Good Enough for God

Do you feel good enough for God?

How good does a person have to be to get into heaven?

How good is God?

He is ALL good, in other words, He is holy.

Picture a blank white board.  Let that represent holiness.

Now, let’s get extreme.  Let’s say a person only ever sinned once….ever.

So, they are 99.9% perfect/holy.  But what does that really mean?

Right, they aren’t perfect or holy.

So, if God were to allow them into His Presence, what would that do to God’s holiness?

Exactly, He would no longer be holy.

So, other than Jesus, has there ever been a human being that qualified for holy?  Nope.

Paul reiterates God’s declaration, “There is none righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is none who seeks for God; all have turned aside; together they have become useless; there is none who does good; there is not even one.”

So, why is this so important?

It means that people cannot stand before God on their own merits.

When our performance is judged against God’s Law, we ALL fail.

We need someone to intervene for us.

Well, I have good news!  Someone did!

God Himself came in the form of Jesus to pay the penalty for all of our sin.

He gave us His righteousness and took on Himself our unrighteousness.

So, in exchange for our imperfection, when we place our faith in Jesus, we are given Jesus’ perfection through His grace and mercy.

This is the start of the glorious exchanged life.

His life in exchange for ours.

All accomplished on the cross; proven by His resurrection.

Now, we are free from the Law, and free to live with grace as our teacher.

The old sinner me is dead; the new me, a saint in Christ Jesus, now lives.

All credit and glory goes to Jesus…none to me.  I’m fine with that.

Now, we are free to rest in His love and acceptance and to pass it along to those around us.

Beloved, have you entered into His grace by faith in Jesus’ shed blood?

Why not choose right now to turn from sin and admit there’s no way you can be holy?

Put your faith in Jesus and choose to follow Him.

It’s the best choice you could ever make!

Blessings!

Robyn

 

 

Prime Rib Positive

How do you react to a verse like, “Be holy, for God is holy”?

Seriously, like that’s possible!

Perhaps, the Lord gave us this standard to help us realize that all of our own efforts to live righteously are doomed to failure.

I grew up in a church that did a solid job sharing the gospel, but it did a horrible job teaching me to appropriate God’s grace in my daily walk.

They taught a ‘here’s your Bible verse, now just try harder’ approach to Christianity.

Beloved, all that does is leave a Christian frustrated and defeated.

God never intended for us to try harder; He intended for us to boast in our weakness and glory in His strength.

There are many believers caught in the ‘just try harder’ Prime Rib Flesh Pattern.

What do I mean by Prime Rib Flesh?

There are three basic categories for flesh patterns: Yucky, Plain Vanilla, and Prime Rib.

The church loves Prime Rib flesh, because it gets stuff done.

It’s a hard charging, power of positive thinking, you can do it if you just try harder philosophy.

It loves ministry programs.  It loves being in charge of ministry programs.

It loves to be in control of everything, because it’s way is always the best way.

It presents itself as having it all together on the outside, but oftentimes, it’s hiding serious strongholds on the inside.

Prime Ribbers know all the answers to Bible Trivia, as they seem to adhere to their list of do’s and don’t’s, but on the inside they can be judgmental and miserable.

Beloved, the only way we can be holy is to appropriate Jesus’ holiness.

He is holy, and He lives in our skin!

We can’t try hard enough!

How do we appropriate Jesus’ holiness?  By setting our minds on the truth over and over…

“not I, but Christ; I can’t live the Christian life, but He can through me.  Thank You, Jesus, for doing this through me.”

When faced with temptation, acknowledge that the battle belongs to Jesus.

Are you having trouble loving people?  Acknowledge your dependence on Jesus to love them through you.

Living in God’s grace means resting and receiving His love and allowing Jesus to express His live and love through you.

Grace does not lead us to indulge our flesh in sin; grace teaches us to say “NO” to ungodliness and live uprightly in His strength as we look for His return.

It’s by God’s grace that we can stop trying harder and start resting in His love and acceptance that is already ours by faith not by performance.

He delights in us always!

Let our battle cry no longer be ‘just try harder;’ but instead be ‘not I but Christ who lives through me!”

Blessings!

Robyn

Back from the Dead

Have you ever met someone who died but was brought back to life?

I would have loved to sit down with Lazarus to hear about all that he experienced over the few days he was in heaven!

I wonder how he felt about being sent back to earth.

I bet he had mixed emotions about the whole mission.

