Grace Thoughts

Announcer: Hello friends, welcome to Grace Thoughts, the radio ministry of Grace Connection Church with Pastor Tim Kelley. Grace Thoughts has been dedicated to preaching a clear gospel of grace for over 20 years. Here is Pastor Kelley.

Tim Kelley: When you speak of the word deception, it means that it's mostly subtle. If it was obvious, it really wouldn't be deception. I think the most subtle deception, and the one that we face most as Christians, is religious deception. It's subtle in a sense like we add stuff to it.

What do I mean by that? Religious deception. We think activity is spirituality. I feel real good about my spiritual life because I'm very active in my faith. I'm very active in the church, or whatever that is. So my activity equals spirituality. Well, it doesn't. That's deception because my activity has nothing to do with spirituality.

The Pharisees were the most active group in the Bible, but they weren't spiritual. They didn't know God and they didn't recognize Christ when he lived amongst them. Jesus died for my sins. So now I better, should have, ought to. How come I didn't? Now, you may not live that way, but I've battled with thinking like that my whole life.

Somehow if I'm frustrated with my own walk with God, then God somehow must be frustrated with my walk with God because I'm frustrated with my inconsistencies. Christ must be frustrated with my inconsistencies. God must be mad at me, displeased with me, and fed up with me because I'm all those things with myself. That's deception. They are subtle and they run deep.

They cause our relationship with God to be stringent, tense, non-peaceful, non-relaxing, and changeable. Our relationship with God changes with my performance for God. So it's imperative, and this is the crux of this morning's message, that we know that our relationship with God is settled and established in his love and in his acceptance. It's unconditional towards us just as we are, and not who we think we should be.

Now, should we serve him? Yes. Should we live holy lives pleasing to him? Absolutely. Should we be about our Father's business? Yes. But what if I can't be? What if there are things hindering me? I looked at our audience this morning and I saw one dear person that was in the first service, and I know they have tremendous physical limitations.

They can be here, and thank God that they are so faithful, but beyond just coming into church, they're hampered. It's very difficult for them physically because of the sickness in their body to do that. You know people like that. We know a lot more than just one or two people like that. I use an illustration about serving the Lord all the time using my own relationship with my father.

My father, as he got older, lived on the other coast in the Atmore, Alabama area. He had this mobile home on a corner lot with a big lawn and some hedges and shrubs. As he got older, it was harder for him to take care of his lawn, so I would drive over there. It was about a three-and-a-half-hour drive. I would drive over there and mow his lawn for him, edge it, and trim his hedges.

Doing yard work in July is never happy. It's just never fun. It's hot, it bakes you, and you're sweaty, but serving my father was always a blessing. He was my father, so it was never a burden. I never drove over there complaining. I always felt good when I got done serving him. I didn't like the work necessarily, but I loved my father.

That's how we serve God today. We might not necessarily even love the work, though chances are we will, but we love our Father. That's why we serve him. There's a difference between grace-based Christian living and law-based or religious-based attempted Christian living. One keeps the responsibility on us and the other places it right back where it belongs: on the Lord. We're going to see this clearly as we get into this message.

Now, with that said, a little digression. Many of you know I came back from a two-week vacation. I was here last Sunday, but I had just gotten back a few days before that. We were in Atmore, Alabama. Has anyone ever heard of Atmore, Alabama? I was talking to Doris. She comes from Alabama. I told her I went to Atmore, Alabama.

She grew up in Alabama and she asked me where that was because she had never heard of it. That gives you an example that Atmore isn't a heavy, bustling type of town. If you were filming it going through downtown, it would take you a strong 10 to 15 seconds to get the whole thing on film. In Atmore, Alabama, there is a Creek Indian reservation.

Some of you know Nicole, my little girl from Alabama. Nicole grew up in our home since she was a teenager and we love her. She's Creek Indian. Her husband is even more Creek Indian and he's on the gaming board at the Creek Indian Casino in Atmore, Alabama. They called me and asked if we wanted to come on vacation for two weeks. They could get us free nights for two weeks in this five-star casino.

