Good Day, Meetpastordan Readers…I’ve just finished my quite time at my desk with the Holy Spirit. I‘ve come to depend on these moments as I start each day, because there is nothing like the confidence that swells up inside me as I declare my intent to bring honor and glory to Him throughout my daily activities. I just ask him to give me the wisdom to get out of the way so he can work through me to accomplish his purpose. And here’s what I have discovered; He is faithful to provide what I need… when I let him. Am I perfect at this? No, but I’m certainly getting better. When I’m plugged in and trusting Him, I see James 4:10 coming alive in my life: “When you bow down (come in humility) before the Lord and admit your dependence on him, he will lift you up and give you honor.”
As I was preparing to write today’s blog, I had three ideas going around in my head. One topic was “the subtle difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant”; another was “Don’t be Afraid; Trust me!”; and the other was “Love is the Answer”. What came out of my quiet time with the Holy Spirit was… “aren’t they all interwoven? Isn’t love always the answer? When we realize that, isn’t it easier to trust? Isn’t that why the New Covenant was given? So, here goes….
We are told in Ephesians 1:4-5,10: “Long ago, even before He created the world (and man), God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. And this gave him great pleasure. And this is his plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ – everything in heaven and on earth.” Hummm…so why do you think he had a plan for our salvation already worked out even before he created the world (or man)? Could it be that he knew –even before he created us – that we were going to go astray? After all, he created us for a relationship with himself, so he knew he would have to give us free will so we could choose to enter into that relationship. But I suspect that because he IS God, in his omniscience he knew exactly what was going to happen. He knew that his proudest creation was going to take the focus off Him and put it on “self”, therefore allowing SIN to enter the world.
God gave us (Mankind) from creation to 2017 years ago to wrestle with the dilemma of SIN. In fact, on Mt. Sinai he even gave us ten rules to live by so his people could live in peace and harmony with one another and bring honor and glory to him. But unfortunately those ten rules proved to present the ultimate challenge to our “human nature” (self-centered nature), and instead of becoming the people God created us to be, we continued a downward spiral until we reached the pathetic state referenced in Romans 5:6. “When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners.
Two paragraphs ago, in Ephesians 1:10, it stated that, “at just the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ.” And what was “just the right time”? When we became “utterly helpless.” The important thing to notice here is that God didn’t wait for us to clean up our act to become worthy of salvation. No indeed! Romans 5:8 declares that “God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners”, and verse 10 refers to us as God’s “enemies”. This attests to His unconditional, unending, unfailing love for us, because Mankind proved, without a shadow of a doubt, that we could not live a sin-free life through our own effort. So God, in his loving kindness, gave us his Gift of Grace so we could become Sin-free and be able to come into his presence for an eternal relationship. Now that spiritual connection that was severed when sin entered the world can be restored when we choose to become a “a new creation in Christ.”
Now let’s look at God’s plan for our salvation. When I think of the difference between the New Covenant and the Old Covenant, I always think of the old advertisement for Chapmans ice cream, which said, “it’s that subtle little difference that makes ALL the difference in our ice cream.” So it is with the difference in the Covenants. Under the Old Covenant we “did” to “get”. In other words, we were trying to please God through our works in order to get his blessing. Remember, God gave us his standard at Mt. Sinai. The problem was, and still is, that Mankind can’t measure up, because if we break even one of those Commandments we’re guilty of having broken them all. Just think about it; do you ever gossip? (bear false witness against your neighbor); do you ever covent? (become discontent with what you have and want what someone else has); do you ever use fowl language?; have you ever committed adultery (either physically or in your mind)?; do you have any idols (false gods) that you put before the one true God?(money, power, prestige, your job, an addiction etc.) The problem with these challenges is they affect the state of our heart and we become consumed with anger, frustration, envy, greed, hatred, jealousy, hostility, manipulation, etc. When this is the state of our heart, we are not in he process of becoming the person God created us to be.
Now let’s compare the New Covenant with the Old Covenant. The New Covenant is not about us doing something to earn God’s approval, it’s about accepting God’s Gift of Grace through faith. This is explained succinctly and accurately in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten (of the same substance) Son; that whosoever believes in Him will not perish, but will have eternal life.” That IS the New Covenant. We don’t do something to get something, because when we accept God’s gift of Grace, we immediately inherit everything we need in Christ. (Notice in paragraph 3 above, in Ephesians 1:4 it says that “God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.” At the moment we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, “we become a new creation. The old is gone the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17) At that moment our sins are forgiven; we inherit eternal life; we are grafted into God’s family; we are given the indwelling Holy Spirit to empower us to become the person God created us to be; we are worthy and acceptable in God’s eyes; we are a Saint (set aside for a sacred purpose); we inherit all the Spiritual blessings in the heavenly realm; and we inherit all the promises in the Bible. 2 Peter 1:3 tells us that the more we grow in our new relationship with Jesus, “his divine power gives us EVERYTHING we need for living a Godly life.”
Because God knows we’re only dust and that our human nature is weak, he has given us the indwelling Holy Spirit so we can rise above our circumstances in this world to become the person he created us to be. Life is all about choices. God has a plan for our life, and we’ll call that plan A. Our human nature has a plan for our life, and we’ll call that plan B. Unfortunately for the new Christ- follower, this new life is a constant battle between staying in line with God’s will (plan A) and resisting the lure of Satan’s plan B. Unless we trust in the Holy Spirit to guide our path and lead us to Plan A, we will crash and burn because we’re no match for Satan and his powerful schemes. But the Holy Spirit IS, as revealed in 1John 4:4: “He that is living in me (the Holy Spirit) is greater than he that is in this world”. (satan) Standing on that truth is how we become the Masterpiece referenced in Ephesians 2:10: “For we are God’s Masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so that we can now do the good things he planned for us long ago”… even before he created the world. The answer for our success as a new Christ-follower is to get out of the way and trust the Holy Spirit to empower us to make choices that bring honor and glory to God. And that, My Friends, is God’s ultimate plan for our life. The more we do this, the more we are walking “in the Spirit.”
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May God Bless Ya abundantly…
Dan Presgrave (a.k.a. Pastor Dan)
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