The reality is that every time we meet up with another brother or sister in Christ, we are meeting someone who died and was miraculously brought back to life!

You see, when we placed our faith in Jesus to pay the penalty for sin, we became one with Him.

So, when Jesus died on the cross to sin, so did we.

And, when He rose from the grave, so did we.

This is why Paul wrote in Romans 6, that we died to sin and now are alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Out relationship with sin is severed once and for all.

Because we are in Christ, His resurrection life now permeates our essence and reconnects us with the only Source of Life, Jehovah.

Each one of us is a walking, talking miracle of God’s grace.

Close your eyes and imagine hearing the Lord Jesus say your name and the words, “Come forth.”

The moment you received Jesus as your Savior the true you arose from  the dead, and sin’s grip on you was shattered.

That which is truly you came alive by being reconnected to the Source of Life.

This happened to me when I was seven, and I remember the experience of breathing in His Life as I expressed my faith in Jesus’ blood to pay for sin and received Him as my Savior.

I don’t remember anything else from age 7!

A miracle happened for me that day.

I was dead; by faith, Jesus made me come alive again.

He transformed me from a dead sinner to a living saint!  Hallelujah!

If you’ve never experienced this miracle, won’t you consider putting an end to your own pathetic efforts to be ‘good enough,’ because no one can be 100% perfect, which is God’s standard.

But, Jesus was good enough, and so He was the perfect sacrifice who died for sin on our behalf, so that by faith in Him, we could receive His resurrection life in us.

In your own words, admit to God that you’re a sinner and that you believe that Jesus’ blood paid for sin once for all.

Then, make the choice to turn from sin and tell God that you receive Jesus as your Savior and His gift of eternal life.

Thank Him for bringing you back to Life, and ask Him to teach you to follow Jesus as both Savior and Lord.

Blessings!

Robyn

The True You

Have you ever heard anyone say, “You just have to be true to yourself?”

What on earth does that mean?

Frankly, most of the time it’s an excuse to indulge their selfish flesh.

However, the reality is that our choices flow from our perception of self.

For example, if I see myself as a person with a bad temper, then I will be perfectly comfortable with biting someone’s head off.

On the other hand, if I see myself as a nice person but react to someone with angry words, it will bother me, and I will quickly apologize.

Our perception of self forms in large measure based on the verbal and physical feedback we get from our parents, siblings, friends, and teachers.

Unfortunately, none of those folks are the Source of Truth.

The key to mental health is perceiving ourselves as God perceives us.

Author Brennan Manning wrote:

“Define yourself radically as one beloved by God.  This is the true self.  Every other identity is illusion.”

In Christ, you are loved, accepted, made righteous and holy, safe and secure, His friend, complete, lacking nothing, blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

The very life and essence of Jesus flows in you and through you thanks to His gift of the Holy Spirit.

Beloved, we need to put off our old self perceptions and  put on God’s perception of us.

This is where truth is regardless of what we feel.

We have been taken out of Adam, so people no longer define us.

We have been born again into God’s family; we are children of the King of Kings; we are princes and princesses.

God sees us as we really are: complete in Him, perfect, holy, Christ-like brothers and sister of Jesus.

Beloved, this is the true you, so be true to yourself and live out of your new identity in Jesus.

Blessings!

Robyn

 

 

Righteous in Christ Jesus

Did you know that there are only two kinds of people in this world?

The righteous and the unrighteous.  That’s it.

We are all born unrighteous in Adam – sinners by nature.

Now, for the person who puts there faith in the shed blood of Jesus to pay the penalty for sin, there is a mighty transformation.

We become what Jesus called – born again.

By faith, we are identified with Jesus to the point that we share in His death, burial and resurrection.

Therefore, we are spiritually reborn into Jesus’ family.

Jesus took on our sin and in turn gave us His righteousness.  Wow!

But, how should this impact how we see ourselves and others?

Here’s truth: believers are already 100% righteous in our spirit because Jesus lives in us.

Our problem is that we focus on our failures and the failures of others and take offense.

Beloved, how many of our sins have been paid for on the cross?

All of them!  100% covered by the blood!

The reality is that we are in Christ, and He is in us, so we are immersed in His righteousness.

So are all believers!

Now, how does his factor into forgiving others?

Think on this: What would it be like to not take any offense at what is done to us?

We would never be upset, ever.

What kind of freedom would that give us?

We would never again be enslaved by hurt, anger, bitterness, shame, fear, anxiety, or rejection.

