Illegal Performance Enhancing Gospel Drug Causes Bipolar Christianity

Remember when baseball home run records were seemingly being broken weekly? Then to only find out that most of our favorite athletes in that era were taking some kind of illegal substance (performance enhancing drugs). The side effects were destructive to the players and the game of baseball, but it’s amazing how sports can mirror the every day Christian life.

 

There is an illegal substance in the Kingdom of God, Paul addressed it in Galatians 3, but today in this blog let’s modernize it a little, let’s call it the performance enhancing gospel drug (P.E.G.)

P.E.G– The lie that God’s love and His favor can be earned by our performance. (Which every religion in the world believes about their god, but Christianity)

The side effects: bipolar Christianity which always asks and wonders “He loves me… He loves me not”- the performance roller coaster allows highs of self righteousness and lows of unworthiness based on performance.

Remember the first time you heard the pure gospel? You believed that God loved you, right there in your moment of life, when you were still a sinner and God sent His son Jesus to die and become sin for you, so that you could have a right relationship with God.  You were excited because not once in your whole life was your performance good enough for God. But then you accepted Jesus as your Lord, to take your sins and save you, and you really felt loved!

Fast forward a few years and for some of us, we may have been exposed to an illegal substance (P.E.G.). It may have been offered from a friend or even a pulpit. Once we receive this drug, our performance appears instantly better, possibly because we are comparing ourselves to our friends and leaders at home, church or at work. Our words seem much more controlled, because we don’t want God mad at us, unless we are talking with our wife or kids. And now we may even point other people to our performance and behavior for the blessings and favor of God upon our life. We may not consciously be trying to earn Gods love with our performance, but we do have a seven step method to modify and improve our friend’s behavior, because our view of God’s favor is performance based.

A few questions to ask people when offered this drug…..

What if God is not this angry old man that takes His presence or His love away from His children because of their failures? What if He really did place all our success and failures and nail them to the cross in exchange for Jesus’ success? Because even our successful performance is like filthy rags compared to His righteousness. What if God based His favor and relationship toward us on Christ alone? What if He knew that the only way for us to have great fruit (performance) and experience freedom was to abide in Jesus? What if God doesn’t want us so self performance conscious, but Christ conscious? What if the effects of a performance enhanced gospel results in a bipolar Christian, but the effects of the pure gospel is a child confident in their Father’s love based on the performance of Jesus Christ? What if for all eternity we need the grace of Jesus Christ, because without Him we can do nothing? What if there was someone that could believe this today?

Visit Galatians 3 and http://www.graceforeternity.com for more great info!

Lay Down Your Wife For The Church?

Have you ever been a leader in your local church struggling with making time for your marriage? I nearly lost my marriage as a church volunteer. It is only because of the grace of Jesus that my marriage is strong today and such a priority in my life! My passion is to help marriages in the local church be all that Christ wants them to be. Marriage should be a reflection of the love affair between Jesus and His people. Unconsciously, many leaders make the local church a top priority in their life, often followed by their children as the next in priority and then, if there is time left over, the wife is given the left overs of his time. Paul wrote in Ephesians 5. “Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” not “Husbands lay down your wife for the church”. What does give yourself up for her mean for us as husbands today?

Men, what if the Holy Spirit knew it would be a sacrifice to make our wives a priority more than our children, or the local church? Maybe that’s why He knew we needed to lay our lives (priorities) down. Every church leader would say their marriage is a priority but I often say, “Where your time is, there your priority/heart is also.” Time is a treasure and worth much more than the American dollar, because it goes up in value. So men, let me encourage you to prioritize your wife and lay down your life by making a decision today to invest in them by putting them on the calendar.

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