The Next Step After Christ

It's an interesting response you get when you ask the average believer this question, " After you have received Christ as Savior and lord, what is your understanding of the next step? "

That is the most prepared question most believers are ready to answer. Some how they got the impression, "k, I'm saved, got my salvation lets get on to the deeper stuff." straight away, they feel they need to get down to business. I call these kinds of believers, mushrooms. " Why a mushroom?" well if you know anything about mushrooms, they sprout very quickly, they have no roots, no stems and no leaves, they grow so fast that you almost feel as if you can see them growing sometimes overnight. But here's the problem with these mushrooms. They’re very weak and easy to step on. But they grow overnight. I've seen many people come into church, get saved and have this radical change, in a matter of days even. I agree that there needs to be some sort of outward change. But that only last for a few days, weeks even. Being zealous for God is a great thing, but not being established in the message of Gods Grace is another thing. It's an opportunity the devil the likes. Jesus in Matthew 13:19 said when someone doesn't understand the word of the kingdom; the devil comes and snatches away what was sown. They immediately stumble and fall back into their previous lifestyle.

I agree there needs to be a point in the life of a believer when they are doing work in the lords vineyard. My question I would like to pose to people in the church is; who is God more concerned with? The world or the church? I believe His church. It’s the church that is going to reach the world. God has already provided for the world to be saved by His grace, which came about because of the glorious work His Son did on the Cross. But if the church doesn't understand that and starts telling the world they need to do this and do that to get saved or to maintain their standing with God. Something is going to be drastically wrong and cause alot of frustration and confusion. Hebrews 13:9 says the heart needs to be established by Grace. It’s very evident all over the bible that Grace needs to be the main theme in the life of a believer.

"Well yea, grace is there at the beginning for them. That’s the easy part, but now they need to work out their salvation with fear and trembling." You might say.

They give you the idea that grace is the starting point then you go on to deeper stuff. What can be deeper then the Grace of God? Surely the Law cannot not be deeper then Grace. There’s only law and Grace.

When people quote the verse that tells believers to work out their salvation, they never quote it in its context. The next verse says this; [Not in your own strength] for it is God Who is all the while effectually at work in you [energizing and creating in you the power and desire], both to will and to work for His good pleasure and satisfaction and delight. Philippians 2: 13 (Amplified Bible) If you are a believer, Believe that God is all the while effectaully at work in you.

Also in Colossians 2:6 it says, "As you therefore have received Jesus Christ the lord, so walk in Him."

Most of evangelical believers know that we have been saved by grace through faith. Amazingly, some how down the road we get the impression we need to maintain our salvation by works. As you can see, in verse 6 there, it says we are to " So walk in Him" as we have received Jesus Christ. So what does that mean? Glad you asked. We are to continue to walk in Christ Jesus by His Grace and by our faith. Well sometimes I notice that people don't know how to walk by faith. I’ve learned faith is simply seeing Jesus and his grace towards you and I. 1 Peter 1:13 ... "rest your hope fully on the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ." Faith just springs up when you See Jesus and He enables you to walk on the water and above the storms in our situations. Hallelujah!

I want to share with you what robs us of being Rhythmic with the Grace of Christ. So what robs us from God working in our lives?

When you put your effort into it. K I am not talking about being lazy here. Grace doesn’t make you lazy, Paul said by the Grace of God I am what I am. Paul’s life speaks for itself when it comes to being under Grace. What I am talking about is, when you believe that you have to do something in order to be something or get something from God. Like praying all night, fasting a few days, trying to get Gods power by your attempts by this and that. I believe in living a life that results in good works ok. When I pray, witness, fast, serve, whatever it may be. Those are the fruits of my relationship with Jesus. The root is believing. Paul asked the Galatians believers, Gala 3:5 " He who supplies the spirit to you and works miracles among you, does he do it by the works of Law or by the hearing of faith?" The Law is all about doing, doing and more doing. It's not about doing more. It's about hearing and seeing more of Jesus. Faith comes by hearing and hearing the word of Christ (Rom10: 17)

When we believe its on us to maintain our position and fellowship with Jesus, setting these standards on ourselves, that is when we fall from Grace. The Phil's translation says it like this in Galatians 5: 4 " If you try to be justified by the Law you automatically cut yourself off from the power of Christ; you put yourself outside the range of his grace. " The Law doesn't say, " thou shell pray " The law doesn't say that, but the church has made it to be that way.
We pray cuase we have confidance in His favour towerds us.

