Get Out of Hell, Free!

Blogger: Joe Harrison

Don't pretend like you have never done it before, because we are all guilty of doing this at least once (but probably more than once) in our lives. We treat the Salvation given to us by Jesus Christ as a "Get Out Of Jail, FREE" Card. Now, right away, I may have people jumping on me and saying that this analogy is correct because we can't work our way into Heaven and the gift of Salvation is free. Well, I have no dispute there. But that's not all it's about.

First of all, think about the card in general. Think about its use. Notice the smaller set of words underneath:

THIS CARD MAY BE KEPT UNTIL NEEDED OR SOLD

And here's where the problem comes. We look to Christ's Salvation only when we think we need it. But until then, we continue to "walk in darkness" (as John talks about). Maybe you have friends who are not Christians, and you give no indication that you are a Christian. You use foul language, you laugh at their crude (sometimes even God-mocking) jokes, sometimes you even add a few jokes of your own. THEN, something bad happens in your life and you go running to God with your little "Get Out Of Jail, Free" card and start begging Him to help you. OR, maybe your friends know you're a Christian, but you've purposefully told them a number of times "Well, I'm not really strict" or "I'm a loose Christian", and you proceed to let words and jokes come out of your mouth that are grieving the Holy Spirit Who dwells in you. Do you understand that? We Christians really do take that for granted. The Holy Spirit is within us. And when we sin, we are grieving Him, and I think, in a lot of ways, it may be worse for this Member of the Trinity because He is seeing us commit these sins firsthand.

As mentioned above, John tells us in his first epistle:

"If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the Truth." 1 John 1:6 (NKJV)

It is not enough to just have Salvation. If we profess to be Christians but treat Salvation as a monopoly card, in other words not taking advantage of Salvation until the very End, thereby letting us live our lives however we want, then we are walking in darkness; a.k.a. Satan's Territory. A place where Satan (and anyone else for that matter) pretty much has the right to call us his "children" because if we're in Satan's Territory it means we're acting like Devils, and as that old saying goes: "Like father, like son."

The Apostle John's letter was written (including the above verse) largely to a dangerous heresy called Gnosticism. Now Gnostics held to many heretical beliefs, but among their beliefs was the idea that they could do whatever they wanted to their bodies because sins committed could not affect the spirit. So even if they led the most sinful life in the history of the world, they would still get to Heaven. Now we look at that and say "That's terrible!" But in actuality... we have to admit that that doctrine is what many of us practice. Christ's Salvation is our "Get Out Of Jail, FREE" Card, so it doesn't matter what kind of life we live. In the End when we stand before God, we simply give Him the card and He opens the gateway of Heaven for us, saying "Well done, good and faithful servant."

I hope you're seeing something wrong with this picture. Notice what God says to us: "Well done, good and faithful servant." We are to serve God with our lives. Now while works do not get us into Heaven, they do play an important part in our service to God. James tells us:

"Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead." James 2:17 (NKJV)

Work for the Kingdom. Serve God. Start acting like His children! Otherwise, Paul tells us:

"He himself will be saved, but only as one barely escaping the flames." 1 Corinthians 3:15 (NIV)

Doesn't that sound awful? I mean it's great that this person would still be Saved... but I don't know about you, I don't want to just barely escape the flames. I want to be as far away from them as possible! So all this is not to necessarily say that you are not Saved, but you are clearly in a lot of danger. You are exactly at the reaching-distance of the Devil, and believe you me, he will grab you and pull you down lower.

Throw out that "Get Out Of Jail, FREE" Card. Don't just apply Christ's Salvation at the End. Apply it to your life now. And let the Holy Spirit begin the Sanctification process as you stop walking in darkness.

"But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from all sin." 1 John 1:7 (NKJV)

Why Isn't God Blessing Me?

Blogger: Joe Harrison

All of us have hit this problem at one point in our lives. You're praying so hard, probably about multiple things, day in, day out; yet God is not answering your prayers. He is not blessing you. Maybe you're praying that your friend would turn to Christ. Maybe you're praying for financial aid. Maybe you're praying for peace of mind or that God would bring you out of spiritual depression.

