Religionists teach that spiritual disciplines keep the Christian centered in the things of
God? That without these "means of grace" or "spiritual disciplines" the Christian will
not mature or become what Father has planned and purposed for their life. Is it true?
No! To say
that anything is the "means of grace," is to center on something
other than the One who is the means of grace, the Spirit of Christ in the
Christian.
He is the disciplined Life and “apart from Him you can do nothing”
(John 15:5). He is always your ability, not your disciplined approach or
principled approach to live the Christian life.
Men are always looking to the
"how to's" of the Christian life, because they are lacking practical,
personal relationship with Christ who is the disciplined life, the exchanged
life, the union life, the supplied life, the victorious life, the Christ Life,
nothing else is needed "for in Him we live and move and exist" in
Christ (Acts 17:28).
Many Christians are looking for the guideposts because they don't have a point of
reference in Christ.
Paul’s
prayer for man was that they would experience salvation, (Rom. 10:1) but they
like many people today were distracted by religious zeal believing that
practicing the law would make them acceptable to God, (Rom. 10:2). In their
futile attempts to “be like” God, they establish their own righteousness (the
fallacy of humanism) and refused to submit themselves to the Righteous-One,
(Rom. 10:3). They were ignorant of the fact that the Law had its end in Jesus
Christ (Rom. 10:4).
Modern
religionists do the same by attempting to be righteous “by the means of grace.”
• By the means of reading their bible,
• by the means of prayer,
• by the means of obeying principles,
• by the means of faithful church
attendance,
• by the means of sacraments
• by the means of whatever they believe
they must do…
However,
there is no means of grace accept the One who is grace, Jesus Christ. He is
grace and therefore the only means of grace.
Grace has no
end but is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. Grace is a
person who is Eternal (Rom. 5:21; 2 Thess. 2:16; Titus 3:7; 1 Pet. 5:10).
Who or what
are you trusting in? “For the Scripture says, ‘Whoever believes in Him (Jesus
Christ) will not be disappointed’ (Rom. 10:11).
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