The Reason for my Joy
Need a reason to smile? Pay careful attention to the joys of your everyday life and be transformed by your loving, gracious, wonderful, perfectly outrageous God.
Need a reason to smile? Pay careful attention to the joys of your everyday life and be transformed by your loving, gracious, wonderful, perfectly outrageous God.
God’s desire is that we, His people, fully enjoy our freedom in Christ. However, there must be self-imposed boundaries or we will become self-serving, independent-minded, and careless rebels with no regard for others. The last 11 verses of Romans 14 address this issue.
In this lesson, let's turn our attention to that horizontal dimension and learn to help others find the same freedom God grants us, as we accept them as they are and release them to learn and grow.
Everyone make mistakes. But there’s a difference between making a mistake and living an irresponsible life. We’re accountable for the lives we live and one day each one of us will give an account of our life to God.
Through this story of the rescue of two trapped whales, Chuck points out how eager we are to help in these situations, but how slow we are to set one another free from our own lists, inhibitions, restrictions, and expectations.
Allowing grace to flow freely means we let others be. You look different? We let you look different. You don’t dress like others? That’s fine, dress like you want to. That’s what grace is all about. Here are some traps we can fall into if we’re not careful.
It’s so easy to focus on the non-essentials. We can become so preoccupied with the details we completely miss the big picture. Relationships become fractured when we only focus on the small stuff.
People who live with conviction no longer react to life, or float along taking life as it comes. These people initiate action because they are motivated by their beliefs.
Pastor Chuck Swindoll wraps up this series on grace by concluding that, while God loves unity, he doesn’t demand uniformity. Understand how you can extend grace to others even amid differences.
Listen to Paul’s exhortations in Romans 14 to the “strong” and “weak” brothers and sisters in the church. Pastor Chuck Swindoll encourages believers to focus on Christ, live in freedom, and love others.