably good and capable and faithful and loving and perfect He is. Why? So the truth about Him will be known, and so everyone will want Him—and get everything they’ve been looking for and everything they need. He is the source of life itself, and He has designed us to find our best longings for life satisfied in Him.

Figuring that out is difficult, I know! There’s so much that offers fractional satisfaction. A clear sign that I’ve been looking for satisfaction in the wrong place is that I fall to the ugly suggestion to pretend I’m satisfied. I hate that.

Fortunately, you and I are still God’s workmanship, which means He’s going to convince us—over and over and over again—that He is amazing toward us by doing good to us. And, much as I don’t like my many slips and repeated neediness, still His over and over again display isn’t a bad thing, at least not for Him. Sometimes I think I’m the vacuum of neediness—“Lord, please rescue/restore/renew me again!” And He does. And His riches are on display in me. Who sees? Everyone and everything, and all those watching on the big screen in heaven. “Wow. Look at God. He’s incredible with Ralph.”
And with you.

"And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus." (Ephesians 2:6-7)

If you’ve been suspicious that God has you on display, it’s not because He is asking you to be a good example for Him. He is bragging on you because He has made you a good example of Himself.

Brag on, God.


(For more about how perfect God is with you, get my new book, “Life According to Perfect.” You’ll find it on amazon: https://tinyurl.com/ya72p6t4.)


From:
Ralph Harris Ministries

• http://lifecourse.org
• http://lifecourseministries.blogspot.com

 

[StriperAddict]

Wow ... !
--------------------

While you will feel pressure today to be something powerful, to be something dynamic, to be something productive and praiseworthy, Jesus will be laboring to keep you free of such pressure, and free to be the son or daughter He fashioned perfectly for His display of grace and glory.
He will be working to keep our sons and daughters free, our spouses and friends free, and even those who oppress us free from the ludicrous lie that life is about conquest, instead of the rest of bearing fruit and of building others up in the freedom of knowing and enjoying Jesus. Some will not understand that—not yet, anyway—but you do.



From:
Ralph Harris Ministries

• http://lifecourse.org
• http://lifecourseministries.blogspot.com

 

[StriperAddict]

I highly recommend the Ralph Harris book: "God’s Astounding Opinion of You". Excerpt:
========================

Are you living by faith in Jesus, that His sacrifice and resurrection actually worked for you, taking all of your sin away and giving you all of His life and righteousness? Then if God knocked on your door and you could see Him through the peephole, what would be the expression on His face?
I ask this only to assist you toward knowing what has been influencing you today: your righteousness and the work you’ve got to do, or His righteousness, and the gift He gave you of the work that’s all done. Think about it, and have another look at the expression of His face toward you. (From my first book, God’s Astounding Opinion of You.)

 

[StriperAddict]

Next, from: The shoveletter 2001

===================================

Implant Versus Application
Submitted by theshovel

Printer-friendly version Send to friend

An application employs an OUTSIDE influence to produce a desired effect. So, while I might apply a bandage on a flesh-wound I WILL remove it. Applications don’t become part of me. We might talk as if an applied teaching melds into our hearts, but truth be told we only HOPE it will it stick. Otherwise we wouldn’t have to keep applying it. In Jeremiah 31:31-34, God claimed that though the first covenant didn’t work, the second couldn’t fail. The first was doomed by breakable written commands, but the second was guaranteed by unbreakable IMPLANTED commands.
Notice, He did NOT etch written commands on hardened hearts, He embedded His very life into new and living hearts. Having done so, GOD fulfills every legal requirement by producing the one thing that cannot break it: LOVE. That’s why “Love one another” was - and continues to be - NEW. Degrading these words into a Christian application bypasses the Christian miracle.
Viewing life as a process of making application of God’s word only thrusts us into the same perception of those under the Law. Now if Israel was UNDER the law and it didn’t work, what good would it do those who have DIED to the law? If you think the application of God’s commands made a mess of the stony heart, what might it do to a LIVING one? The law was Israel’s jailor, and with each generation hope faded. Most regarded the promise as an illusion. They lived as dead toward God, their actions were merely outward attempts to produce the appearance of righteousness. Being alive toward sin, every newly created law or rule only produced a flurry of new transgressions - broken laws. The miracle of Christ made us dead toward sin and alive toward God. Why don’t we simply live in view of it? Attempting to apply the written (or spoken) truth to our life is an attempt to get this extra something within us. This is thinking outside - in.
But when we recognize that the goods have been put within us, we gain confidence that we HAVE BEEN hearing God through this miracle of Christ. He supplies from the INSIDE and works it out. We actually hear TRUTH - not just words. We have been grafted into God through Christ - as the branch is IN the vine and the life flows through the vine and into us.
As far as believing goes, we have been brought INTO faith - it IS happening. I refuse to believe my own insinuations that I need MORE faith. You want to know why? Because every time I thought I didn’t have enough, God removed even what I THOUGHT I had until nothing remained, and I was left simply believing HIM.
We become so sure that we don’t even believe Him so often, but then we find ourselves believing Him even though we find nothing left in ourselves.
We don’t grow more faith, the truth is that WE grow in IT. Why do I view myself as being OUTSIDE this miraculous faith, instead of being wrapped up inside it!!!
Know this, that your miracle ears hear Him and you are encouraged and uplifted in faith in so many ways. Of course you will sense yourself being built up sometimes when reading or hearing the written words of the Bible (both the old writings, and the letters of the apostles). You will also discover the same in your encounters throughout the day - especially when you recognize how free you are to hear God in EVERYTHING!!


