Building with Brad...(13Oct08)

 

Not afraid of law

I have come across two groups of grace believing Christians. The first group are those who are so afraid of law and performance that they constantly walk around aware of everything that might even remotely elude to law or performance. Even encouragement is misunderstood for "telling them to perform". The other group are those who truly understand grace, they live in such revelation of it that there is no way that they are going to go back under law or be placed under performance based living. This is the place in which we need to bring Gods people, that they would "grow in their knowledge of grace" and not live "afraid " of law. 

What happens is that the word "works" is often misunderstood for "performance to please" or "human effort". "works" is not a swearword if we understand grace. The bible speaks of us doing the "works of Christ" and "the Good works that have been set out in advance for us to do". This is not at all motivation under pressure to perform but it is rather a natural reaction of a life lived in grace and most importantly with The Holy Spirit. He is in us and He is manifesting the life of Jesus through us, hence "the works of Christ". There is a natural activation that takes place when we surrender to the Holy Spirit, we can only surrender to the Holy Spirit when we live in a revelation of grace.

Let me just say that there is at times a "sofa-sitting" stage that some believers go through when they first begin to be liberated from performance, human effort and law( not all believers go through this stage but only a small few- that I have seen anyway). This is the stage where they sit around and say "we don't have to do anything because we are under grace", this statement is true because we don't 'have to' do anything, the reality is that they have not yet grown in grace into a place where the 'have to' changes to a 'want to'. The 'want to' stage comes as we mature in grace ( most people I have met, including myself, went straight to this stage). The problem comes when they never get to this stage and they stay critical of everything that is encouragement. Some people even make grace a law and beat each other up with it, you have to always watch what you say around them and as a leader you can never encourage them because you are quickly accused of placing them under law. The only way to get them to mature is to continue to preach true grace to them. I had a guy here under my leadership who was like this, he came out of a very legalistic backround and started to hear us preach on grace and he got set free to some measure ( because he was afraid of law now he wasn't truly free). he would question anything and every encouragement was placing performance on him. I just kept teaching him grace and eventually before long he got it and now he is flying. 

When we live in maturity of grace we can not go back under law and so we do not live afraid. Even if I visit a church and the preacher starts to preach a strong mixture of law and grace, he starts to place heavy guilt driven motivation to give to the poor ( if you love Jesus you should be giving to the poor etc ) and then he takes up an offering for a poor community somewhere, I will happily give because I will myself be giving under grace and would want to give to the poor because I live in a revelation of Gods love, I don't agree with the way it was done by the preacher but it does not have effect on me,I don't have to give but I want to give, I know who I am and I will give out of that place ( I hope everyone understands what I'm trying to get across, I just used giving to the poor as and example). This goes with every area of our lives, while the ultimate need might be correct, the way in which it is presented is based on human effort and striving to perform and earn, but we will not be brought under that kind of living because we are truly free and no person can take that away. We meet the need (eg: pray for the sick, giving to the poor etc ) out of a place of our revelation of who we are in God and not out of motivation from the preacher. We don't throw our hands in the air and say " no, I'm not giving, this guy is trying to place law on me" thats immature thinking, why should we let ourselves be effected by legalistic people. 

If people are walking afraid of law then they are not truly understanding their freedom. We need to keep preaching grace to them so that they can come to a mature understanding of it and not live in fear of going back under law or performance and human effort.

These are just some of the people I have come across that I thought I would share with you. maybe some others have seen this, maybe I am wrong. I believe it is our role, in partnership with the Spirit, as leaders to bring people through into freedom and maturity so that they can fly with the Spirit. 

God Bless