Written by Chuck Swindoll, these encouraging devotional thoughts are published seven days per week.
Let me encourage you to guide your life by any and all Scripture with all of your heart, regardless of how anyone else may respond. But when questionable things aren't specified in Scripture, it then becomes a matter of one's personal preference or convictions.
Let me give it to you straight. Don't give me your personal list of dos and don'ts to live by! And you can count on this: I will never give you my personal list of dos and don'ts to follow!
I like to think of certain verses in Scripture as those that help us breathe. By that I mean they encourage true freedom. They liberate! I suggest that all who wish to be free—truly free from bondage traps and legalistic prisons—read these verses again and again and again.
Christ died for us on the cross. He was raised from the dead for us at the tomb. When we believed in the Saviour’s death and resurrection, we were "dipped" into the same scene. Our identity was changed.
Grace killers cannot be mildly ignored or kindly tolerated. You can no more allow legalism to continue than you could permit a rattlesnake to slip into your house and hide. Before long, somebody is going to get hurt.
Legalism is an attitude, a mentality based on pride. It is an obsessive conformity to an artificial standard for the purpose of exalting oneself.
What do I mean when I declare that the Christian has liberty? Essentially, liberty is freedom...freedom from something and freedom to do something.
Now that Christ has come into my life and I have been awakened to His grace, He has provided a freedom from that kind of slavery to sin. And along with that comes a freedom that brings a fearlessness, almost a sense of invincibility in the presence of the adversity. This power, keep in mind, is because of Christ, who lives within me.
Jesus spoke of an abundant life that we enter into when we claim the freedom He provides by His grace. Wouldn't it be wonderful if people co-operated with His game plan? There is nothing to be compared to grace when it comes to freeing others from bondage.
Grace is God's universal good news of salvation. The tragedy is that some continue to live lives in a deathlike bog because they have been so turned off by a message that is full of restrictions, demands, negativism, and legalism.
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