A few weeks ago I read a great blog post by a mom who doesn’t do Elf on the Shelf because she feels that it teaches her children that receiving gifts/blessings is conditional, based on their performance. I was telling a friend about it, and she responded: “but isn’t that what Christianity is?”
Hearing this broke my heart, and I realized that performance-based Christianity is a lie believed by too many of my sisters. You can believe that we are saved by faith, that our salvation is secure and cannot be lost, and still be living under the yoke of performance in your walk with the Lord.
PERFORMANCE: a display of…behavior or a process involving a great deal of unnecessary time and effort; a fuss: an action, task, or operation, seen in terms of how successfully it was performed*
vs.
GRACE: the free and unmerited favor of God*
“Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God’s grace. If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died for nothing.” Galations 2:21
The enemy’s number one tactic is to attack God’s character, to get us to question God’s goodness and grace and to make us feel as though yes, God loves us, but we must always be doing and striving to stay in His favor, to earn His approval and to receive His blessings. (The first record we have of the enemy ever speaking lies to one of God’s children is when the serpent led Eve to question the character of God in the Garden of Eden.)
If we don’t have a full understanding of God’s character, of His rich, unconditional, ferociously powerful love and limitless grace (free and unmerited favor) for His children, then we keep the Lord at arm’s length and are missing out on what it truly means to be a daughter of the Most-High King with the privilege to approach His throne freely, with boldness and confidence (Hebrews 4:16). He longs to lavish His love upon you!!
As believers, God looks upon us and sees us through the lens of the complete and finished work of Jesus on the cross. When He sees you He is filled with joy to behold His precious child–you!–whom He loves so much that He knows how many hairs are on your head (“And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.” Matthew 10:30) He’s not looking at your failures, your weaknesses, how many times you’ve had a quiet time this week or whether or not you give something up during Lent.
Absolutely nothing you can ever do or not do will add or take away from God’s opinion of you. He is not interested in your performance.
So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us?…The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture…None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us. Romans 8:35-39
I am thrilled and honored to be a contributor to Overcome The Lie‘s January 2014 blog tour.
**these definitions came from Oxford Dictionaries
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