But the days go by and your prayers go unanswered. This can sometimes lead to a dangerous faith-crisis. Sometimes we get angry with God; we say "God! Why aren't you answering my prayers!? Why aren't you blessing me!?" And this often times leads us to turning our backs on God for a time. We lose our hunger for His word. We stop praying. We stop talking to Him. We either stop going to Church or we go but don't pay attention to the message from the pulpit.

We start blaming God.... Which is an absolute "No-no".

Time after time after time we see in the Bible that when someone blames someone else, you can usually trace the blame back to the accuser. Let us not forget the famous words of a certain man in the Garden of Eden:

"...This woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate." Genesis 3:12 (NASB)

Not only is dear Adam blaming Eve for his troubles, but he is blaming God. And, of course I don't have to tell you what's wrong with this. But I'm going to. It was Adam's choice to take the fruit from Eve. She didn't make him eat. He took it.

So, perhaps you're blaming God. But now, as you look at your finger, pointing upward, you noticed three other fingers pointing back at you, as the age old saying goes.

But maybe you're trying not to blame God. And whenever you're about to, you turn away. Well that's good. But, either way, you will most likely find that the problem is yours, not His.

If God isn't answering your prayers or blessing you, it's time to start examining yourself. Chances are, if you dig deep enough, you will find that there is Sin in your life that you have not yet let go of. A habitual sin, which we are warned of all throughout 1 John. Something you're doing, something you're holding onto, maybe even something you did in the past that you haven't had fixed yet. Maybe you hurt a friend of yours some time ago in some way and never apologized. Maybe the friend doesn't even know you hurt him, and you need to confess it to him (and to God, if you haven't already). Maybe you're engaged in illegal activity, but you try to dismiss it as 'nothing', making up excuses for it. Maybe you've set up an idol in your life; your TV, computer, video games, sports, work, a relationship; something that you just can't let go of. That is an idol. And the Second Commandment commands us to do away with our idols. Maybe you're not tithing each Sunday; not giving your 10% to God; this is thievery. You are stealing from God. And then while you're stealing from God you turn around ask Him for financial aid..... This doesn't work!

"Will a man rob God? Yet you are robbing Me! But you say, 'How have we robbed You?' - In tithes and offerings." Malachi 3:8 (NASB)

I can tell you from experience; there was a time, I am ashamed to say, (to listeners of the show this is old news) that I used to download computer programs illegally off the Internet. Programs I didn't pay for. So I was stealing these programs from their manufacturers. During this time, I hit so many rough bumps I nearly turned my back on God once or twice. But when, through Christ, I was able to rise up and do away with those programs, I turned to God with a renewed heart and renewed strength, and He brought me by the hand out of my Spiritual Depression. My hunger for the Bible returned. My comfort in talking with Him returned. He brought great joy in His Grace into my life. And while it was very hard to give up those illegal programs, the joy and blessing I received afterward gave me more peace then I had ever known up to that point. And since then I have been working with God to reveal all my deepest Sins that I haven't yet confessed, or maybe habitual sins that perhaps I didn't even know were sins.

Maybe you don't know what sin you're committing. But that's when you need to ask God to reveal it to you. And because He desires to have no hindrance in His relationship with you, He will help you! But either way, we must rid ourselves of the sins we are holding onto, otherwise John calls us liars:

"If we say we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth." 1 John 1:6 (NASB)

God is waiting eagerly to bless you, to answer your prayers! But you need to let go of your sins, first. Stop walking in the darkness and start walking in the Light that you profess to walk in. Stop being a liar and "practice the truth". Seek out what's hindering God from blessing your life and answering your prayers or what's causing you spiritual depression. And when you, through the strength of Jesus Christ, remove that hindrance, God's blessings will pour out. Now this is not, necessarily, to say that you will find the type of blessings that certain "pastors" would have you believe, such as health, wealth, and prosperity. God will bless you in that He will meet your needs in the way that He knows is best for you, not what you think is best for you, what He knows is best for you. With the hindrance gone, you will regain a hunger to read the Bible. You will find yourself in almost constant deep gratitude to God for what He's done. You will find peace in talking with Him. These blessings which have to do with your relationship with HIM.

