Game-Changer

"Based on what we know of God, what would God expect of us".

That was the question Nigel put to us the other Sunday morning and it's an absolute stonker! Rightly understood and rightly applied, with faith-ful confidence, humility, wisdom and courage it is, as they say, a game-changer.

All we do, everything we say, think, believe....it should all come out of what we know of God and the grace he has shown us in Jesus. When we've got that properly squared away and we're living "under this" then what God expects is pretty obvious and the implications huge.

We get sidelined for a promotion or we miss out on something we think we deserve:
based on what we know of God....we feel the pain and the disappointment but trust that God is totally for us and he will provide what we need.

We're let down by someone close to us, we feel hurt and betrayed:
based on what we know of God....we feel the pain, the sadness and the anger but remember that we serve one who experienced all the betrayal we have experienced and the knowledge of this helps us to forgive, extending grace instead of hate and we move on.

We suffer a financial loss and we're not sure what the future may hold:
based on what we know of God.....we feel the fear and the anxiety but we believe that if God did not spare his own Son but gave him for us he will, therefore, certainly supply all our needs.

We see someone screw their life up through a series of ridiculous life-style choices:
based on what we know of God....we acknowledge the brokenness and the wrong choices that led to it but we realise that if God extended radical grace to us when we deserved utter condemnation we can never, ever disdain or disparage another person.

We feel disappointed with ourselves and our repeated failures to be who we want to be:
based on what we know of God....we make our confession, naming our sin (where appropriate) but rejoice in the fact that God accepts us at our worst (and this is all by grace) and so we move forward with confidence.

We feel really rather pleased that we're doing so well for God:
based on what we know of God.....we give thanks for what he has enabled us to do but we remember that any good in us is only by his grace and that without his undeserved intervention in our lives we would be nothing (at best). And so, we move forward with humility.

The work of God in Christ - the gospel - changes everything. It means we do the radical, unexpected thing. The stuff of Luke 6 and Matthew 5-7 in fact.