[callout]The following is an excerpt from a book I am writing. If you enjoy it, sign up for the email list and be notified when the book is finished and ready to be published. I’ll even give you a free 28-day devotional for doing so![/callout]
As odd as it sounds, this world is full of Christian Muslims. In other words, this world is full of people who confess Christ and live as if they are confessing Mohammed.
They sing about Jesus, yet wonder if the words they sing are true. They pray to Jesus, yet they think they need to constantly ask for forgiveness. Christian Muslims are predominantly present in the American Church. I know this because I witness it.
Are You a Christian Muslim?
Are you, though?
I hear the way American Christians talk. They are more interested in behavior modification in themselves and certainly in others than they are about intimately knowing Christ. This is because their morality determines their eternal destination. This is what they think. And it’s dead wrong.
It breaks my heart when someone doesn’t understand grace. I want nothing more than to sit them down and talk about grace until they get it. But unfortunately, most people have walls up to grace. When this is the case, I want nothing more than a demolition day.
It is so easy for the people in our churches to miss grace. When all pastors want to talk about is morality, what should we expect? Too many professing Christians are living as if they are unsure of their salvation. This is the biggest problem in modern Christianity.
In our valiant, unwavering effort of fighting the culture wars, we have entirely missed the point of our faith. Instead of preaching hope, American Christianity has been preaching truth without grace. And truth without grace isn’t truth at all.
Grace is the good news of Jesus and it cannot be ignored. Grace is what took Christ to the cross. How dare we ignore the very thing God wants for this world!
Real Christian Hope
The grace of God confronts everything in your being. It pierces deep within, cutting through the skin, slicing through the bone, and ultimately taking up residence in your heart. It flies in the face of the way we parent our kids. It fundamentally changes the way we think about ourselves.
You may struggle with self-image. You may be like many people I know who question whether or not they are valued. They seek out everyone’s opinions. Girls seek out the eyes of guys and guys seek out the adoration of girls – Both in a desperate ploy to be valued by someone, anyone. I can tell when someone is confronted with the grace of God because everything in them begins to get jumbled. Their perspective toward themselves changes. Their outlook on life is radically changed. Finally they are seeing right side up, for they’ve been upside down for too long.
It can’t be overstated. Grace is the exact opposite of what we deserve. We absolutely don’t deserve it. We deserve nothing except judgment. Thank God that he is who he is! When everything in us tells us that we are unworthy, he is telling us that he loves us anyway.
The grace of God is like a hurricane, destroying the idea that our good works count for something. It took Jesus coming to earth to be a willing sacrifice for us to be put in a right relationship with God. There is absolutely nothing that we can do to earn this. It is a gift.[shareable]The grace of God is like a hurricane, destroying the idea that our good works count for something.[/shareable]
This gift is for you. No matter what you have done, no matter who you think you are, no matter what other people say about you, the gift is for you. You don’t have to hope in your behavior. You can hope in your Savior. When your behavior wavers, your Savior stays the same.
The God I worship and the Savior I trust in is radically in love with you. The actions of Jesus tell me that he absolutely adores you. God looks upon you with the eyes of a loving father who desires the best for you. He embraces you despite your brokenness, despite your past, and despite your present. He embraces you because he loves you. His embrace is powerful yet gentle and the crazy thing is, he won’t let go.
“For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).
Paul’s words are powerful. There is no one and no thing that is able to separate us from the embrace, from the love, from the grace of God. Let that truth linger. Don’t brush past it. The great Creator of the Universe, the All in All, the Alpha and the Omega, Yahweh, God actually loves you. And his love is an active, sacrificial love.
It’s time that you abandon your hope in your behavior and completely trust in Christ. It’s time that you abandon being a Christian Muslim – someone who confesses Christ, but lives as if they are confessing Mohammed, striving for self-improvement and hoping in that for your salvation. Jesus offers something infinitely greater than some religious system. He offers grace. He offers life. He offers himself. No longer do you need to picture yourself striving to find God. You can picture God coming down and finding you, for that is really what has happened. While you were running from him, he was running after you. That’s right. Not only does Jesus offer himself for you, but he also runs after you, calling you to himself.
The Christian hope is that no matter what your past is, and no matter what your present is, you can come to Jesus just as you are and he will accept you and begin to change you from the inside out. Everyone is invited to come to Jesus. You’re not the exception to this. He is calling you to come to him. He has wrapped the gift up for you, waiting to give it to you. Will you come to him and receive it? Sure, you call yourself a Christian, but are you truly following him? Are you just calling yourself the title because it is the right thing to do?
[callout]This was an excerpt from a book I am writing. If you enjoy it, sign up for the email list and be notified when the book is finished and ready to be published. I’ll even give you a free 28-day devotional for doing so![/callout]
