Receiving God's Blessings Until the Day of Jesus

We deserve death. We deserve to be separated from God. But it says that God gives us a free gift. Eternal life, grace, a gift that we couldn't earn or deserve. And all over the Bible, see that God just keeps lavishing more and more of his grace, more and more of his gifts that we don't deserve. God just keeps blessing his kids with more and more. If you're a Christian, you are in a position to receive all of the blessings of God in your life. And the most incredible one that you receive might be in verse seven where it says, in him, we have redemption. [00:40:34] (37 seconds)  #LavishedGrace

That story goes back to Genesis when God created us in his image and created us to live in his world beautifully with him and with each other and with creation. And we collectively as humanity and our first parents raised our fist to God and said, no. We don't want that. We wanna live in your creation our own way. We wanna pursue our own pursuits. We wanna figure it out on our own. We sinned. We turned our back on God and ran away from him. And the consequences of that, the fallout, the wages, what we deserve because of that is death, separation from God. [00:39:50] (37 seconds)  #GenesisFall

I paid the ransom. I got it back, and that's what God did for you and me. God paid the price to get you back from your and my sin and rebellion and consequences and fallout. God himself paid the price. And look at what it says. The price that he paid was his blood. It wasn't $30 or $40. It was his blood. When we gather together as a church, we are gathering to celebrate every Sunday that Jesus poured out his blood to death for us. [00:43:17] (37 seconds)  #JesusPaidItAll

Our understanding of Christianity cannot be better than our grasp of adoption. See, what this realizes is the reality that when we understand that God is our data, that he's adopted us as his children, that fuels our joy. It makes us celebrate. We sing differently. We praise differently. We live differently when we know we've been completely brought into a new family, when we received adoption into God's family. And, man, how does God treat his kids? Look at verse six. To the praise of his glorious grace, he look. Look. He lavished on us, his kids, in the beloved one. [00:38:04] (42 seconds)  #AdoptedByGod

We know you make mistakes. We know you do things wrong here and there, even some big things, significant things sometimes, but we love you, and we wanna bless you. And we're gonna take you to Disneyland. You see, that's the good news of the gospel. That's the good news of God's love is he doesn't wait for us to be perfect. He doesn't wait for us to to figure it all out to give us his love. He loves us in spite of our brokenness and our mess and our running away from him. When he chose us, he didn't chose choose us because we were good. He chose us simply because he loves us. [00:33:59] (35 seconds)  #ChosenByLove

So, father, we place ourselves right now in the position of being receivers. We come to you knowing that we do nothing to put you in our debt. We do nothing to, add to you or give to you and earn anything from you, but we are receivers of your love, your kindness, your goodness, your redemption, your forgiveness, your protection. So I pray that we would put down our attempts to work for your love and work for your favor, and that we would rest in what we have received from you. Holy Spirit, make it clear to anyone in here if they need to grow as a receiver for the next two years and give them the grace to commit to it and follow through with it. We pray in the name of Jesus. Amen. [00:59:48] (61 seconds)  #ReceiveNotEarn

Paul doesn't tell these Christians, man, now go out and find some grace. He doesn't tell them to figure out how to get some peace. He says, man, both of these things are just given to us from God and Jesus. We just have to receive it. You see, what we see all over the bible, we could look at so many more verses and we'll look at some. What we see all over the bible is this, we are receivers until the day. That's who we are today. If you're a Christian, if you're a follower of Jesus, you are a receiver until Jesus comes back. [00:26:05] (34 seconds)  #ReceiversUntilReturn

But God, comes in and actually transforms us and gets that sin out of our lives progressively as we follow him so that we can experience more of the joy and peace in life that God has for us. See, many people think that the church is actually oppressive. It makes people change who they are. But what we see in the Bible is that God wants us to be supremely happy, supremely joyful in this life, but sin kills that. And so the good news is that God is working in our lives transforming us to be who we were always supposed to be. We've received that from God, his work in our lives. [00:35:32] (41 seconds)  #TransformedByGrace