So that's where the Rhythm of Grace is altered, and its Rhythm is off.

I know of a few people who have turntables. They would agree that just the slightest nudge on the table where the turntables sit on; you would most likely hear a distorted noise, sometimes even annoying. When you distort the rhythm of grace, no one would wants to hear it. The real rhythm of Grace hasn't been displayed to the world. Let's look deeper into what distorts the rhythm of grace.

Galatians 3:24-25 Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith. 25But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.

The law was our tutor unto Christ, but the church has taken the tutor the along with us after we have begun our walk with Him. The tutor played it's part, it was only to lead them to Christ. Christ is it's replacement. When believers don't understand the purpose of the Law, this idea comes up, "you have to maintain your salvation with works ". It's no different then saying, " you must obey God perfectly to stay right with Him " Paul said in Galatians 3:3 " Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh? " One translation says, " Can it be that you are so stupid? You started with the spiritual; do you now look to the material to make you perfect? When Paul talks about flesh, he talks about self-effort. We are no longer under the tutor! It was only to lead us to Him. The law is not of faith (3:12) Law plus your effort = no need for faith in Christ! Why does my effort void my faith? Cause your relying on yourself and not on Him. The Law is not of faith, it only reveals our shortcomings and it makes us sin-conscious, which in turn makes us disqualify ourselves.

Some false brethren reintroduced the law to these believers in Galatians. Same as today, theres alot of galatianism going on in the body of Christ. Are we so stupid to believe such a thing? To depend on our flesh? Due to being taught to believe wrong, we have experienced the fruit of our beliefs. A lot of us have been frustrated, fearful, overwhelmed with guilt and condemnation due to having a wrong concept of God. People have this sense that God's hammer is going to drop on them, perhaps because of some weaknesses and their failures. I was once there.

But there’s Good News. The hammer fell already; it fell on Jesus 2000yrs ago. We as believers in Jesus need not fear and need to reject condemnation and guilt. This amazing truth will remove all these faulty beliefs we have about God and ourselves and give us boldness to walk before Him and before others with a confidence that He is a Great and awesome loving God.

But alas, the church, I believe is struggling in their belief system. Their understanding of the gospel is off a few degrees; in the long run it has its deadly effects. We need to understand the significance of the cross of Christ. We need not worry about conduct right away. When people are believing right, they will live right.

Here's what I believe is one of the most pressing issue right now in the body of Christ. Its salvation. People have this idea you can lose your salvation. You hear this question in many Christian circles, "Once saved, always saved?"

Like is salvation totally of Christ and none of you or some Christ and some of you? Make up your mind people.

We will not make it by the law, Like Paul said, " I do not spurn the Grace of God. If we can be justified (made righteous) through the Law, then Christ's death was needless." (2:21) If we could get right with God by our own obedience and good works, Jesus death on the cross would be pointless! Let me just tell you this, you and me in of ourselves could not do enough good deeds or obey God enough to make good ground with Him. The purpose of the Law was just to show our inability to redeem ourselves, it showed our unrighteousness. Alas, Apart from the law there is a Righteousness revealed, even the righteousness of God through faith in Christ Jesus (Rom3: 21-22)

Now let me ask you a question. Now that someone is made righteous apart from their works or deeds. It was by way of Jesus they have become righteous. Now, can they by their bad deeds ever be unrighteous? Listen, in the first place the unrighteous person became unrighteous because of adams sin in the garden. It wasn't what they did that made them unrighteous, it was because of adam.

Romans 5:18-19 (The Message Bible) " Here it is in a nutshell: Just as one person did it wrong and got us in all this trouble with sin and death, another person did it right and got us out of it. But more than just getting us out of trouble, he got us into life! One man said no to God and put many people in the wrong; one man said yes to God and put many in the right."

