Grace 24/7

Life is The Prayer

Scott — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:28:29 +0000

Fascinating documentary:

The Unwritten Self

Scott — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 22:10:40 +0000

*****

Withhold the ink
and the pages of self
drift away, unwritten

*****

Chapter 3742 in the carnal novel of self happens, grows, develops in part because ink is applied to the page. The ink is the energy, the Light, the Life Force within that propels all action whether it be moving your arm or imagining a giraffe or circulating blood.

I know that my custom has been to wrangle with self after the pages have been written already–crumple and toss some, edit some, hold some up as masterpieces of my awesomeness, hide some in a dark closet. But, in this dealing with self, in that it takes place in this imaginary world of the false self-image, more episodes of self are written. That is the game. That is the unseen bondage.

For self is some type of organic being with some modicum of intelligence. How does it live? For most, it lives when it comes for a feeding and I feed it by identifying my true being as being the false self, and engage the false, carnal self-image as who I am. For some, we recognize there is a “real me” at my core and the self image is a false representation of the “real me”, and a wrestling match occurs, the real vs the false. In doing both, we give it the energy it needs to go on living.

How does it die? Well, religion tells us to beat it into submission, to kill it. To overcome or lay down the self image’s “life” by force of the will. I think that that is the way of law.

I am currently seeing it this way and I think it might be the way of grace. We are the pen. We can, by basically unconscious automatic writing, live the drama that our false carnal self creates, imagining it to be “life”. Or, we can be at one with The Pen, the source of Life; and control the flow of ink, denying it to the pages of self when we are aware of what is happening, and by starving the self of the life it needs to exist, observe it’s death, little by little.

Amnesia

Scott — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 06:37:05 +0000

*****

God is.
Often I was.
Sometimes I will be.
But we meet at I am.

*****

I had an epiphany after my last post on this blog. It has changed how I look at things. I’ve been meaning to make a post here explaining this epiphany and how it came about and what it has meant to me since I had it. But then I realize, it doesn’t matter. It’s part of the past. The past along with the future is where I’ve lived, ignoring the current moment. So, I’ll just offer the bare bones.

Imagine you go to bed on a Sunday night–normal, you. And you wake up Monday morning with amnesia. You don’t remember your life. If you smoked cigarettes on Sunday, would you on Monday? If you were a Sunday prostitute, would you do the same on Monday? If you were bitter, or self-righteous, or liked pizza, or disliked fishing, or hated your parents, or whatever: how would you be on that Monday morning?

If you were at one time addicted to drugs and somewhere along the line “found Jesus and got saved and got delivered” so that you no longer were addicted to drugs–that being a big part of your life story on Sunday night. But, how will that matter on Amnesia Monday when you don’t remember it?

From this exercise I realized a few things. I am not my thoughts. And, I am not an accumulation of my life’s past events.

Saul Becomes Paul

Scott — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 20:22:52 +0000

2. It’s about hearing our new name. Abram becomes ‘Abraham.’ Jacob becomes ‘Israel.’ Saul becomes ‘Paul.’ The new name expresses your new identity, uniqueness, and what you mean to God in a way that no one else does. It is your particularity. Hearing your new name helps heal the wounds — those blows that were designed to take you out of play and to prevent you from offering what the world needs from you. As for me, I remember God whispering, “Jim, you are my Aragorn.” He may not ever whisper that to you, but he knew what it would mean for me to hear that.

–Jim Robbins

Hmmm, I find that extremely intriguing. My full name is very common and I’ve often thought about having a different name. And I remember testimonies scattered throughout years of sermons where people were given different names…

***

Rev 2:17 To him who overcomes I will give some of the hidden manna to eat. And I will give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written which no one knows except him who receives it

The Treadmill Goes Nowhere

Scott — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 16:47:13 +0000

–On the day that Adam ate from that tree of good and evil, he exchanged the mirror of God for the mirror of his own and the mirror of every person on the planet. And his view of life, his equation for now for being OK, instead of just looking at God and asking ‘Am I ok’ and hearing him say, ‘Yeah son, you’re ok’; he got a new equation. Now, he evaluates himself and he focuses on other’s evaluations of him. And so his new equation for being OK is: my performance + your evaluation of my performance + my evaluation of my performance = whether or not I am ok. And that is deadly and dangerous.

–Frank Friedmann

As we were in the loins of Adam when all that happened, we inherit that from Him at birth. Pride is the sin of comparison. As long as we eat from the good/bad tree, there will always be comparison and competition. We look at others and see the mirror of ourselves and judge them comparing them to ourselves and judge ourselves comparing us to them. It’s a neverending cycle of measuring up.

2 Cor 10:12 For we dare not class ourselves or compare ourselves with those who commend themselves. But they, measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise.
Rom 5:17 For if by one man’s offense death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.

All Grace

Scott — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 20:08:21 +0000

…Paul went about releasing people from the bondage of sin and the law and the spys came behind Paul and put the handcuffs right back on, “bringing balance.” You cannot balance grace and law. There’s no middle ground–there’s not a bit of law and a bit of grace. It’s a radical message. All grace, all grace.

