What It Means to Live in God's Amazing Grace!!

God's GRACE is an importantto me!! It is a constant theme in my preaching/teaching.

The following statements reflect what it means to live in God's grace. Ther is great power that results from exchanging your life for the life of Christ in and through you:
· **It means serving God because He has fully and permanently accepted us through Jesus Christ, not because we want to gain His acceptance or become more pleasing to Him through our works.
· **It means motivating Christians to live out of love and thankfulness, rather than guilt and duty.
· **It means believing firmly in Biblical absolutes and trusting in the life of Christ within to enable us to live by those absolutes, but rejecting attempts to legislate the Christian life through human rules.
· **It means unconditionally accepting people at their current level of spiritual growth and development without condoning their sin, just as God does, then encouraging them to grow in an atmosphere of grace.
· **It means creating an environment of honesty and transparency that models God's love and acceptance; not ignoring or approving a person's sin, but loving people in spite of their sin with a goal of bringing them to truth about it.
· **It means placing the primary emphasis of the Christian life on inner motivations rather than outward behaviors, believing that when inner motivations are right, the right outward behavior will follow.
· **It means refusing to deny or minimize the pain that comes into our lives because of our own sins and failures or the sins and failures of others; rather, it means viewing pain as a means of bringing us to an experience of God's grace and life.
·** It means following the relational style of Jesus, who accepted and forgave sinful, lost people, even though they may have failed miserably, then through truth and love led them to a better life in Him.
· **It means interpreting the Biblical commands as describing a mode of life befitting someone who has already been accepted by God, not as laws that bring us more merit with God.
· **It means resting IN the life of Christ and operating from our new identity in Him, not in our own strength, but His.