Sunday Highlights
It was a great day at all of our campuses as we wrapped up our “Religion Lies” series.
I spent the morning at our Dickson campus hanging out with our amazing volunteers there.
Then I headed to the Nashville campus picnic. What a blast. Go check out THIS BLOG for some highlights and pics.
Here are a few notes from Pete‘s message “A Story of Redemption”
Religious Lie: The better you perform the more God loves you.
We don’t like things to be easy. We want to earn grace.
Matthew 5:17-30
We play the “He Love me, He Loves Me Not” game with God. (You know the game where you plucked the petals off a daisy to determine if the boy you liked, liked you.)
We try to make deals with God all the time. We start to believe spiritual activity creates spiritual formation.
Jesus taught to guard your heart not just edit your behavior.
Religious systems just lead to behavior modification not changed hearts and transformed lives.
John 15:5
Romans 5:8
You are not defined by what you do. You’re defined by what He’s done.
Most of us have either spent our lives 1) over-performing to win God’s love or 2) giving up and running from Him because we don’t think there is anyway we can earn His love.
God can not love you anymore or any less than He does in this moment.
Do you believe that?
I completely agree that we “like to earn grace”. Grace makes us very uneasy – this is why we come up with a million rules of what being a Christian includes – or does not include. Then WE are in control, and have some basis for being considered “the elect”. Sad, I know.