I would like to say a big thank you to everyone who has visited any of my blogs this year, 2016. Going into 2017, I will be posting on only one platform “Musings Of My Heart” but all previous posts on my other blogs “Vignettes of Grace”, “Effervescing Thoughts” and “Musings From The Psalms” have been archived on the consolidated blog and can still be freely accessed.
As the year draws to a close, I present salient points from my blog posts in 2016:
1. Human effort lacks the capability to put us in a good position with God. No rites or rituals, no amount of piety or sanctimonious acts could ever be good enough. It is all just not good enough. We are justified by faith. And we did not achieve it on our own. It came by the gracious act of our gracious God.
2. We were under the curse of the law but Christ has bought us out from under that curse. The only blessed, innocent, holy and righteous one took our place and by so doing He redeemed you and I. We are redeemed from the curse of the law.
3. In this new dawn of grace God does not expect the believer to live and relate from the standpoint of the Old Testament rules and regulations. It’s rather from a standpoint of the empowerment of God’s grace operating in the core of our beings. There is a new vista of life for believers in Christ Jesus. There is a new principle governing our new relationship with God. It is the principle of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus all made possible by God’s grace.
4. In Christ Jesus all discrimination is put away. God receives us solely on the basis of faith in Jesus and we all have equal access by one Spirit. We are all on the same level, saved the same way, entitled to the same privileges. There are no special favours on account of birth, beauty, body physique, skin colour, employment category, level of income or gender.
5. God has given us full rights of sonship. We are joint heirs or co-heirs with Christ Jesus; Christ’s position is our position, His possession is our possession, His privileges are our privileges. All of this is so because God by His grace has adopted us into His family.
6. With our adoption into His family, God sends His Spirit into our hearts producing in us a deep feeling of endearment; a strong sense of intimacy and belonging to God as our Father. This is true of every believer in Christ Jesus. This should be the platform on which we relate with God daily. Just like Jesus. Not like cowering slaves scared and terrified of their wicked master. Rather it should be as liberated sons of God with affectionate desire and appreciation of the immense love our Father has for us.
7. For every believer in Christ, there is an intimate personal knowledge which God has of him or her. God’s personal presence, His personal ownership, His personal love, His personal guidance, His personal kindness and personal care are all yours. This is the reality of the new life in Christ Jesus.
8. There are many man-made regulations on food, clothing and rules about worship that really have no real significance in God’s dealings with us. They are just shades of powerless religiosity; superficial, external veneers that do not matter with God and we must not allow them take precedence over the reality of God in our hearts. The grace of God has ensured that faith alone in Christ is adequate.
9. We lose fervency, zeal, joy and such positive attitude toward God when we allow other matters aside the grace of God to take the pride of place in our hearts. Occupy your mind with thoughts of your liberation and freedom in Christ; your deliverance from sin; your freedom from a system of rules and regulations; the new life you have in Christ Jesus; the tenderness of the warm embrace of our Father; the intense intimate relationship you have with God; the priceless position, possessions and privileges that are ours through grace in Christ. It will keep your heart ablaze and if the glow in your heart had waned, it will definitely return.
10. There is a wide gulf between the Law and grace. It appears that we sometimes need to think deeply about how life under the Law would have been so we can better appreciate the blessedness of the grace of God that we enjoy in Christ Jesus. We really didn’t stand a chance in the face of the Law but God stepped in and made a way through His grace.
11. As a believer in Christ Jesus, you are not an offspring of the slave who eventually got cast out of the household. You are a child of promise. You own God’s inheritance, it is yours! Don’t be like Mephibosheth, don’t call yourself a dead dog when the King has given you a seat at His table by grace!
12. We must not allow ourselves be drawn away from the grace of God. God wants us to stand firm in the freedom Christ Jesus has given us. Don’t allow anything hold you in any sort of trap. Grace is the entry point, grace is also the sustenance of the new relationship we now have with God through Christ.
13. Our Lord has completed His work of redemption on our behalf. At His death, Jesus said “It is finished”. It signified that He had accomplished all that He had come into the world to do. Debts of sin paid in full. Ransom for slavery paid in full. Price to set His people at liberty paid in full.
14. There is an undeniable power of influence. It is seen among friends, siblings, families, peers, colleagues/co-workers, congregations, communities and even large populations. Our actions, words and attitudes have the power to influence at least someone else and many times a lot more people than we realize can be influenced by the things we do and say. Choose to be a positive influence in your home, family, at work, in church, among your friends and everywhere else.
15. God’s grace has brought us liberty and His grace also dictates a certain type of lifestyle-a life that is not governed any longer by a powerless servitude to the law or slavery to sin but one with a powerful exhibition of selfless love.
16. Living by the Spirit is the only fail-proof way of not succumbing to the desires of the flesh. Experiencing victory over the flesh does not come by simple human philosophy, mere human resolutions, the force of education or human legislation. In this new life in Christ Jesus, God gives us practical victory over the flesh as we keep yielding ourselves to the influence of the Holy Spirit.
17. The grace of God has freely provided a means of victory for us; we are born of God’s Spirit, we are in the Spirit and it is in the Spirit that we experience God’s victory over the flesh not in our own efforts to help ourselves. In the conflict between the flesh and the Spirit, see yourself as the victor and not the vanquished.
18. Life in the Spirit is different from life in the flesh. We are different and we should live differently. We are washed, sanctified, justified already! That’s our heritage. We must allow God’s Spirit dominate our minds always and refuse to allow the flesh have its way. That is the life the grace of God has brought us to.
19. The Spirit of God bears fruit in our individual lives. If people are to see what heaven is like, they should see it now in the way we as heavenly citizens live our lives together here on earth. The fruit of the Spirit is to be displayed by all believers in Christ. God did not call us to live ordinary lives. We were made to thrive and allowing the Holy Spirit to bear His fruit in our lives is one aspect of thriving in God.
20. We already live in the Spirit. That is one of the benefits of grace. Since we live in the Spirit, we ought to keep step, and fall in line with the Spirit. We ought to live in full conformity with the Spirit. We must yield fully to the influence of the Spirit and to His guidance.
21. Key steps in walking in the Spirit are: a) Maintaining a conscious awareness of the presence of the Holy Spirit, b) Consciously relying and depending on the power of the Holy Spirit, c) Praying, d) Acting in faith in accordance with the revealed word of God.
To be continued...
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