Salvation Assured DON'T MEASURE YOURSELF
But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Eph. 4:7.
One of the proofs that we are hopelessly hooked on the do-it-yourself approach is that often when a person begins to seek a relationship with God, he still measures whether or not he has a relationship by his behavior. Let's say that a person has been a victim of the disease of trying to work his way into heaven, and he discovers that we are saved by faith in Christ alone. So he begins to turn his attention toward Jesus and fellowship with Him. The first thing he tends to do is to look at himself the next day to see how much better a life he is living as a result of this relationship. Have you ever done this?
I was talking to someone one day who was having a terrible time trying to live life even in this world, let alone hope for eternal life. I tried to point him to Jesus, and gave him a few suggestions as to how he could become acquainted with Him, spending time with Him day by day. And then I said, "Now watch out. Because the first thing you are going to do if you spend time with God tomorrow is to try to decide whether you're succeeding by how life goes tomorrow. Life might even go worse tomorrow. It often does.
Have you ever discovered yourself living a more difficult life when you prayer harder? Have you ever discovered that when you make a determined effort to come into a closer relationship with Jesus, everything went wrong? Have you ever in all sincerity surrendered everything you knew to the Lord Jesus, and the next week everything went bad? Has that ever happened to you? I had a student say to me, "I've discovered I do better without God." And another student told me, "I quit being a Christian two weeks ago, and I haven't sinned since."
We should never judge our relationship by our behavior. That's God's business. God will judge every man according to his works. We are to judge no man, and if we are to judge no man, doesn't that include ourselves? It is possible for the Christian life to become unbearably hard because we constantly measure ourselves by ourselves, and look away from Jesus. We find it hard to look to Jesus, to accept that "there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved" (Acts 4:12).
But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Eph. 4:7.
One of the proofs that we are hopelessly hooked on the do-it-yourself approach is that often when a person begins to seek a relationship with God, he still measures whether or not he has a relationship by his behavior. Let's say that a person has been a victim of the disease of trying to work his way into heaven, and he discovers that we are saved by faith in Christ alone. So he begins to turn his attention toward Jesus and fellowship with Him. The first thing he tends to do is to look at himself the next day to see how much better a life he is living as a result of this relationship. Have you ever done this?
I was talking to someone one day who was having a terrible time trying to live life even in this world, let alone hope for eternal life. I tried to point him to Jesus, and gave him a few suggestions as to how he could become acquainted with Him, spending time with Him day by day. And then I said, "Now watch out. Because the first thing you are going to do if you spend time with God tomorrow is to try to decide whether you're succeeding by how life goes tomorrow. Life might even go worse tomorrow. It often does.
Have you ever discovered yourself living a more difficult life when you prayer harder? Have you ever discovered that when you make a determined effort to come into a closer relationship with Jesus, everything went wrong? Have you ever in all sincerity surrendered everything you knew to the Lord Jesus, and the next week everything went bad? Has that ever happened to you? I had a student say to me, "I've discovered I do better without God." And another student told me, "I quit being a Christian two weeks ago, and I haven't sinned since."
We should never judge our relationship by our behavior. That's God's business. God will judge every man according to his works. We are to judge no man, and if we are to judge no man, doesn't that include ourselves? It is possible for the Christian life to become unbearably hard because we constantly measure ourselves by ourselves, and look away from Jesus. We find it hard to look to Jesus, to accept that "there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved" (Acts 4:12).
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