Michael Daling - July 4, 2021
The Wisdom from God
Jesus is for us everything we can’t be for ourselves. The great irony of our attempts to be with Jesus (practicing spiritual disciplines) is that our every tendency is to use them to get ourselves right before God…so we come to church thinking that it will make us more acceptable to God…we struggle and can’t understand to any great degree God’s Word describes itself as the satisfaction for the deepest hunger in our souls…we hear Paul talk about praying continuously and we think that God must be super disappointed with our efforts…we make our confessions of sin shallow and w/o any specificity so that we don’t have to really admit that we aren’t right before God and can’t get ourselves right—and so we don’t seem to find real victory over the wickedness in our hearts. But that is exactly the reason that we must never lose sight of how Jesus receives the sinner who comes to him. In Jesus, we cannot pretend that any of it is our doing…and so we must not lose sight of how delighted he is to do it. The difference is incalculably vast between doing something hoping that God might be pleased if we do it…and doing something because we know he is pleased with us in Jesus. Jesus, is our righteousness—so when we fail we can go to Jesus…look specifically at the way he overcame for us…surrender our own self-reclamation projects and trust that his righteousness makes us accepted before God…and ask the Holy Spirit to renew us in Jesus’ righteousness.
Scripture References: 1 Corinthians 1:26-31
From Series: "Jesus Is Everything"
What does it look and sound like when Jesus receives sinners? How do we learn to be with Jesus? God desires to make a people for Himself who are captivated by Jesus. He IS the gift of God, he IS our life, he IS everything for us and to us.
