“I had to nurse you and feed you with “milk,” not with the solid food of more advanced teachings, because you weren’t ready for it. In fact, you are still not ready to be fed solid food, for you are living your lives dominated by the mind-set of the flesh. Ask yourselves: Is there jealousy among you? Do you compare yourselves with others? Do you quarrel like children and end up taking sides? If so, this proves that you are living your lives centred on yourselves, dominated by the mind-set of the flesh, and behaving like unbelievers.” 1 Corinthians 3:2-3.

You know, there’s a deeper place for Christians to live daily – simply because God’s GRACE is available to each one of us all the time. His Grace facilitates our new way to live. However, Grace can’t change a FAKE ME. By that I mean, who we are can be carefully hidden under layers of ‘pious sucking it up’ instead of true transformation. Real transformation means when somebody presses button “A” in our lives, we don’t explode anymore. OH for THAT day!! 

In our society today it seems the land of harder and worse is looming up right in front of mankind. Sadly, most of the time, instead of listening to our own reactions, we make excuses for our behaviour and get furious at someone else. But because of what Jesus did for us, we no longer have to be ashamed to acknowledge where we personally went wrong.

A lot of our time in this life is wasted by pretending we are managing – when we are not. The best thing about sin is that we have an opportunity to be saved and transformed from it, when we acknowledge it! Every person on this planet has sin in common. Realising that, can lead us deeper into the Lord’s incredible Love, we must understand that despite our sinfulness, He will not turn any of us away. It is always our choice … we can live in the need for revenge, or inner peace. You know, babies always need to be looked after, adults have a life to live. Babies are not productive at all, they are consumers.

It would seem from these verses in Corinthians that the Apostle Paul knew some undernourished fat-babies in his life as well! However! “There IS NO condemnation for those who are IN Christ Jesus…!!” Acknowledgement of our own sin will lead us into a wider, broader place … where I can love you no matter what you did, because I’ve learnt hating you is just as bad as whatever you did to me! Comparison of big and little sins is killing us – and our fake identities are muddying the waters of this life. There are higher places for every single one of us to go. I tell myself: ‘Every time I confront these things in my life, I’m building my faith muscle. Every time I humble myself I am stepping into His Grace.’

So we must decide, and choose to move on from the stuff that has held us captive for most of our lives, and believe what the Lord Jesus said. It’s all part of the same faith. “It is for freedom that Christ set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” Galatians 5:1. The slavery comes in when we refuse to acknowledge to ourselves, that we were all born broken! Accepting the never-ending, all-encompassing love of God is available to everyone, changes our perception of things that appear to be stuck. Transparency helps us. We cannot afford to walk around with our noses in the air looking at others thinking: ‘they are more broken than I am!’

Let me be clear – the Lord won’t physically stop us, we must learn, through experience, to use our faith in His truthfulness, to stop ourselves. That’s what our faith is for – we are to live this new life we have been given, using our faith that what the Lord said He did, He did! Acknowledging our sinfulness puts feelings in second place, and at the same time we are telling ourselves that no matter how things look, Jesus has got our troubles or difficulties and He’s THE penultimate Redeemer. 

The door to that jail we lived in before we met Him – is now permanently open.There are no guards! They fell on their backs when He burst out of that grave! The enemy tries to keep all of us busy examining everyone else’s attitudes and actions for our entire lives. Unfortunately, if we put our faith down, and aim at excusing ourselves, we will continue to commit whatever sin we’ve been fighting that trips us up. Instead we must believe Jesus is telling the truth. He said He did it, so it is done. Now we repent and repair things wherever we need to, and move on.

Jesus said that while He was hanging on a cross in agony. “It. Is. Finished.” Every requirement for our new life is already in our account, it has been paid for, in full. Now we put aside the temptation to resent people, or to lie, to ourselves and others, or get angry and hate people. We simply go and do what Jesus would do. He came here to love people, so that’s what we do too! We are all pilgrims, we have not yet arrived: “but we press on!! …” 

There is incredible freedom in not excusing yourself and facing up to reality. There were times Jesus physically went up a mountain to pray. Here’s my little theory … I think He did that because He needed the spiritual, physical and emotional respite from the stuff all around Him. He need to find true REST in His Father.  Prayer and reading the bible are our spiritual life-blood – they gives us rest from striving. Listen as if God Himself was speaking to you, personally. What we need to change is our belief that your sin is worse than mine! Bye. 👋