Orient Your Life

"I am accepted"--accepted as though my life displayed the spiritual perfection of the Messiah himself--out to be the automatic response of our hearts whenever we wake, like the compass needle that always points north.  This is the response which is always relevant to our current spiritual condition.  We never make such progress in sanctification that we can depend on it for acceptance.  And our continuing record of sin and failure never expands beyond the limits of the love of Christ, who has covered our debts for all time, past, present, and future.  (Renewal As a Way of Life, Richard Lovelace)

I wonder how many of you before reading the above quote were living in an awareness of your acceptance in Christ this morning.  As a pastor, I find that so many of the people that I love and care for week in and week out are in a constant struggle to "feel good" about their spirituality.  The problem is that they are basing their spirituality on their own ability to be spiritual rather than on the finished work of Christ on the cross.  The moment we remove ourselves from the shadow of the cross we are subjected to the sweltering heat of life.  Apart from the cross, we find in ourselves an awareness of sin apart from an awareness of our acceptance.

This is why it is so important to orient our hearts toward the cross everyday.  Trying to be spiritual by being in church, reading the Bible, praying, etc., often times does not lead to intimate communion with God, but rather the opposite--we wind up feeling ashamed and separated from God.  How does this happen?  Because we fail to read the Bible one day, or, we fail to pray one day.  Although we may be in church that week, we go through a period of self-atonement by feeling guilty for the first half of the worship service when we sing songs like, "All to Jesus I surrender..." because in reality we didn't even surrender the first moments of our day to him in prayer and meditation on his Word.

A life centered on the gospel, a cross-centered life, realizes each day that feelings of acceptance and worth are not based on our religious duties for the day or week, but are solely based on the finished work of Christ on the cross.  The basis of our being right with God is the person and work of Jesus, not the person and work of _____________ (insert your name here).  If the basis of our spirituality is the finished work of Christ, then this is to be received by faith.  Therefore, the life of the Christian is a life of faith.  Not a faith in faith, but a faith in the risen Lord Jesus because of his death, burial, and resurrection.

The ultimate question to be asked by every Christian at every moment is, "Do I truly believe that Jesus and his death on the cross is sufficient for me?"  This is the question that most Christians believe is the ultimate question to be asked of non-Christians in order to "get them saved."  The truth is that Christians must awake each morning and ask this question of themselves, orienting their lives to the one place that they see most clearly how absolutely sinful and absolutely loved they are.

Before carrying on with the rest of your day, pause for a moment and reflect on the cross.  See yourself as terrible as you truly are.  See Christ's blood drip from his body.  Hear him cry out, "It is finished!"  Take a deep breath, a sigh of relief.  Believe.