When we choose to abide in Christ and to see Jesus followers as righteous in Christ Jesus, we can more easily choose not to take offense when they react in their flesh.

Also, resting in faith in Jesus, gives us His eyes for the unrighteous and therefore, empowers us to not take offense at their actions against us just as Jesus did from the cross.

The first martyr, Stephen, understood this as he responded with forgiveness toward the unbelievers as they hurled lethal stones at his body.

He refused to take offense, because he could see His Savior ready to receive him into heaven.

Beloved, this takes faith in the finished work of the cross.

We have been redeemed.

We are clothed in His righteousness by His grace!

No one can truly harm us.

They may hurt our eathsuits, like they did Stephen’s, but they can’t really hurt us unless we choose to take offense.

Forgiveness brings freedom.

When we surrender and rest in the knowledge that nothing can harm the real us, we will be free to respond in all situations in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Blessings!

Robyn

Discipleship101: Part 4 “How to Save Your Life”

Self Preservation is a primal human instinct.

Solomon wrote, “God has written eternity in the hearts of man.”

Folks, we were never meant to die.

We know that instinctively, and we react to life threatening situations by fighting for our lives.

So, what Jesus says in Matthew 16:25 sounds counter-intuitive to our basic survival instinct.

“For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake shall find it.”

Say what?

There is only one way to save our lives – to have eternal life; and that is by faith in Jesus Christ and what He accomplished on the cross.

A person who chooses to follow Jesus has made that saving faith choice.

The evidence of that choice is the believer’s choice to deny self, take up the cross, and follow Jesus.

Jesus always leads us along the path of Life.

All other paths lead to death and destruction.

There is one name given among men by which we can be saved: JESUS.

He alone is the Way, the Truth and the Life.

Jesus said that NO one can come to the Father except through Him.

No matter how sincere a person is in their beliefs, unless Jesus is the object of their faith, they have no hope for eternal life.

Some people may find this harsh.

God made one rescue plan.

It’s Satan that has concocted all the others…. all of which are based on man’s efforts and not the cross.

Beloved, if you’ve received Jesus as your Savior, great!

Are you living under His Lordship?

Have you realized:

• that when He died, you died?
• that when He arose, you arose with a whole new identity?
• that He calls you to trust Him wholeheartedly by following His lead instead of telling Him what you’re going to do for Him?

I hope you can answer “Yes” to these questions and that you truly enjoy allowing Him to express Himself through you as you follow Him!

Blessings!

Robyn

Discipleship 101 Part 2: Taking Up the Cross

Do you like to wear a cross as jewelry?

I don’t think that’s what Jesus meant when He told His disciples that taking up the cross is a requirement to follow Him.

I seriously doubt that members of the early church would have worn crosses as jewelry.

Today, it would be like someone wearing a noose or an electric chair as jewelry.  We just wouldn’t do it!

They are symbols of death.  There is nothing pretty about them.

In Deut. 21:23, the Law declares one who is hung on a tree as accursed of God.

So being crucified or hung on a tree was a cursed way to die according to God.

Paul tells us in Galatians 3, “Jesus redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us… so that in Christ the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.”

Jesus turned the curse into a blessing!

But, why must I also take up the cross to follow Him?

It is through the cross that my old man (who I am in Adam… a sinner) is put to death.

No one can stand before God IN ADAM.  No sinner can stand in the presence of the HOLY ONE.

In order to enter God’s presence and live, I have to be taken out of Adam and placed into Christ.

This is the whole idea of being born again!

But, before I can be born again, I have to die.  How?

By faith, I receive Jesus’ gift of eternal life, His Life; I share His past, present, and future.

When He was crucified, I was crucified; when He was raised up, I was born all over again into His family.

I was transformed from the old me (a sinner in Adam) to the new me (a saint in Christ Jesus).

Beloved, taking up the cross isn’t walking through life carrying some random burden.

It is acknowledging my Self was crucified with Jesus and raised up to new life in Him.

It is living out of His life in me.

It is living like a saint, a holy one, one who is no longer in Adam subject to the mastery of sin.

Jesus is now my Master, not sin!

Praise the Lord!

Blessings!

Robyn

Discipleship 101: Part 1 Denying Self!

Are you a fan of Jesus or a follower of Jesus?

Some folks have prayed to receive salvation through faith in Jesus, but have never really chosen to become a follower of Jesus Christ.

They treat the gospel like it’s simply fire insurance.

