Liberating Grace—Part Two

You know, none of us can earn our way into heaven because eternal life is a free gift

when you accept Jesus as the Lord of your life.

Hey everybody, this is Pastor Rick's Daily Hope and today Rick Warren continues a series

called Good News About Grace.

You can't truly understand the Christian life until you understand grace.

It's at the heart of your faith and your relationship with God.

And in this series, you're going to discover how not to only understand grace, but how

to experience it and the joy that it brings.

Let's go to the final part of a message called liberating grace.

Romans 8.31 says this.

If God is for us, who can be against us?

Now notice that God is not just with us.

The Bible says God is for us.

Now ladies and gentlemen, that is the essence of the doctrine of grace.

Grace can be summed up in four words.

God is for us.

God's on your side.

God is not sitting up there in the heavens looking down on you saying,

what can I punish next in their life?

If you have received God's grace and you've become in part of God's family, then God is

for you.

Now if you're thumbing your nose to God and you're saying, God, I'm going to be my own

God.

I'm going to work my way into heaven.

I don't need you.

Well, of course God is not for you.

But when you come in sincerity and honesty and humility and go, God, I admit it, I'm imperfect.

I don't stand a chance of getting into a perfect heaven except through you.

Please show me your grace.

God is for us.

Now again, that's a hard thing to accept for some people because you were trained.

You were customized.

You were programmed to think of conditional love.

And all your life you just felt like you could never measure up.

The hell in relax stands for let God handle things.

Let God handle things in my life.

So that's very important because at the root of perfectionism is a desire to control.

You see, you think that if you can just control things, then they'll be perfect.

And so if I can just control my spouse, we'll have a perfect marriage.

If I control my kids, they'll never get in trouble and always be safe.

If I can control my career, my path will be assured.

If I can control any other people around me, then the world will be a better place.

But as we've talked about many times, most of your life is out of your control.

And you can't control it.

You see, that's an attempt to play God.

God is God and you aren't.

And God can do a whole lot better job than you can.

So what do you do when you can't control the uncontrollable things in life?

Peter 5, 7.

It says cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

Now circle the word cast.

Those of you who are fishermen know what it means to cast.

When you cast a line or if you're a fly fisherman and you're casting repeatedly, you're holding

on to the line or you're holding on to the rod and reel and there comes a point in the

cast where you have to take your finger off the button of the line and you have to let

it go.

If you don't, there's no casting.

The essence of casting is letting go.

And to overcome perfectionism, you have to let go.

You have to let go and let God do his thing.

Now if you want to live a long time, you need to memorize Proverbs 14, 30.

Look at this next verse.

Read it with me.

A relaxed attitude lengthens a man's life.

I've already had you write down, I don't have to be perfect for God to love me.

I want you to write this down too.

Things don't have to be perfect for me to be happy.

Things don't have to be perfect for me to be happy.

Things don't have to be perfect for me to enjoy them.

There is no such thing as a perfect vacation.

If you're waiting for one, you're never going to enjoy one.

There is no such thing as a perfect marriage.

You married a sinner and she married a bigger one.

So there's no perfect marriage because you've got imperfect people.

Who thinks you can put two imperfect people together and have a perfect relationship?

There are no such thing as perfect kids.

There is no such thing as a perfect body.

There is no perfect church.

There is no perfect job.

The Bible says nothing is perfect except God's Word.

And if you're waiting for that perfect environment for you to enjoy life, it's not going to happen.

You must learn to enjoy life in the middle of imperfection, in less than perfect circumstances.

Have you learned to do that?

To love the moment in the midst, everything does not have to be perfect for you to enjoy

the moment.

If you're walking down the beach, you can still enjoy the moment even if you can hear

the car is going by and you still have bills to pay.

Learning to enjoy the moment in spite of the imperfections of life.

Paul said it like this, I've learned to be content in whatever situation I am.

He said, I've learned to be content no matter what state I'm in.

I notice he says, I've learned.

You see, I by nature, I'm not a contented person.

I by nature, I'm discontented and so are you.

It is not human nature to be content.

It's something you have to learn.

And of course, we live in a society called, it's filled with consumerism and an entire industry

called the ad industry which is designed to create discontent in your life so you'll buy their product.

And you see things on TV and you think, how in the world did I live without that?

My life is incomplete until I get that product, use that service, have that experience, look

like that model, etc.

You have to learn to be content.

It's learned.

We know Paul was a southerner, the apostle Paul, because he says, I thank God for you all.

The A in relax stands for, act in faith, not fear, act in faith, not fear.

Now remember how you got into God's family in the first place.

In Ephesians 2.8 it says, read it with me, for it is, by grace you have been saved through faith.

Now listen, that's the only way you're going to ever get saved by grace.

If you don't get saved by grace, you're not saved.

There's no other way to get into heaven except by grace.

You'll never be good enough, you'll never be perfect enough, you'll never earn enough,

you can't buy you into it.

If you don't go in by grace, you're not going in.

But it's a free gift of God.

It's by grace through faith.

I put my faith in God's grace.

That's how you get into the Christian life.

Now listen, this is very important.

The way you got into the Christian life is the way you continue the Christian life.

The way you became saved is the way you continue to be saved.

The way you became a believer is the way you continue as a believer by grace through faith.

Notice the next verse.

So then, just as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, as Lord, continue to live in Him the

same way.

You're not saved by grace and then lived by works.

