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“I often point out to folks, today we are not only saved by grace, we are paralyzed by it.” — The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus’s Essential Teachings on Discipleship by Dallas Willard“.
Its important to remember that grace is like many gifts-assembly required, batteries included.
Grace is not a get-out-of-jail-free card that we stick in our bible and pretty much nothing changes (except God now overlooks all our little mistakes and sins).
Grace is not a call to passivity where we grab our camera and a fully stocked picnic basket and settle into a luxury seat on the canoe of life and enjoy the ride while Jesus does all the rowing up the rapids of life to heaven.
Think of God’s amazing gift of grace as a free gym membership given to you with the expectation that you will work out your salvation with fear and trembling, empowered all the time by the ever-present Holy Spirit.
Bottom line, this life is about preparing for eternal life. Flabby, indolent, lazy Christians will have a hard time keeping up with Jesus’s eternal agenda for us once we get to heaven.
Thank goodness, He’s graciously given us a gym membership and has promised to be our Trainer-it’s called discipleship.
The ONE THING for today: Grace without discipleship is like leaving an amazing life-changing gift in the box.
12 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; 13 for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.
Philippians 2:12-13
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