Now, if a sinner couldn't get out of their sin nature by their own effort, what makes you think a saved born again blood washed saint can lose themselves from a Greater grip? It took the work of God to bring you out from your unregenerated condition! When you were a sinner, not even your good works could save you. Now that someone is saved, I don’t believe they could work their way back to the previous condition based on their works. In the first place, everyone became a child of wrath apart from their works, it was because of adams sin. Now, those who have received Jesus have become a child of God, because of Jesus’ Obedience (rom5:19). So, to say that someone could lose their salvation in Christ, is saying Christ' work on the cross is inferior to adam’s deed in the garden. Cause what Adam did caused the whole would to be in sin! Now for some reason what Jesus the Last Adam did, can’t even last a week sometimes due to being taught you must maintain you salvation. That’s insulting God’ work He did through His Son.

I believe, believers need the assurance, the security in their position with God. When there is security, there is peace. There is security, and it's sure foundation is the finished work of Jesus.

R.T. Kendall said this in his book, titled Once saved, always saved. Pg. 33 " As long as there is the remotest possibility that the saved person could ever be lost, to that extent the door is opened for anxiety. As long as you entertain the possibility that somehow, somewhere, you could sin so that you sever your relationship with God and risk being sent to hell, you cannot be at peace. "

People need to have the boldness before God and others that their sealed once and for all. What kind of testimony would it display to the world that some people could lose their standing with God because of some failure. They wouldn't want that So called heavenly God. They know themselves they are not perfect and have failures. why would they go to Him just to be sent away and rejected? This kind of gospel is a turn off for the world. Its not the gospel at all.

Now, in the book of James it says, " you break one you are guilty of breaking them all " (2:10) It's utter futile to attempt to be justified by the Law. Church has even put its own set of laws upon people. You got to dress right, act right, talk right, think right, associate with the right, do right. I believe in all these things. We have them backwards I believe, these things are fruits of your relationship with the King. Believing in the gospel IS the root and the fruits are the fruits of the spirit Galatians 5:22-23. We believe the root is doing all these things to be blessed by God. That is upside down from the Gospel of Christ.

Paul said that we also spurn the Grace of God (2:21). One translation says, you frustrate His Grace. How do we frustrate His Grace? First we must understand what His Grace is. In the Greek, it's Charis. It’s His undeserved, unearned, unmerited favor and blessings In Christ and its based solely on the finished work of Jesus Christ

We frustrate His Grace by having the idea we can earn what is unearnable, trying to deserve what is undeserveable, trying to merit, what is unmeriteable! You see under Law you have to obey in order for God to bless you! (Deut 28:1-14) Under Grace, Because of Jesus' Obedience, God has blessed us with everything in Christ! (Ephesians 1:3) Law and Grace could never have been so different. Under God's Holy Law we deserved the punishment for sin. Under Grace Jesus took what we deserved upon Himself what he didn't deserve. Now, What Jesus deserved is what we get from the Father, His goodness, His love, His blessing, and His protection. That's Grace. We get the Good, because Jesus took all the bad! That’s what the Church needs to hear.

The Law is all about, thou shell not, thou shell not. Grace is about D-O-N-E, done! Everything is done in Christ Jesus. If there is anything we must do, it is to believe on Him. Its only when we are at Rest, Jesus can move in and through us. Paul had said by the Holy Spirit that, the flesh opposes the spirit and the spirit opposes the flesh. Why does the flesh oppose the spirit? Cause it wants to act independently of the spirit of God. The flesh gets it hype from the Law. "For I bear them witness that they having a zeal for God, but not having it according to knowledge. For they being ignorant of Gods righteousness and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the End of the Law for everyone who believes-Roms 10:1-4 " This was said of the Jewish people who missed God when the Messiah came. It’s the same with believers to sometimes.

It's very tempting to get into self-effort. Its what the enemy would love nothing else to do but to get us self-sufficient. There is alot of believers going about trying to establish their own standing with God, by their own works. That's a sad thing. They burn out; they are not being rhythmic with Grace. We frustrate His grace when our effort comes on the scene of His working in our lives. So I ask you, what should be the next step after Christ?