Now, there's more to it than just gambling. There are movie theaters, bowling alleys, and five restaurants in there. Don't think I just went and gambled, even though I did come home four dollars lighter than I went there. So we went there and Sadie stayed with Nicole right down the road. We'd see her during the day and take her in the pool, but in the meantime, my wife and I were in that beautiful hotel room overlooking the pools and the lake.

We just sat and talked and ordered room service. We ate french fries, fried stuff, and things I normally don't eat. I gained about eight or nine pounds in two weeks because after a while, there's only so much you can eat. That's what we did for two weeks. It was one of the best vacations because I did nothing. I sat and read three books I've been waiting to read.

My wife did nothing as well. There were no dishes to do, no kids to take care of, and no grocery shopping. We just sat and did nothing. If this place was in Orlando, we could have found other things to do, but because it was in Atmore, Alabama, there wasn't anything else to do. We wanted to go out to eat. We ate at the casino a lot because they had four or five different restaurants, but we decided to eat in the town one day.

There were two main restaurants in the town. The first and number one restaurant was Dave's Catfish House. My wife actually went in there and saw somebody eating a catfish. I've never knowingly eaten a catfish before. She was meeting a family member because everyone knows each other there.

She came in and saw the head of a catfish, the tail of a catfish, and bones in the middle, just like in a cartoon. She would have taken a picture of it if it wouldn't have been rude. That was Dave's Catfish. The second-best restaurant was Dixie Catfish Shack. Those were our choices for dining, other than a McDonald's, but that wasn't on the list.

About a week into this, I wanted my usual Starbucks coffee. I asked Siri on my iPhone where the closest Starbucks was, and it was 57 miles away. I actually drove 57 miles to get that Starbucks, turned around, and drove home. I went shopping as well, but it was 57 miles to get coffee. In that sense, it was one of the best vacations because I did nothing.

I want to look today at what it means to sit down. You'll see what I mean in just a moment. The work that my wife and I normally do in the course of a week was finished. There was nothing left. There were no dishes to do, no phone calls to make, and no emails to return. Our work was finished for those two weeks, so we rested.

Today I want to talk about something higher than ourselves and our struggles. I'm going to move quickly through the message. I'm setting it up because I want you to grasp this. I want to talk about something bigger than just what we're going through at the moment. I want to look at positional truth and experiential truth.

What's the difference? Positional truth is what Christ did for us on the cross and where we stand with him. These are unchangeable truths. You can live in positional truth but never have any real-time application of it, so it might not help you that much. Experiential truth is truth I can live in. I can take it and actually have it impact my life in time and space.

I probably speak a good mixture of both, but today I want to spend more time in positional truth. When we grasp positional truth and meditate on it, it takes our eyes and elevates them beyond the horizontal into the vertical. When my eyes are up there, I don't see what's really happening out here. That's the idea.

Out here is heartache, confusion, pain, grief, and loss. These are all things that we go through in life. But when I take my eyes and elevate them out of the temporal into the eternal and see the great work of God, it makes the things on the horizontal plane shrink. At the very least, it puts them into a whole different perspective. It magnifies Christ and it shrinks us.

Throughout August, we're going to be preaching random, unconnected messages on purpose. I was reading through the book of Hebrews and I found that the same statement came up five times. I wrote it down and decided to put them all together this morning to see what they mean. Let's start in Hebrews chapter 12.

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him..." What was the joy? The joy of his love, the joy of fellowship with man, and the joy of a restored relationship.

These are all the things that compelled him into redemption and the reason he came here. For the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. That reminds me of the hotel room. I was just sitting there resting with nothing for me to do. The work was over.

Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. We see here, and we'll see in four other places in the book of Hebrews, where Jesus is sitting down on the right hand of God. Why did he sit down at the right hand of God?

First of all, we have the death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Christ. But we don't always see something called the session of Christ. It's not a term that's used that much, but the session of Christ is when he sits back down at the right hand of God.