–Rob Rufus

You Are Faultless

Scott — Sun, 31 May 2009 15:45:48 +0000

I said alot of words in my previous post on Christians being reconciled to God. So let me simplify it a little bit…

Jesus presents you today as holy, blameless and beyond reproach to God. When you are unreproachable in His sight, it means He doesn’t find fault with you. Let’s make sure we grasp fully what a fault is. It means:

–a defect or imperfection; flaw; failing
–an error or mistake
–a misdeed or transgression

God does not look at your faults. He relates to you, not by what you’re doing, but because you are in His Son.

God doesn’t want you obsessing over your faults, failings, imperfections and transgressions. That’s old covenant legalistic thinking. You are now in the New Covenant where your sin is forgiven one time by one sacrifice.

God is holy. And because we can’t become holy no matter how hard we try, He declares us holy, so that we can relate with Him. It’s not earned by what you do or lost by what you do. It’s a gift. It’s grace. It’s part of the good news that makes you free when you, by faith, believe it and keep that perspective.

You Are Reconciled

Scott — Sat, 30 May 2009 18:55:46 +0000

Col 1: 19-23 For it pleased the Father that in Jesus all the fullness should dwell, and through Jesus to reconcile all things unto Himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of his cross.

And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight–

if indeed you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard…

***

Jesus, through the blood of His cross, made peace between you and God. You are reconciled (brought into agreement and harmony) with God when you believe the gospel of Jesus Christ and are born again. And you are presented by Jesus to God as holy, blameless (free from and not deserving blame; guiltless) and above reproach (to find fault with; upbraid); right now, today, and for all the days of your life. God sees you the same way He sees Jesus. That is the good news of the grace of God.

For God knows that when you do wicked works and evil behavior, when you were lost or now that you are born again, the tendency for you is to estrange yourself from Him in your mind, becoming aliens and enemies to God. But God, in this wonderful gospel of His invites you to find freedom from that wrong thinking; He sees you as blameless, holy, finds no fault with you, doesn’t upbraid you no matter what. In this relationship with Him, He says, this is how I relate to you.

And when we continue in that attitude and are not moved away from that perspective, we remain at peace with God. When we move away from His perspective of us, then we ride the roller coaster and in our minds become alienated from Him.

***

Do you see it? A legalist Christian says (consciously or subconsciously) if I do something bad, I’m moving away from the gospel and God is displeased with me (And conversely, when I do something good, God is happy with me). And when you keep seeing things like that, as the bad acts pile grows higher, you estrange yourself from Him, because you’re just not living up to what your mind believes are His expectations of you; He is holy, I am dirty, look at all I’ve done. And then down the road, you recommit your life to Him and return, and back and forth you go in a neverending cycle. As James 1 says it: double-minded, unstable in all his ways.

The legalist’s mind sees Col 1:23, regarding continuing in faith and not moving away from the gospel, as one of doing the godly things and not doing the ungodly things. NO, that’s not it. That’s doublemindedness. The legalist will forever try to earn that holy status, that blameless state by trying in his self effort harder and harder to do. Whereas, God says, it’s my gift to you, holy blameless and unreproachable, believe it and receive it, continue in it. The legalist’s mind disagrees with God’s mind and so he’s unstable in all his ways and rides the roller coaster.

This wonderful transforming grace of God says to you that you are holy, without blame and unreproachable in His sight. That is the God of love in whom you trust. Stay grounded and unwavering in that perspective, in His perspective, and see what happens when you walk in beautiful freedom. I pray God open’s the eyes of your understanding to see His unbelievable grace towards you.

Which Is Your Heart?

Scott — Fri, 29 May 2009 04:04:16 +0000

A. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

B. God has given me a new heart, where the Spirit of Christ dwells, into which God poured His love.

The legalist believes (A) and figuratively and sometimes literally walks around with this heavy weight on his chest covering his heart. It’s old covenant thinking. And because he’s afraid his heart will deceive him, he lives completely in the realm of his mind, ever debating, ever learning, ever getting his ducks in a row in his systematic theology. And when you speak to him, he speaks to your doctrine, not you; waiting for the buzzwords to hit his mind so that he can explain things to you. Sex? Here’s 12 verses telling you what not to do. Sabbath? Here’s a 750-page book I wrote on that. Divorce? Let me slap this bumper sticker on you, God Hates Divorce.

When you realize (B), that in the New Covenant God gave us a new heart; that he poured His love into your heart and that you can only love from your heart (not your head); well then, grace is not far from you and you can speak the truth in love from a heart that loves the other person.

Why do we ask the lost to believe on Jesus from their heart and then when they get converted to forget that part of themselves? That you’ll just get messed up in deception and error? As a christian with a new heart given to you by God with the mind of Christ by the Holy Spirit dwelling in your heart, you’ll be deceived 100 times more often by head thinking than you will by heart life.

Beware of the Leaven

Scott — Tue, 26 May 2009 20:47:10 +0000

Luke 12:1 Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.

What is hypocrisy? The acting of a stage player, pretending, putting on a mask, playing a part. And who were the Pharisees? The law experts, the legalists.

As was said in the post on Emulations, our flesh has a tendency to pretend. To emulate or imitate some standard of righteousness that we invent or that we’ve been taught to follow. The legalist says pretend you’re not struggling with sin, follow this or that formula and do better/try harder and one day you’ll be what you’re pretending you are.

Grace invites you, just as you are, into His perfect righteousness; and encourages you to cease from your works and self effort and rest in the One who has already lived the way you are striving to live. And as you walk in that rest, you’ll walk in freedom and love and joy and peace and self-control.