Grace again?

What is grace?

The teachers say that grace is getting what I don't deserve, while mercy is not getting what I deserve; logically, grace is going to heaven and mercy is not going to hell; grace is being saved in spite of my sins, mercy is not getting the punishment that my sins deserve. Grace is a gift from God, and mercy is also a gift from God.

Both grace and mercy are totally undeserved, so in a sense mercy is also grace because it is also a gift I don't deserve; I don't deserve either one. The real difference is that through grace God calls me, causes me to be saved, sanctifies me and glorifies me together with Christ; if God only gave me mercy the only thing that would happen is not receiving the penalty for my sins, i.e. go to hell, I need grace to take me to heaven. That's the way I see it, and I could be totally wrong, as I often am, but that is the way I understand it.

Every time I do any thing good, it is by grace that I do it; it is God working in me to will and to do of His good pleasure; and every time I sin, mercy prevents that sin from piling up and accumulating an enormous debt on top of the enormous debt I have already accumulated, and it piles it on Christ to be dealt with.

It is a fact of life that I will sin, but my sin will not be accounted onto me; and sin has no dominion over me. This is grace and mercy. I deserve to go to hell, and I don't deserve to go to heaven; and both are nullified by the grace of God, the order of things is reversed by His love; mercy and grace are produced by God's love and all of them are demonstrated in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ; in fact, both grace and mercy are only possible because of Jesus. Tell me if I'm wrong.

"By grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works, least any man should boast". Grace makes boasting obsolete; grace puts boasting to death, it obliterates it; it makes God look glorious and awesome, and it make me look like I really am, nothing; at least to me it does.

Every single day of my life is a gift of grace; every breath I take is a gift of grace; the fact that I can still think clearly (not as often as I wish) is a gift; the fact that I can conquer the little sins of my heart is a gift; being alive is pure grace, and my death is now a merciful and gracious act of God taking me out of this miserable body and translating me into His glorious presence; all made possible by Jesus' sacrifice.

I have no fear of dying anymore, I don't want to die but I still welcome the thought of dying as I am right now; the only reason I'm still typing is because of the grace of God; and all fear is gone. I do really have peace with God, even when my mind tells me that I am not ready and I still need to change many things, and I still want to do many other things and be with some people I love, I have peace even if that doesn't happen, and that peace is a gift from God.

Like I said, I could be totally wrong, the more since I am not a theologian or a teacher or anybody wise and strong, or a genius; but I like thinking these thoughts, they bring me joy (another gift of grace) and happiness, and that is something I want constantly, to be joyful.

I am a blessed man; extremely blessed, so blessed I don't even know how blessed I am, it surpasses my understanding. This is the reason why sin is becoming an ugly thing to me, it took a long time for sure, but it is not a drag to think like that though, I think it is a gracious way of thinking; imagine, all the little sins we do every day, each one of them deserve the maximum penalty; just a little white lie deserves hell as retribution and justice; and it will never happen if you are in Christ; pure grace and mercy it is.

Why so high of a punishment for so little a sin? Just one tiny little sin and you're done? Yeah, that's what the bible says; have you ever stopped to think about it? I have. The answer is simple; an offense to an infinitely holy and righteous God is infinitely offensive, and it by logic needs to be dealt with in an infinitely just manner; and it just so happens that hell is an infinitely just punishment for an infinitely offensive sin to an infinitely holy and righteous Being. Thank God for Jesus.

If grace does not excite you and makes you jump up and down for joy and gratefulness, then I feel sorry for you; it is probably not even your fault, maybe no one has ever explained to you what the gospel really is; but take courage, the day will come when you will jump up and down for joy, the day when we all will see clearly and will need no explanation for anything; we will see the answer to all of our questions and all doubts will disappear.

Stop thinking that God is not pleased with you; that is such a lie, straight from the pit of hell; the same as trying to obey and failing all the time; "I got to try, I got to try, I got to be obedient", what a horrible way to live dude; get it once and for all, you will never be pleasing to God by trying to be obedient period, you are a sinner who has an advocate, a mediator between the Almighty and you, Jesus Christ The Righteous, and you have been redeemed with the precious blood of Christ; He bought you with His blood; and all His righteousness, including His perfect obedience to God, has been imputed unto you and that is where it stops. God sees you as perfect as Jesus, read Ephesians, read Romans, read, read, it is all there, please.

Yeah I know what's coming, "but you still need to try"; ok, whatever; I will write about that some other day, but right now I'm stopping the stomping on the keyboard, just remember one thing for today; God is gracious, He is full of grace for you if you are His child, and His grace is amazing.

Have a nice day.

http://makariotes.blogspot.com

Blessed....

Are you blessed? Do you really know what it means to be blessed? I think I do. I think I am blessed. That's what I'm thinking right now, about being blessed, and about what it really means to be blessed; so that is what I will write about in this post.

