Does the God who lavishly provides you with his own presence, his Holy Spirit, working things in your lives you could never do for yourselves, does he do these things because of your strenuous moral striving or because you trust him to do them in you? Don’t these things happen among you just as they happened with Abraham? He believed God, and that act of belief was turned into a life that was right with God. (Galatians 3:5-6 MSG) God's grace is provided in lavish amounts - because we need all we can get! His presence comes as we say yes to him, so we are entering into a new relationship that needs to be developed just like any other relationship. The difference is that we don't 'work' our way into his presence or into his grace as we might with our earthly relationships. In our relationship with Jesus, he draws us to himself, shows us exactly who he is, tells us clearly what he likes and dislikes, and then he provides all we need within that relationship - not in limi...
Have some of you noticed that we are not yet perfect? (No great surprise, right?) And are you ready to make the accusation that since people like me, who go through Christ in order to get things right with God, aren’t perfectly virtuous, Christ must therefore be an accessory to sin? The accusation is frivolous. If I was “trying to be good,” I would be rebuilding the same old barn that I tore down. I would be acting as a pretender. (Galatians 2:17-18 MSG) We are not yet perfect. Man, that is certainly true on my account! I do a decent job at 'doing the right thing' most of the time, but ALL of the time - nope. I slip up on occasion - say things I shouldn't, think things I know better than to be thinking, make judgments based on what I see or think I know, and the list could go on. The point is that we ALL are not yet perfect - none of us has it all together or is without sin. Even those religious leaders who wanted to stone the woman caught in adultery couldn't throw th...