A lot of people think that.

You see, they think, well, I'm saved by God's free gift.

And now I have to really work hard as a Christian to keep God's approval in my life.

No, you don't.

How were you saved by promising to be perfect?

No.

How do you live the Christian life?

By promising to be perfect?

No.

How did you come into the Christian life?

By keeping the 10 commandments and promising to obey every rule?

No.

How do you live the Christian life?

By keeping the 10 commandments and promising it?

No.

By grace through faith.

Now listen, you need to understand that literally everything in your life is a gift from God,

everything in your life, your own life.

You wouldn't be alive if it weren't for the grace of God.

The air you breathe is a gift of grace.

The mind that you have is a gift of grace.

Your ability to hear and see right now is a gift of God's grace.

You wouldn't have it.

You certainly didn't earn it.

Everything that God does in your life, he does for one reason, grace, grace.

God teaches you by grace.

God forgives you by grace.

God guides you by grace, not because you deserve it.

God uses you by grace.

God gives you gifts and talents by grace.

God blesses your life by grace.

God gives you friends and family and freedom by grace.

Absolutely nothing in your life did you earn.

You say, wait a minute, I earn my salary, I earn my income, I earn my place.

Where do you think you got the ability to make that money?

The ability came from God and if he hadn't given you the ability in the hands of the brain,

you wouldn't even do that.

Everything in your life, you owe to God.

All, all, all by grace.

Now understanding this truth is one thing.

It doesn't guarantee that you'll live by it.

Because if you were a perfectionist before you became a believer, then as I said after

you become a believer, the tendency is to take all those perfectionistic tendencies and

put them on God and make God the unpleasable parent and he's the one who always nags at you

rather than your conscience or culture or something else.

Some of you have been living in the prison of perfectionism for a long, long time.

But today you're going to get clemency.

Today is your day of pardon.

Today is the day you're going to be set free.

The jail door is going to be unlocked and you're going to be told from God's word you

can walk out a free person.

That you don't have to live under or in the prison of perfectionism anymore.

Because grace is available.

But the only way you'll be able to walk out that prison door is to have faith, not fear,

to trust in God's grace.

Have you been living in a prison of perfectionism, a self-imposed prison?

Have you been robbed of your joy and your freedom?

Well you can walk out today.

One of the symptoms of perfectionism is constant fatigue.

Because you're always trying to control everything and it's tiring trying to be the general

manager of the universe.

Hold all those strings together, trying to keep all the balls in the air.

One day you realize it's not up to me.

I can relax.

I can let go.

And I don't have to try to make things perfect in order to prove my worth.

Now you can live in a self-imposed prison of perfectionism or you can take step five

and find liberation and freedom to date.

My perfectionism, exchange my perfectionism for God's peace.

You see perfectionism destroys peace.

You're going to live with one or the other, perfectionism or peace.

Now here's the offer.

This is an offer that Jesus Christ makes and it's still valid today.

It's an offer you really can't afford to refuse.

Matthew 11, Jesus says, are you tired, worn out, burned out on religion, come to me.

Get away with me and you'll recover your life.

That's real recovery, recovery your life.

And I will show you how to take a real rest.

Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.

I love that message, paraphrase.

Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.

Now listen, let me wrap it up with this.

God is perfect and because God is perfect, he expects his children to be perfect.

Do you hear that?

Yes.

God is perfect and he expects his children to be perfect.

Jesus even said it.

Jesus said, be he perfect even as I am perfect.

But he also knows there's no chance you're going to be perfect.

He knows that's impossible.

And so he came up with grace.

And that's why God sent Jesus because Jesus was perfect and we get in on his perfection.

You can either try all you want to or you can just accept the perfection of Christ and say, let me in on his ticket.

Now as you read the Bible, you read God's perfect standard of perfection.

And you read many things and you go, there's no way I could measure up to that.

There's no way I could keep all those principles, follow all those rules.

There's no way I could be the kind of person that God says a perfect person is.

But you don't have to worry because he's already taken care of that.

And by grace, he has been the perfection for you.

So I invite you to receive God's offer today through Christ.

Christian living is based on grace, not guilt.

You see, you're going to fail a lot in life.

You're going to fail many responsibilities that you've been given.

You're going to fail to live up to the expectations that other people place on you.

You're going to let them down.

You're going to fail your own expectations.

And of course, you're going to fail measuring up to God's standard of perfection.

The Bible says all of sin and fall short.

But you don't have to worry about that if you receive God's grace.

In fact, there's only one failure you ever need to worry about.

It's the failure of Hebrews 12.15, the last verse.

Be careful that no one fails to receive God's grace.

So I invite you to receive it right now.

Let's bow our heads.

Why don't you pray a prayer like this in your mind?

Dear God, I need your grace.

I realize I'm not imperfect.

In fact, I'm far from it.

But I want to enjoy your unconditional love.

Thank you for your grace.

I put my trust in your grace today.

And I ask you to make me a part of your family.

Make me your child, not because I deserve it, but because of your unconditional love.

Help me to believe that you're for me, not against me.

And help me to let you handle things in my life to relax and to cast my cares and anxiety on you.

Lord, I know from today that it's just putting my faith in your grace that saves me.

And so I do that.

But I also ask you to help me to put my faith in your grace to live the life that you've meant for me to live.

And I am tired.

And I am worn out.

But I come to you today.

Help me to learn the unforced rhythms of grace.

Amen.

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