Author: Tom Sanders

This is the season that consumes our hearts and minds.  Thoughts of friends and family, big dinners and gifts, Christmas trees and stockings.  And among some people we remember the real reason for the season.  This the time we remember that Jesus came to earth and was born in a manger.  Born to demonstrate who God truly was.  Jesus stated in scripture “If you have seen Me, You have seen The Father.”  For to long people had seen God as distant, uninterested, uninvolved, and a strict judge and totalitarian.  The saw Him as do it My way, or fire and brimestone will rain down apon you.  And yet this is not at all who God is.

So Jesus came to dispel the rumors and to reveal the true nature of God.  And He demonstrated what I like to call  the L.A.F. Principle, which is the heart of God towards us simply stated in three points.

First is L.  L stands for love.  John 3:16, perhaps the most famous verse in scripture states  “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”  And verse 17  follows  “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”    God deeply loves us.  And does so unconditionally, and without reservation.  Our problem is we have been separated from His love by the things we have done wrong in our lives.  And only when we repent of our wrong doing and accept His forgiveness can we receive that love. 

Growing up I spent my whole life in church and never once experienced God’s love personally.  You see going to church will never make us acceptable to God, nor will any of the good deeds we do.  When I came to God on His terms, and surrendered my life to His control however, the experience of God’s love flooded my whole being and changed me forever.  The feeling is indescribable.  There are not words enough in any language to describe the immensity of God’s love, and there is no way to properly convey how awesome His love for me is.  And scripture states that “God is no respecter of persons” which means that with God there are no favorites.  God loves you in the exact way and with the exact intensity as He loves me.  All you have to do is come to Him on His terms and you can experience it for yourself.  After all, He is God.

Second is A. A stands for Acceptance.  God accepts us without condition.  He never asks us to measure up to any standard before He brings us into His family.  In fact scripture states that God opened the door for us to enter into His family before we were interested or willing for that matter.  “But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.”   The only thing God requires is that we believe in Him.   God has rolled out the welcome carpet for us and called us each personally by name, and all we have to do is accept His invitation. 

Third is F. F stands for Forgiveness.  God’s heart is for all of us to be included in His family.  Scripture states “God wills that all men be saved”.    Jesus came to earth to live among us and reveal God’s true heart towards us, and more importantly to pay our penalty for our sin, and provide the way for us to be included into His family.  Jesus then rose again from the dead to go and prepare a place for us and to show us that with Him we no longer have to fear death, as He will take us home with Him if we accept His invitation. 

The big thing that all this reveals is that there is nothing we can do to earn God’s favor, and nothing we can do to pay our own way into His family.  We get there simply because God loves us that much and chose to invite each of us in.  The only thing we can say we did was to say yes to His invite.

Everyone of us has encountered “Christians” that have left a sour taste in our mouths.  From the hardline “bible thumper” to the “hypocrite” who preaches “the life” but never lives any of it.  Or the whimpy Christian who sits in the corner reading their bible, but never making a stand or declaring what is right.

We have heard many different versions of “Christianity” from the “work your way to heaven” to “God will accept everyone”.  And yet none of them truly convey the heart of God.  To be a “Christian” literally means to be “Christ-like”  and so if we are not portraying Christ then maybe we shouldn’t be called by His name.

And yet not many people can portray Christ successfully.  And that is because we are struggling to try and do it on our own.  You see we only become “true Christians” because of the working of God’s Spirit within us.   To be born again, simply means we have a natural birth, in which we are separated from God because of our sin, and a spiritial birth, born again, through God’s Spirit bringing us into relationship with Him because of the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross to pay our penalty for our sins.  Christianity is simply a relationship with God, through Jesus Christ.

So if Christianity is a relationship that is started by God, how come we are fighting to become “Christ-like” on our own?  Scripture teachs “This is God’s message to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord Almighty – you will succeed because of my Spirit”  And yet we try to fight it out ourselves.  Paul challenges his behaviour when he says “Have you lost your senses? After starting your Christian lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort?”

And yet we struggle on our own trying to gain the favour of God.  Trying with everything in us to gain His acceptance.  And we get very little for our efforts, and end up discouraged and disenchanted with our faith.  And yet this was never what God intended.  Scripture never teaches us to work our way to heaven.  In fact Scripture teaches the opposite.  We can never work our way to heaven, because all our goodness is like dirty oily rags compared to God.  And we get into heaven on God’s standards not our own.

So what does all this mean?  God accepts us and loves us 100% as we are.  That is why He sent Jesus to pay our debt, so we could have a relationship with Him.  Nothing can change that, and nothing can remove that.  We come to God as we are, and He accepts us as we are.  Now He loves us to much to leave us as we are, so then He begins to work in us to change us and make Christ more visible in us, as we simply trust in and yeild to Him.  But it all starts with and ends with Him.  This is what grace truly is.  God accepts us, and changes us to be like Him, and our job is to yield to and trust in Him.  And we get it all confused by trying to live up to His “expectations”. 

Many of us even feel like we have let God down and He is disappointed with us.  But this would mean we failed to live up to His expectations.  But if God knows the beginning from the end, and He does, then He already knew you wouldn’t do what He asked, and before you were even born, so how could He be disappointed?  Nothing  comes as a suprise to Him.  So we need to get over ourselves, and begin to simply trust in and yield to the One who Loves us Extravigantly, Forgives us Instantly, when we ask, and Accepts us Unconditionally.  Only then can we truly begin to live out the True Christian Life.