WHY SETTLE FOR A SUPERFICIAL LIFE?

Shoveletter 2001

 

[StriperAddict]

Catching the whompers ... !!!
================================
Ralph Harris
June 30 at 10:50 AM

The obsolete arrangement between God and man (the Old Covenant) was never Christian—not even close. Not even. If now we make any attempt to wed it to the new and current arrangement by our efforts, our hopes or our expectations of God, we’re binding ourselves to frustration and confusion.

If frustration and confusion are whomping on your life just now, consider your covenant. Trying to have them both means you’ll enjoy neither, let alone God. It would be like trying to mate a horse and a car and hoping to get somewhere with it.
There is no fit. It won’t work.

It's crazy.

If you're going to actually enjoy and truly like God, you've got to pay attention to the covenants—only one is for you. The New Covenant is arranged and maintained entirely by Him for you. We are not achievers, we are receivers. We live by faith that Jesus was successful, which means that all of the benefits are ours for free.

Enjoy!

That’ll help you catch the whompers.

(For much more about the great benefits of Christ’s success, get my book, God’s Astounding Opinion of You: https://tinyurl.com/ydftk2v5.)


From:
Ralph Harris Ministries

• http://lifecourse.org
• http://lifecourseministries.blogspot.com

 

[StriperAddict]

Is God moody?
=====================

Is God moody? Can you put Him in a generous mood or make Him stingy? Can you do something to move Him close, or something to move Him away? Can you do something to get into His presence, or do something to get out of it? Is He fickle? Does He leave you?

The Christians at Corinth wondered about those things and they had good reason. Their behavior was awful—headline news. Epic. While Corinth was well known as a city where people took cruel advantage of each other, non-Christians were especially repulsed by the behavior of some who called themselves believers. Many in the church knew they were a mess, so it caused them a lot of stress concerning the security of their relationship with God. The Christians at Corinth had to have been worry warts.

Naturally, they were aware that their spiritual daddy, the apostle Paul, knew all about their sloppiness and ugly failures, and they were afraid that he wouldn’t come to be with them because they were so often so bad. “Will Paul,” they might have asked, “who loves us so deeply, draw away from us to punish us or as a way of teaching us a lesson? Will he go somewhere else, to people who are better than us? Why would he want to come here?”

Knowing their fears, Paul wrote a second letter to the worried Corinthians, and said essentially this:
“Are you kidding? I brag about you! Every time I think of you, even just a little bit, God fills me with love for you! How can I help but want to be with you in the same way that He does? I’m crazy about you! Did I not make that clear in my first letter? I know it’s been awhile since I’ve visited; it simply hasn’t been the right time. But my heart for you is exactly like God’s heart—everything is ‘Yes’ with Him! Remember what He says? Yes, I will always be with you. Yes, I have given you all things. Yes, I have secured you in Christ for always. And, yes, my love and grace for you is unchanged—it is and will always be “Yes!” Can I get a Corinthian ‘Amen’?” (See 2 Corinthians 1:12-2:11)

Paul did what many of you do: he answered their questions and vanquished their fears by describing what he knew and how he felt from having God’s love for them.
The Corinthian Christians were the perfect people by which to make the point: no matter how things look, no matter how we look, God’s affection and grace are never at risk, never threatened. In fact, they are even more in view. That’s the perfect relationship God has given to us already. You don’t have to go get it. You don’t have to earn it. You don’t have to work on it. It has been given to you. It’s His gift—yours to enjoy.

God has plenty of motivation to be with us and to do for us; He doesn’t need more. He doesn’t run out of motivation or have a shortage one day, and He doesn’t need convincing. You’ll never need to woo God, and you’ll never need to do anything right in order to attract Him to you. There’s no class on successful flirting with God! He’s the One who loves and behaves perfectly—remember? Believing that slips away sometimes, I know, but that’s the gospel that the devil keeps trying to move you and me away from. So if you’ve wandered, as I sometimes do, wander back.
You and God are tight and secure. You’re together! He made it happen. And He will never be moody with you. He’s not like that. I can tell you.

From:


Ralph Harris
July 5 at 4:28 PM