How's your relationship with God going.....

Wassup Brothas and Sistas!!

This quote rocked me the other day as I was perusing a wonderful quote site called www.FirstImportance.org and I wanted to share it with you guys.

I wanted to share it with you guys because I feel like it exposes the only way to approach God. Yes, I am sure, intellectually speaking, we all know we can only approach God solely by the blood of Christ; however, the real question is do we understand that functionally speaking. I saw how much I had begun to subconsciously merge my personal performance towards God (Prayer, reading the Bible,etc) with my understanding of my position with God.

A little example....Have you ever asked someone "How is your relationship with the Lord going? Whenever, I want to initiate convo about God and a friends spiritual life, I usually ask that question. BUT, I realized that I need to be careful, because often times when someone asks me that question, I will reply in one of two ways. Either I haven't been able to get into my word and prayer life is not that good, so my relationship with God is not doing well. Or, I've been getting into the Word and praying, and so my relationship with God is great. Now, don't get me wrong these are valid questions and responses, but they need to be categorized correctly. Our relationship with God is meant to be cultivated by all means! But If I think that my performance with God changes my position with God, I have been grossly mistaken. I happen to think that D.A. Carson puts it quite a bit more eloquently ;)


“How dare you approach the mercy-seat of God on the basis of what kind of day you had, as if that were the basis for our entrance into the presence of the sovereign and holy God? No wonder we cannot beat the Devil. This is works theology. It has nothing to do with grace and the exclusive sufficiency of Christ. Nothing.

Do you not understand that we overcome the accuser on the ground of the blood of Christ? Nothing more, nothing less. That is how we win. It is the only way we win. This is the only ground of our acceptance before God. If you drift far from the cross, you are done. You are defeated.

We overcome the accuser of our brothers and sisters, we overcome our consciences, we overcome our bad tempers, we overcome our defeats, we overcome our lusts, we overcome our fears, we overcome our pettiness on the basis of the blood of the Lamb.”

—D.A. Carson, Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), 103

In Christ Alone,

JDV

"If you are returning to the Lord with all your heart..."

Hey guys,
Here's something that convicted me today during my time in the Word that I'm going to keep meditating on and that I wanted to share with you.

"And Samuel said to all the house of Israel, 'If you are returning to the Lord with all your heart, then put away the foreign gods and the Ashtaroth from among you and direct your heart to the Lord and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines."
-1 Samuel 7:3

As I seek the Lord, I have to put all else aside. If we want to come to Him with our whole hearts, we can't have our hearts divided and given over to other things. And that for me means more than just in my devotion time, but in all things. God is not just priority #1, He is priority #1,2,3 and so on. I pray that God would show me anything in my life that is not surrendered to him, and I'll be praying that for you guys.

Love you bros and sisters,
Michael Lacalle