I was there.  I accepted Jesus at the age of 7, because I knew that I had sinned, and I didn’t want to go to hell if I died on the drive home from church.

It wasn’t until I was in high school, that I really committed to following Jesus as my Lord.

In several of the gospel accounts, Jesus’ conditions for following Him are laid out for us.

He told His disciples:

“If anyone wishes to follow Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life, shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake shall find it.”  Matthew 16:24,25

I want to break down these verses over the next few weeks.

Let’s start with what it means to ‘deny self.’

Why is this so important?

When Adam and Eve ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they became self-aware.

They went from living our of God’s life in them, to seeking self-fulfillment from each other and their environment.

Now, we have whole philosophies built on ‘self-actualization.’  You are god; you just have to realize it.

Folks, we are our own worst enemy!

Selfishness is deadly.  We enter this world from day 1 crying out to get our needs met.

We think we are the center of the universe…. “It’s all about ME!”  No, it’s NOT!

It’s all about God!  He is the center of all existence.

He is the only One who fulfill our every need.  We are His creation.  We were made to NEED Him.

The key to entering into the Exchanged Life mindset is the denial of Self.

Self is kicked off the throne of our lives, and Jesus takes His rightful place as both Savior and Lord.

We no longer live for ourselves; we live for Him.

We no longer try harder to live the Christian life; we allow Jesus to express His life through us in all that we do.

It’s not about us; it’s about Jesus!

He is our Life Source; there is no other.

Beloved, realizing and accepting this is the first step in following Jesus.

Next week, we are going to talk about what it means to take up the cross.

Blessings!

Robyn Henning

Actively Passive

God wants us to be actively passive.

How’s that for an oxymoron!

Critics of the Exchanged Life often accuse us of teaching passivity.

The Exchanged Life is not, “Let go, and let God.”

It is a mindset of acknowledging that without Jesus, I can do nothing and that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

What does this look like in real life?

A simple prayer of awareness, “Thank you, Jesus, for doing this through me.”

Appropriating Jesus’ power and life is all about setting our minds on the truth that He lives in our skin and therefore is supplying the life energy to do all things through us.

Jesus expresses Himself co-mingled with our personalities.

He does not usurp our will, nor do we sit down until He moves us.

No, we actively engage our environment with the awareness of His life flowing in us and through us.

This is how Jesus lived and engaged people.

The Father, through the Holy Spirit, led Jesus and empowered Him as He expressed the Father in all that He did from the mundane tasks of carpentry to the three short years of ministry.

Beloved, Jesus so loves us that He wants to be our power source for all things from the mundane to the spiritual.

When I teach these truths to my clients, I challenge them to start in the simple things, like household chores, by saying, “Thank You, Jesus, for doing this through me.”

Then, when the harder things come along, we will more likely acknowledge Him in those things as well.

So, start acknowledging Jesus in the simple things this week.  As you do, you will start remembering to thank Him in the harder things too.

Blessings!

Robyn

Law vs. Grace

What does the word grace mean?

I’ve heard it defined as,”unmerited favor,” or “When you get what you don’t deserve.”

The problem is that many Christians think that grace is a free pass to indulge fleshly lusts.

I agree with Paul: “May it never be!”

Paul tells us that sin takes advantage of the Law to deceive us.

Here’s how sin takes advantage of the Law:

What happens if you put a plate of green beans in front of a kid and say, “Don’t stick those up your nose.” Right, as soon as you aren’t looking, they stick the bean up their nose. Why? Because the flesh wants to do its own thing, and sin is right there to help by saying, “do it!”

The problem isn’t found in the Law; the problem is found in sin and our flesh.

So, what happens when we choose to live in God’s grace instead of the Law?

Sin loses its opportunity to use the Law against our flesh. How?

When I live by grace, I am choosing to let the Holy Spirit lead me into what is good for me.

Titus tells us that it is “grace that teaches me to say “no’ to ungodliness and ‘yes’ to righteousness.”

It is God’s grace that has transformed us from children of wrath to children of God.

And, it is His grace that will teach us to make choices that line up with our new identity as His children.

The Law says, “I HAVE TO” live like this.

Grace says, “I GET TO” live like Jesus, as I allow Him to express Himself through me.

Grace does not let me sin all the more; grace lets me live out of the righteousness of Christ in me.

The Law compels me to perform; grace gently leads me to rest in my new identity in Christ.

Beloved, choose to live in God’s grace and love for you, and you will experience the victory He has accomplished for you over sin!

Blessings!

Robyn