Being blessed has to mean something to some people, and it has to mean something else to some other people, but there is only one real meaning of that state of being, the being blessed. There is also absolute truth, truth that is pure, unadulterated, untainted truth; and I don't know any other source of truth except the word of God; of course I am talking about spiritual truth, I have to differentiate because there are also other sources of truth, such as scientific truth for example, and to me spiritual truth is the most important truth there is; any other source of spiritual information is only relative, or half a truth; and as J.I. Packer says, a half truth is a complete lie.

So, the truth is that a man is blessed, according to what I have found in the bible, only when God makes the man blessed. I heard it said that to be blessed is to be happy; teachers and preachers say it all the time from the pulpit, I agree, but it is more than just happiness. When I looked at the Greek word that is used for blessed, I found it is the word "makarios"; that's where I got the name for the blog, and "makariotes" is the one who is in a state of blessedness.

Makariotes is a state in which one is completely satisfied, mainly satisfied in God as the source of his happiness; namely His grace. Makariotes is an elusive form of existence; I find myself in and out of it, actually never arriving at the point where I can really rest from pursuing this mindset; always striving and fighting my mind and flesh and just when I think I can be totally satisfied, then sin gets in the way; of course this is only in appearance, because the reality is that I am totally satisfied in God, and that since day one.

When I say that this is an elusive form of existence, what I mean is that it is always fleeing from my understanding; this is one of those truths that I think I understand but I don't; in the spiritual realm I am perfect in God's eyes; but in this realm of the here and now, right between the past and the future, I see myself as the most sinful and pitiable of all creatures and I only see myself as God sees me for a few fleeting moments.

I long for the day when I will no longer struggle with my mind and with my desires; a day when I will no longer have fragmented thoughts of holiness, and for all I know it might be tomorrow, or even tonight; I am a blessed man.

To be blessed has not depended on me at all; when I started believing in Christ I never felt or reasoned that I made a choice to believe, the whole thing just happened to me, and I couldn't understand it; why was I so opposed to God as presented in the bible? Maybe it was the way I was brought up, as a catholic; every Sunday I saw the hypocrisy, even my own, of the people who were there; I knew it was all for show of religion, people appeared to be pious doing all that sitting and kneeling and standing up, and having the priest smear ash on our foreheads during lent; it was all a farce.

I always thought it was weird, all that Latin being spoken that no one understood, I don't even think the priest understood what he was saying; but the one thing I knew for sure is that I was a sinner, a bad one; so far gone from God and yet I was touched by the story of the crucifixion; just as if I had heard a horrible story of abuse upon the innocent; it all made me sick and at the same time it convicted me; I never did any confession either, I thought it was none of his business, I'm talking about the priest.

But as soon as the mass was over, I forgot all about it; I continued to live my life as if I was never at church. Once in a while I would meet a guy who was different at work, and people would tell me: "he's one of those hallelujahs, he thinks he is better than everybody else"; gee I thought, I don't like that; but the truth was that the guy didn't think he was better, he just knew how bad he really was, and so he behaved differently, he didn't drink, he didn't party, no debauchery, no chicks and things like that, I really thought he was gay.

30 years ago I thought that was a boring way of life, where is the fun in that? No partying? Are you serious? We are in chick heaven and you don't party? Yeah, he must have been gay. But he wasn't; he was married with kids, and he was the most righteous guy in the office, and the hardest worker, and the most kind and amiable; what a trip, I can still see his face, his name was Fernando, that's even trippier, that I remember his name.

I didn't need God, I was having fun and no one could stop me; or so I thought. Finally one day I hit the bottom of the stairs, and there was no where to look but upwards; but I was still rebelling against God, I didn't want religion, I hated it; it was not appealing to me at all; and it's still not appealing.

One day a guy named Gino told me the story again, and then he gave me the magic formula, "pray this prayer with me...", and so forth; man I didn't even speak or nothing; in fact I didn't even prayed; all I was thinking was that I needed help and I remember talking to God saying "okay, I've tried everything up to this point, so if you are real, and all this is real, help me", I didn't ask for forgiveness or anything like that, but when I opened my eyes I believed everything I ever heard about Jesus; somehow it all seemed like it was the truth; the gospel was the truth.

I'm not mocking when I say "the magic formula"; I just hate it when people think that all you have to do is pray a prayer and bam! You are saved and you are a Christian now; that has no biblical foundation at all; and I hate it even more because that is what I used to believe, just pray this prayer bro, accept Jesus and ask Him to come into your heart. Accept Jesus? Now it is the sinner that needs to accept God Almighty? Mmmmmm.

As you can already see, I am deviating into another trip; maybe I should get back on track.

Anyway, my point is that it is God who makes the man a blessed man; a state of blessedness is not attainable by human means; it is an impossibility; and it all starts with God taking the first step to make you blessed. Blessed is to be completely satisfied in God and not in favorable circumstances; if you can say with all honesty "I am blessed" even when your tiny world is falling apart, then you have come to understand what I mean, or what it means to be blessed.

I just wanted to put some thoughts on paper and make someone think, that is why I'm writing right now; to make you think. So think if you must, but one thing I can tell you for sure; if you are a blessed man, or a woman, it is not your own doing; you have nothing to do with it.

Have a nice day.
http://makariotes.blogspot.com