Covenant Home Care's Pastors Blog

Never Fear Another Day
By Steve Wickham

Everything lies ahead of us as opportunities to be conquered. When we know this, when we lock it into our consciousness through a sense of inspired habit, we never have to fear again.

Our sins and our brokenness are borne over the shoulders of Christ and we no longer have to carry that burden. But this knowledge must find its way into our relational worlds through the constant practice of letting go and living beyond the strains of the protected psyche - that place we go in order to protect ourselves from risk, usually through avoidance. This is the place we go to when we fly away from our darkness.

We have to accept our darkness.

Once we have accepted our darkness - that, we are all sinners - and, we can remain conscious of both our lack and the completeness of God's grace to completely meet that lack - we live free.

There is then the ability to never fear another day.

DISCIPLE OR 'LIVING HERESY'

There are many insufficient, inappropriate and inadequate theories advocating how to live the Christian life. There may be more misguided attempts to live the Christian life than well-advised endeavours to pick up one's cross and follow Jesus.

Any Christian life lived that minimises either the sinner's sinful nature, within that man or woman or boy or girl, or the grace of God to save them, is a heresy.

Both the truth of the sinful nature and the truth of the grace of God must be borne front and centre of mind. The more honestly we consciously admit and tackle our sinful natures, knowing they will remain with us throughout our lives until glory, the more we will marvel at and actively rely upon the grace of God.

The more we hold these two things in tension with each other, the better we will live the Christian life, and the less the probability we will be living heresies.

Added to this is the additional blessing; we never need fear another day.

THE IMPORTANCE OF REMINDERS

We are a forgetful people. We need to be reminded, or remind ourselves, of the need to be fearless. Being acknowledged sinners means guilt and shame can be disposed of. We loudly applaud the grace of God that sanctifies us. But we quickly forget how amazing grace is.

When the amazing reality of grace is realised, mindfully, it helps us live fearlessly.

With grace already behind us we have nothing to lose and nothing left to prove.

But again, we need practical ways of reminding ourselves of this urgent and important truth. We need to be reminded how well the grace of God covers our darkness.

� 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Steve Wickham is a Registered Safety Practitioner (BSc, FSIA, RSP[Australia]) and a qualified, unordained Christian minister (GradDipBib&Min). Steve writes at: http://epitemnein-epitomic.blogspot.com.au/ and http://tribework.blogspot.com.au/

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