Hey Church in the USA! Freebies are Fun! Now that we know its not a contest for who did the best things and who refrained from doing the worst things, we can breathe easy! No first prizes for first place! Takes a lot of stress away , no more high blood pressure, no more anxiety about how good you are, or how good you should be. Peace, man – it is OK.
Not only do we give a shout-out to God for the Love and Mercy he has shown us, we can also be hopeful even when we are going through the tough times, in fact, we know our though times help us grow, Remember when you were growing up? Sometimes you got achy, and your parents called in growing pains.
Not exactly fun, but then you realize you just got taller and your shoe size went up. and you were like so proud! Same with our spirits! One day you realize: “Oh man, I can handle this!”
So if you are struggling now, friend, just remember that suffering leads to endurance, endurance leads to character, character leads to hope, and hope brings reconciliation with God. (I think I just went Yoda on you guys!) That should make your heart feel pretty darn full.
Sad thing is guys, guys what I hear ALL THE TIME? What’s God done for me? Yikes! Like everything. Here we are a-wallowing in our weakness, like hogs in the slop of bad-ass sin. (Not a pretty picture, BTW), and we want God to do more…more what?
See, the thing is, God is good, and He cannot tolerate sin because He is Good. He is Truth. He is righteousness. When exposed to sin, God gets angry – we call that God’s Wrath, and its no small thing. Read the Prophets! Read the Gospels! We cannot escape His Wrath because of our sin.
That is why it is so important to realize and remember Gods huge Love for all of us (even in our ugliness); He is willing to place his Son, jesus Christ, on the painful, scandalous cross that leads to death.
I can’t even wrap my head around that kind of Grace! We cannot conceive of it, but we CAN BELIEVE IN IT!
No human would ever be able to do what Jesus did. When we realize He died for a bunch of hogs in sin-slop, WOW! We’re saved by the life He gave up! Because of Jesus, God doesn’t see the slop, He sees His beloved children. He sees the beauty of who we were before we cloaked our true selves in the mess of sin. That’s why we give a shout-out to God! Give God the Glory!
The thing we need to remember is that from the first family…Adam and Eve, sin was brought into the world, and every corner of this planet knows that the penalty for sin is death. Ugh!
Think about it: Adam and Eve got to hang out with true radiance in the garden, and what did they want? To experience His presence in the golden breezes of the evening? No! They wanted more, they wanted to be God! Really dudes, clueless. Course, we all are… because sin still has a hold on us – yes, thousands of years, and sin still holds dominion! Its a bummer, for sure.
Remember Bob? He’s a typical churchie guy, thinking it’s all about Eve taking the first bite, and what they did has nothing to do with him. He thinks of himself as the center of his life, and is pretty dumb when it comes to realizing what a freebie we’ve been given.
Bunches of people died in sin because on the one guy – Adam – BUT bunches and bunches of people can claim the free gift of life because of one guy (namely Jesus). Pretty cool how that worked out.
