Gospel vs. Religion

I know when God has something important for me to write because the spiritual battle heightens - my thoughts get fuzzy, my line of thinking less clear...even now I am struggling to get this down right.

This morning I am listening to Matt Chandler continue to preach from Colossians 1. Oh, is it good. So good. But he does talk fast and there is so much in there that I know I will need to listen to it again...and take notes this time. Toward the end he talks about the point where the Gospel veers away from religion.

Religion says, "Forgive your brother, feed the poor, be a better person and you and God can talk." The Gospel says, "Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest." If your ultimate goal is to fix your marriage or stop your addiction or be a better person you are in big trouble. Because what will likely happen, and I can personally attest to this, is you will attempt to walk the straight and narrow, you will knuckle down, you will strive for behavior modification...until you reach a point of stress, anger, weakness, where you fall back into your former pattern all over again and repeat the endless cycle.

Only when Jesus is your ultimate goal do you have any hope of lasting change. When we make Jesus our main pursuit, our main purpose...when we walk deeply with Him, when we understand his character more greatly, when we follow him more intimately...than we begin to see things the way He does. We begin to have a changed perspective, as well as a changed heart, when it comes to our marriage, our time, our money, our desires. It's the "new appetite" language that Piper talked about. Truly walking with God brings about NEW desires. That's how change comes about. We can't will it. Not for long anyway. If Christ isn't our ultimate goal, the best we can hope to do is exchange our current chains for different ones.

I love this line from the sermon..."God is not in love with some future version of you." God says, "Come to me NOW." Do you feel how freeing that is? It goes back to my occasional belief that I am not "good enough" to come to God for forgiveness and reconciliation after I have sinned. God isn't waiting on me to get my act together so we can hang out and finally get tight with one another. God is not in love with some future version of me. He loves me right here, right now. He loves me with all my issues and baggage and shortcomings and failures.

Religion says that isn't how it works. The Gospel vehemently disagrees.