Enter Your Rest! Do it!

exhausting-day-of-work

This post is a reflection on Jacob Goff’s wonderful post on the power of the redeemed mindset. It is very much worth the short read:

simulblog.com/2014/05/07/why-christians-cant-believe/

Really, read it and be blessed. I insist!

Now, I reflect.

Someone commented on Jacob’s article and said they struggle to maintain a redeemed mindset. The brilliant thing about the gospel is that we don’t need to struggle to comply with it at all. That would be like saying you have to struggle to sit or sleep or eat ice cream or hang out with your wife and watch a movie in your living room. Those are things you do when you stop struggling. There is no process to resting. When you know that you are eternally forever and most assuredly “in”, safe, saved, justified, declared significant, died for, and deeply beloved, you stop worrying. It’s like getting married: before that, you’re looking around and worrying about who it will be and whether you will ever measure up to someone’s expectations and if you’ll find someone you love that loves you back. These are huge fears. Then, you not only find them, but throw caution to the winds and declare love for life publicly in the eyes of the law and God and everyone you know.

God has done this with us! He loves us, and He has thrown all caution to the wind. He has determined to love us for life, and He will live for a very long time. You can’t even kill Him and keep Him dead. So knowing that we are so completely beloved, that we are the object of such a passionate and genuine desire from so great a savior, we listen differently to everything. different_eyesWe stumble around differently. We get angry differently. We read the Bible differently. We watch TV differently. We waste time differently. We misunderstand things differently. We hope differently. We fear differently. We even sin differently! There is therefore now no condemnation (Romans 8:1). As I recall, the word “no” means zero. It doesn’t say that we have therefore now “much less” condemnation. If you say you are struggling to die to sin or struggling to have a gospel-centered mindset or whatever, it sounds like you are still hearing even the gospel as a piece of condemnation. Let it go! You will never never never never ever again taste condemnation. Forever, in Christ, you are beloved. It is ALL FINISHED. His blood is enough and we ought never say differently; He is just and the justifier. It would actually be wrong for you to say that some sin of yours is bigger than the Father’s only begotten precious Son’s sacrifice. Believing these things is what believing in Jesus actually means. It means that you have realized that you are completely safe. This is what changes you because this belief IS the change. Walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called! You are immensely and eternally important and the angel paparazzi are angling to see what God and you are up to. Movie stars are one thing, but you have become an eternal citizen of heaven. You simply can’t sin enough to break that. That’s the thing you believe. If you don’t believe it you’re not … ta-dum! … a believer.

It is not up to you to break His love for you. It is up to Him. He is determined to have you to the point of death and beyond. Stop thinking His love for you is so weak and conditional. Why? Because you are missing out on the party! You can actually think whatever you want and He will still love you. Your thinking isn’t what saves you. Jesus saves you.

Every time someone comes around to believing this and getting this, every time someone repents of their self-sufficiency and self-righteousness and trusts in the complete and eternal love of Christ, angels rejoice and throw huge parties and cry great angel tears of rapturous joy.

Oh My Goodness! Believe and rejoice! Do it!

5 For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection,
6 knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin;
7 for he who has died is freed from sin. Romans 6:5-7 NASB

Let us make an end: as long as you are struggling like the Pharisee to be alive in your own eyes–and to the precise degree that your struggles are for what is holy, just, and good — you will resent the apparent indifference to your pains that God shows in making the effortlessness of death the touchstone of your justification. Robert Farrar Capon

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