We will go more into this issue in a future newsletter, because I should also note that unanswered prayers do not always mean something is wrong, for God may have other plans, but for now, examine yourself, seek out the hindrance with God's help, and overcome it through Christ's strength.

"I can do all things through Him Who strengthens me." Philippians 4:13 (NASB)

Meditate on this as we near the closing of the week, and may the Grace of Christ be with you.

Refurbished Christian

Blogger: Joe Harrison

There are, of course, many things in life that can be refurbished, but I'm sure most of us in the younger generation are more familiar with the term when it refers to video game systems. Refurbishing refers to the cleaning up of something that has already been furbished (or brand new). Take a video game system, for instance; you buy a brand new Nintendo Wii and play it for hours, days, weeks, months, and while there are some systems that remain strong, 1 in 4 will usually crack under the stress of remaining in constant heat. So, rather than just throwing the console away, it gets taken to the manufacturer to be refurbished; cleaned up, tweaked, given new parts that work better, etc.

I think for a lot of Christians this line of events is true for us. We get going in our faith in Christ and we are running strong. But as time goes on, the heat of fighting against sin becomes too strong--this is usually because, when things are going great we tend to start getting too self-confident--and we start buckling, and not working the way we're supposed to.

Throughout the Bible we see such occurrences; that when you're on the right trail and everything's going great, the longer you are on that trail it can sometimes lead to you straying from God. Among our examples, King David, who became so wrapped up in his kingly authority and his place of royalty, which God had given to him, that he distanced himself from God and committed adultery with Bathsheba, and had her husband Uriah killed (2 Sam. 11:1-12).

You know this is why it isn't healthy for us to have comfortable lives in which nothing bad happens and why we need spiritual exercise with trials. James tells us:

"Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing." James 1:2-4 (NASB)

If our faith isn't tested, then it can go stagnant, bringing our temperature down to lukewarm (which God abhors, Rev. 3:15-16), or worse, it can turn us away from God completely.

So now that you know we need trials and tests, we return to the original point of this post. Often times we will hit a period in our faith in Christ where we feel invincible. Everything's going great, you're feeling strong! This is when you are especially vulnerable to self-confidence. And that's when it happens. Paul warns us:

"Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall." 1 Corinthians 10:12 (NASB)

As we become more self-confident we start trying to fight sin with our own strength. And it is very evident that Sin is stronger than us. You can hinder sin with your own strength, but doing so only makes it stronger, so that when it hits the next time it will be harder to fight.

We buckle under the heat, and break down. Sin is victorious. And there we sit, alone and broken, most likely wallowing in our guilt, just as Jonah felt when he was swallowed up by the great fish. But what did Jonah do next? He spent three days in the belly of the fish evaluating, examining, testing himself and getting right with God (Jonah 2:1-9). Paul tells us to do this very thing:

"Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you--unless you indeed fail the test?" 2 Corinthians 13:5 (NASB)

When we break down, we can't waste our time wallowing in our guilt and feeling sorry for ourselves. We need to immediately turn to God and examine ourselves to see where things went wrong and why they went wrong. The chances are pretty high that you will come to see that you fell because you were relying on your own strength as opposed to God's strength.

So now a crossroads stands before you. Go on sulking, or get up and get "refurbished" in Christ. Let Jesus Christ renew you and re-strengthen you. Because this is exactly what God wants to do! He wants to renew you. And as you set out, refurbished, continuously examine yourself to see if you are "in the faith". Make it a weekly habit. Maybe even a daily habit. Turn to God and ask Him "Lord, reveal to me anything that is in my life that is hindering my relationship with you." Keep in contact with God, even when your life seems to be going great. Don't let your self-confidence take over! Abide in God's word, the Bible. Take a daily walk and talk with Him. And each week (or each day) examine the last few days and make sure that your contact with God hasn't been diminishing. And if it has been, you know the danger, and you have God help you get it fixed before it's too late.

"Trust in the LORD with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight." Proverbs 3:5-6 (NASB)

I hope you will remember all of this as we begin the new week. And as you set out prepared to deal with your self-confidence, may the Grace of Christ be with you.