God Is Always For Us And Will Never Stop Pursuing Us.

Throughout this plan, you are going to hear that you will need to rely on God to see victory in your life. This, however, is impossible if we do not have an accurate view of God. As we saw yesterday, we cannot earn our way to heaven and need Christ as our Savior. If you are a Christian, then hopefully you understand this. In my experience, however, even those of us who see our need for Christ as our Savior may still not understand how God’s grace affects our current relationship with Him.

I want to be very clear that the view I am about to describe about God is a false view, and it’s a very common false view. Although we rely on Jesus’ death and resurrection to be able to go to Heaven someday, many believe it is still up to us to maintain and keep God’s favor in our life. Perhaps we picture God far away, watching from a distance. His eyes are constantly on us, he knows exactly what we are doing, and he is always judging. It’s almost as if we live on a pedestal that goes up and down based on how well we are behaving. If we read our Bible and pray, we go up a few notches. Help somebody out and we go up another notch. Lead someone to Christ and we go up several notches. On the contrary, if we are negligent in these spiritual disciplines, then our pedestal slowly sinks lower and lower. If it seems like it is getting too low, we try to jump back into reading our Bible and praying, hoping we didn’t drift too far down.

If we do a “big sin” like premarital sex, going to a drunken party, or caving once again to the temptation of pornography and masturbation, then we crash and burn. At this point, we are still saved, but we feel like we must start all over again in our relationship with the Lord. He looks on us with disgust and disappointment in His eyes. During these low times, we often feel like we are still expected to pray, but we do not expect God to listen to us. We are still expected to open our Bible and read, but we do not expect God to speak to us. We are still expected to go to church; however, we feel like a hypocrite if we raise our hands in worship. But if we keep doing these things—reading our Bible, praying, worshiping—then we feel like we are working our way back into God’s good favor. Once we get our pedestal high enough that He likes us again, then He will be there to help us overcome temptation, but until then, we are not worthy of His help, so we are on our own. It is exhausting and discouraging to do it on our own, and we will just keep failing.

Praise the Lord this view is completely and utterly false. God’s grace is not just a gift to get to heaven. It is also the gift of a relationship with Him that is based on Christ’s righteousness and not our own. I’ve mentioned righteousness before. What is it? It’s basically a fancy word for right-standing. Jesus is God’s perfect child and because Jesus died for us, we don’t have to earn that right-standing by proving ourselves worthy. He made us worthy. That’s amazing news because we couldn’t earn right-standing with God if we had to on our own.

Hebrews 4:14–16 tells us that we can boldly come before the throne of grace to receive grace and mercy in our time of need. Many times in the past, when I read that verse I only felt confident to come to Him when I felt worthy. I reworded it in my mind, come boldly before the throne when you are at your best. Other times, when I knew I was struggling, I would cower in my shame and avoid Him. These verses, however, are calling us to come boldly to Him for grace and mercy in our time of need. We are always in need of grace and mercy, but especially in our time of sin and temptation.

We have more to battle than our own sin-nature. Our adversary wants you to feel like you must do this on your own in order to please God, but that is the complete opposite of the gospel. God stands before you with arms open wide begging you to run to Him to receive His strength, His mercy, His forgiveness, and His cleansing that you need to live in victory. Remember, this is not because sin is not a big deal, but because Christ took all that shame on Himself on the cross. And He did this for you. He did this so that you would have the freedom to sprint to God in your moments of need. In victory, we run to be held by Him. In sin, we turn so that we can be held by Him. There is no losing. My sister, please do not buy into the lie that God is angry at you and holding you away at a distance. He will not give you the silent treatment or a cold shoulder. He will not ignore you. He absolutely loves you and longs for you to give Him your entire heart. He does this because He wants to be loved completely by you, and He also knows that this is best for you. This is both all for His glory as well as for you. God is that good!

Heartwork

(Write down your answers in a separate notebook or on a note in your smartphone.)

Look at how you have been living the past few days. How have you been doing with lust? Write down your answers in a separate notebook or on a note in your smartphone.

Take a minute to answer the question above.

Based on this, how do you think God views you? Don’t just give the right answer. Give the honest answer that comes to mind. To embrace truth, we must be aware of any lies that may be lurking in our minds. If you discussed this in your group this past week, hopefully, your perspective of God’s view of you is starting to be transformed. If so, how is your perspective changing?

Take a minute to answer the question above.

Whether you are doing well or really struggling, if you have given your life to Christ, God bases His view of you on Christ’s righteousness, not your own. Your status is not dependent on your actions. His love for you is consistent. But we must be careful that we do not allow this view of grace to give us the impression that we have the freedom to continue in sin.

Without using religious vocabulary, write out what you love most about Jesus.

Take a minute to write out your answer.

How freeing would it be if you knew that you could come clean about everything in your life, even the darkest corners of your heart and that it would not change that person’s view of you? That is what grace allows us to do with God.

Prayer

Remember, if you have put your faith in Christ, Jesus gives you access to the Father. You don’t have to fear whether God will accept you or not. You do not have to fear whether He is listening or not. Spend some time telling God about how you viewed Him in the past and spend time thanking Him for Jesus and what He did on your behalf.