Tag: Christ

But I’m not a very good person

So in contrast to my other post,But I’m a Good Person,  I want to flip things around for you a little bit.  Again along the lines of Grace being for ALL not SOME.  Many people feel that they have too much baggage for God.  Too much wrong in their past for God to love or to use them.

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So I wanted to give you a list of jacked up people in Bible:

Let’s start here:

Matthew 1:1-2, 6

1The [a]record of the genealogy of [b]Jesus [c]the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham:

2 Abraham [d]was the father of Isaac, [e]Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of[f]Judah and his brothers

6 Jesse was the father of David the king.  David was the father of Solomon by [h]Bathsheba who had been the wife of Uriah.

Abraham — Yes, Father Abraham, didn’t believe God could make good on His promise of having a son, because his wife was barren.  Had a son with a hand maiden.  After his wife got pregnant, he sent off the hand maiden and her son.  So here we have an adulterous dead-beat dad…

Jacob — Ever heard the story of Jacob and his brother Esau.  Twin boys, Jacob was momma’s boy.  Manipulated his brother into giving up his birthright.  He also with the help of his mom, tricked his dad Isaac who was dying and going blind, taking his brothers family rights, and making his brother his slave.  To the point that his brother Esau wanted to kill him.

David — David was a great man of God.  He was a loved ruler of Israel.  But verse 6 above says a lot.  David had Bathsheba’s husband killed so that he could be with her, after he got her pregnant while her husband was away at war.

Genesis 9:20-21

20 Then Noah began [j]farming and planted a vineyard. 21 He drank of the wine and became drunk, and uncovered himself inside his tent.

Noah — Builder of the Ark, after the flood got drunk and naked.

Exodus 2:11-12

11 Now it came about in those days, when Moses had grown up, that he went out to his brethren and looked on their [c]hard labors; and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his brethren. 12 So he [d]looked this way and that, and when he saw there was no one around, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.

Moses — Leader of God’s people out of Egypt, Holder of the 10 commandments;  was a murderer.

Joshua 2:1, 8-9

1 Then Joshua the son of Nun sent two men as spies secretly from Shittim, saying, “Go, view the land, especially Jericho.” So they went and came into the house of a harlot whose name was Rahab, and [a]lodged there.

Now before they lay down, [b]she came up to them on the roof, 9 and said to the men, “I know that the Lord has given you the land, and that the terror of you has fallen on us, and that all the inhabitants of the land have [c]melted away before you.

Rahab — One of a few women in the bible with her own story.  She was a harlot.  She protected the Israelite spies in Jericho.

Are you feeling any better about what is in your past yet?  God has used murderers, drunks, prostitutes, tax collectors, and cheaters.

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No matter what your situation is, no matter what you have done in your past, no matter how ruined you feel that you are, God can and will use you.  All you have to do is listen to Him, when he is calling to you.  He is waiting on you to call out to Him and ask for His grace and forgiveness.  He is waiting on YOU to say, Lord I know I’m a sinner, and that I am far from you.  I want you in my life.  I want to receive your forgiveness and grace.  Lord please forgive me and come into my life and make me new.  Use me Lord, to reach those around me that are far from you.  Clean me Lord and restore me.  I know that it is only though you that I can be saved.  It is only through you that I am made whole.  Thank you Lord for making me whole and saving me.  Thank you for your grace and your love and your mercy.

Remember that Grace will always win…

by corymcglone

But I’m a good person

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Over the past couple weeks our pastor has been doing a series called Grace too good to be true. This is been one of the most amazing message series I have heard in a long time.

It has been a reminder that we are all messed up, some more than others, but we were all once in the same place. We were all once outside of God’s grace and mercy. There are “good” people out there that do really amazing things, but they haven’t given their lives to God. There are people on death row that have realized the wrongness of what they have done, and have asked God for forgiveness and He has brought them into his circle of grace and mercy.

It’s not a matter of the things that you have done or the things that you do.  The closer that you are to God and the closer that you draw into Him, the harder it’s going to be to sin or to look to sin.  Many people will look around and say, “Well at least I’ve never _____,”  “At least I’m not doing _____”  Fill in what ever Holier than thou reference you want in these blanks.  This is the problem with Churches and Christians today.  So much time is spent calling out the sins, and belittling those that fit those molds.  God poured out His grace on the cross for ALL not SOME.   

John 3:16-17

16 “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 17 God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.

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I want to take a minute to brag on our church for a minute here as well.  We recently changed our mission statement to the following : “ Helping people far from God find God.”  This simple statement sums up what we are about.  Out other big question that we always ask is: “If we ceased to exist, would our city miss us?”

