Continuing with the series on Christian Lies, today we tackle Christian Religion Lie #7: “You should rededicate your life to Christ”.
Is “rededication taught in the Bible for New Testament Christians?”
Should you follow the herd and do it like all the other Christians?
Read today’s article and find out!
I can’t count how many times I went to church as a young child and answered the Preacher’s call to “rededicate my life to Christ”.
And boy was I sincere!
Every time I thought I would be able to do it “if I just tried hard enough” … if I was determined enough… gritted my teeth enough.
It’s been said the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”…
IF that’s true, then I was most definitely an insane Christian for MUCH of my early life.
But that’s what happens when we try to live the Christian life by our own efforts. We fail. Again and again.
It’s funny, my copy of “Grace Amazing” by Steve McVey was sitting on the couch opened to a page that addressed this very point and said…
“God Won’t Let You Succeed”…
You see, you have to reach a point of brokeneness, a point where YOUR effort… YOUR striving and YOUR performance doesn’t work anymore to live the Godly lifestyle- before you can start to rest in the sufficiency of Christ…
(I called this point “Hitting rock bottom” in my book, Christ Through Me)
What an amazing creator!
He literally GIVES us salvation, a gift, invites us to be partakers of his divine life… and He literally LIVES the Christian life for us after salvation. Most Christians would agree with me that salvation is not of works but is a free gift from God. But they have a hard time understanding that the Christian life is to be lived in much the same manner.
Paul wrote to the Galatians about this (Galatians 3, the message, bold emphasis mine)…
“You crazy Galatians! Did someone put a hex on you? Have you taken leave of your senses? Something crazy has happened, for it’s obvious that you no longer have the crucified Jesus in clear focus in your lives. His sacrifice on the cross was certainly set before you clearly enough.
2-4Let me put this question to you: How did your new life begin? Was it by working your heads off to please God? Or was it by responding to God’s Message to you? Are you going to continue this craziness? For only crazy people would think they could complete by their own efforts what was begun by God. If you weren’t smart enough or strong enough to begin it, how do you suppose you could perfect it? Did you go through this whole painful learning process for nothing? It is not yet a total loss, but it certainly will be if you keep this up!
5-6Answer this question: Does the God who lavishly provides you with his own presence, his Holy Spirit, working things in your lives you could never do for yourselves, does he do these things because of your strenuous moral striving or because you trust him to do them in you? Don’t these things happen among you just as they happened with Abraham? He believed God, and that act of belief was turned into a life that was right with God.
7-8Is it not obvious to you that persons who put their trust in Christ (not persons who put their trust in the law!) are like Abraham: children of faith? It was all laid out beforehand in Scripture that God would set things right with non-Jews by faith. Scripture anticipated this in the promise to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed in you.”
9-10So those now who live by faith are blessed along with Abraham, who lived by faith-this is no new doctrine! And that means that anyone who tries to live by his own effort, independent of God, is doomed to failure. Scripture backs this up: “Utterly cursed is every person who fails to carry out every detail written in the Book of the law.””
I don’t think I could have said it better myself 🙂
So it’s not by rededicating OUR power, and OUR life to God that we live the great Christian life…
It’s only by trusting in God – by faith – to live it through us!