At the end of the day, being a good person isn’t what it’s all about.  Being a good person makes you likable.  Being a good person may make you feel better about yourself.  But what is your standard of good?  Have you ever told a lie?  Have you ever, looked at someone lustfully that wasn’t your spouse?  Have you ever left work with a pen or sticky notes?  If you answer yes to all three, you are a Lying, Thieving, Adulterer.  This make you no better in God’s eyes than someone who is a murderer, a drunk, (insert your better than sin here).  Your story shouldn’t be that, “I’m blessed by God because I do this, _______.”  Your story should be, “ God has blessed me with this even though I’ve done this.”  It’s not about what you can do for God, it’s more about what God can use you for.  When you are doing His work for His glory, you may not be the best person, but you will be living a blessed life.

John 8:1-11

8 But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. 2 Early in the morning He came again into the temple, and all the people were coming to Him; and He sat down and began to teach them. 3 The scribes and the Pharisees *brought a woman caught in adultery, and having set her in the center of the court, 4 they *said to Him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in adultery, in the very act. 5 Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women; what then do You say?” 6 They were saying this, testing Him, so that they might have grounds for accusing Him. But Jesus stooped down and with His finger wrote on the ground. 7 But when they persisted in asking Him, He straightened up, and said to them,“He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 Again He stooped down and wrote on the ground. 9 When they heard it, they began to go out one by one, beginning with the older ones, and He was left alone, and the woman, where she was, in the center of the court. 10 Straightening up, Jesus said to her, “Woman, where are they? Did no one condemn you?” 11 She said, “No one, [a]Lord.” And Jesus said, “I do not condemn you, either. Go. From now on sin no more.”

Are you living you life comparing yourself to others or are you comparing yourself to Christ?  Are you living up to the calling that God has placed on your life?  Do you know the calling that God has on your life?  Do you know that it is God’s grace that has saved you?  You don’t have to get your life right before you come to God.  He will help you through that.  He will change you.  You don’t have to worry about changing yourself, that will come.

by corymcglone

Getting back to the basics…

Yesterday and today, I was blessed with the chance to be the production engineer for a training at our church.  Earlier in the week I received a mass text looking for someone to work the training on Friday night and Saturday, and I figured that someone else had already answered and was setup.  But I responded later in the evening anyway, and I was still needed, so being me, I said sign me up.  I had no clue what I was going to be sitting in on at that point.  The training was on prayer and healing…

Praying no matter what, is what we need to be looking at.  It is in God’s hands not yours.  You will at times just be overcome with the pain of someone else.  Too many times people pray in condemnation, people pray for people and air the dirty laundry that they know about them, and push disbelief out to people.  Many times people will pray for show, or will blame the person that does not have their prayer answered, or will reason with the issue – it’s a sanctified pain…

To me more than the Friday night teaching and the sessions on Saturday, was the feeling of the Spirit during worship.  I have been in church all of my life.  I have been working with church praise teams for many years now too.  While I’ve heard and felt God’s presence many times before during worship, this morning I felt something that I hadn’t felt for a while.  And I felt God really laying this message on me.  But I couldn’t get the song “Heart of Worship” out of my head.  The opening line of the song, kept repeating itself –

When the music fades
All is stripped away
And I simply come

So many times we get caught up in the entire production of “church” today, and we don’t really move forward in Worship.  We play church too much.  Now, I’m not talking about what churches to today, but more of what the attendees do.  I myself find myself just showing up.  Too many times sitting in service I find myself thinking – I would do this with the sound, that was off-key, That is off beat…  Many of us show up on Sundays or Saturdays and go through the motions.  We like the beat of the songs, we like the concert that many churches have each week.  But that brings me to the point that God was driving into me this morning; the worship session at this training that started out both days was one guy and an acoustic guitar.

You could feel as he led the room in worship that he was pressing in to God’s spirit for himself.  It is that sincerity that can be felt.  It is getting yourself away from the noise and the show, as I thought back on the other times, that I had felt God the most during worship, for me, it has been the times that it was a simple set.  Not a full band, sometimes it was just voices, at times it was an old hymn.  The only formula for getting close to God, is opening your heart.  It is knowing that no matter what, you are God’s child, and that even if His answer isn’t the one you wanted, or His “lack” of an answer, you still know that he is there with you and for you.

The belief that God is with us no matter what, and that we are His.  We are His hands and feet, in all that we do.  We don’t know His full plan, we only see the glimpses that He reveals to us.

16 Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to him, “King Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. 17 If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us[c] from Your Majesty’s hand. 18 But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.” 

Daniel 3:16-18 (NLT)

To me these are the basics:

  • God is God
  • God waits on us to open our hearts to Him
  • We don’t know what he has next for us, but asking for a glimpse is fine.
  • And to steal a line from Garth Brooks – Just because he doesn’t answer, doesn’t mean he don’t care

I challenge you to put away the noise of the things around you.  Take some quite time with God, this doesn’t have to be time in silence, but take time to just wait for God.  Spend time in the Bible, we won’t always hear God in a loud booming voice, but He reveals himself to us in different ways.  But it is in our time pushing into Him and concentrating on Him, that gets us back to the basics.

by corymcglone