Grace Works: Let God Change Lives through You in 2013

As you consider the beginning of a new year, I want to encourage you to pray about how you can make a positive impact for God's kingdom in 2013. Next year is not so much about your dreams but about God's dreams for your life. With Christ in you, you can do this!

Prepare
Experiencing God's life and love in you is the best way you can prepare to change your world. You don't have to live a perfect life to impact your world. God uses imperfect people to express Himself through us to other people. Yes, I know, we are perfect in our identity but you know what I mean. In a sense, we are all a mess. Here are some books to give you and those you care about, a deeper understanding of Christ in us. The Rest of the Gospel, The Naked Gospel, Classic Christianity, and The Ultimate Makeover.

Pray
Ask God who is currently in your concentric circles who He wants to love through you? What are concentric circles? They are areas of your life where you have or can have relationships. They may include family, friends, neighbors, work place, Christians and those not yet Christians. Write them down. Then ask God to show you how and when to express His love to them. God's love is radically transformative for everyone. That doesn't mean you will act weird and go up to them and say, "God loves you" out of the blue. You can tell them you are praying for them or ask how you can pray for them or anything God leads you to do.

Pause
You don't have to be in a hurry to express Christ's life and love to people. Wait and watch for where God is already working in people's lives. If you just watch for it, you will be amazed at what you see. People are empty and often hurting underneath the veneer of their smile. In the book of Acts, every time the Holy Spirit ministered through a Christian, it was because God was already working.

Praise
You might want to keep a journal of how God works through you in 2013. I think by the end of the year, you will be giving great praise to God at how He impacted people's lives through you.

Happy New Year in Christ!


Mark Maulding, President and Founder



www.GraceLifeInternational.com
All Content Copyright © 2012 Mark Maulding

Celebrate Christmas: Open the Gift of Righteousness!

    Do you have any gifts from last Christmas you have never opened?  Of course not! You opened those gifts with great excitement and anticipation.

    Yet, many who are in Christ have an incredible gift from God which they have never opened. We read about it in Romans 5:17. "Those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ." God gave us the gift of righteousness the moment we believed in Jesus Christ for our salvation. It is already yours, but is it possible you are one of those who has not opened it yet? Here is what I mean. When you truly believe that your identity in Christ means that you are righteous, only then have you opened that precious gift. In believing this, you begin to revel in the reality of God's unconditional acceptance of you.

    From age 9, I knew that God accepted me into heaven because of my faith in Christ but I did not know that he accepted me as a Christian. Because I had not opened the gift of righteousness, I was blinded to the fact that I had a "work for God's acceptance" mentality. As a consequence, over time, I began to unravel. When God made clear to me at age 32 that He unconditionally accepted me, my self-worth improved, my marriage improved, my spiritual growth improved and my health improved. I have never been the same!

    I asked a man one time, "How righteous are you?" He said, "It depends on the day." Like many Christians, he was equating his obedience to God with how righteous he was, but his life was falling apart. Counseling and discipling thousands of Christians, we have discovered at Grace Life International that this is a central issue for every Christian.

    2 Corinthians says it this way, "He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." Do you see it? God gave us His own righteousness so that it is now our righteousness. You can't get any more righteous than that!

    A lady who recently learned that God had made her righteous the moment she placed her faith in Christ, cried with joy saying she had been struggling with God's acceptance and being loveable.

    God made you acceptable and loveable to Him when He gave you the gift of righteousness! Why don't you do yourself a favor and tell God that you believe He made you righteous in Christ even if you don't feel like it is true? Then pray it as often as you can and watch what happens. Otherwise you will be working really hard to be more righteous and wonder why you feel so defeated. And if you want to help someone else truly celebrate Christmas this year, pass this on so they can choose to agree with God and open their gift of righteousness too!

    Comfort and joy are available to those who open this free gift.

Merry Christmas in Christ,


Mark Maulding, President and Founder



www.GraceLifeInternational.com 
All Content Copyright © 2012 Mark Maulding

Celebrate Christmas: Give to Christians in Need

     A Christian leader and his wife drove 100 miles to Grace Life International earlier this year because their marriage was in trouble. They could not afford to come but more importantly they could not afford to not come! Others paid for their counseling because they wanted them to have quality Biblical counseling before their marriage dissolved. Once at Grace Life, the message of the complete Gospel freed and healed them, restoring their damaged marriage. Like many of us, they wondered how they could have missed the simplicity and power of the complete Gospel. They were so impacted by what they heard, that they recently enrolled in our Distance Learning so they can be trained to share what they learned with many other struggling Christians.

   Can you imagine how some of those who paid for their counseling feel now? They are full of joy realizing that their financial investment in this couple kept this Christian leader's marriage from being another sad casualty. You, too, can help other Christians like this who cannot pay for their counseling but desperately need to receive quality Biblical counseling at Grace Life. You can be their unseen hero whom God uses not just to get them through a tough time but to bring them to a place where they want to share with others this marvelous message of "grace"! How can you help? By choosing to financially invest in other needy Christians. 

  At Grace Life International, we need monthly donors who know how transforming the complete Gospel can be in a person's life and relations. As one who receives my weekly e-devotion or blog, you are one of those who personally understand the power of the "grace" message in your own life. Most of these hurting Christians who come to us have not heard it and you can help them, especially the ones who cannot afford to pay for their counseling at Grace Life. To show how great the need is, we counseled 300 people per week in 2012 and have a waiting list even now. Those whom you help will be eternally grateful to God for you. It's like 2 Corinthians 9:12 says, "This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of God's people but it is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God".

   To help the needy Christians whom God keeps sending to us, Grace Life International needs monthly donors at $50 per month, $75 per month, $100 per month or any other amount smaller or greater. How do you get started? The easiest way is to sign up on our secure web site. To go there click here. Donate Now  Once on our Donation page, you will be able to check the "I want to make a recurring donation" box so that your gift will be automatic each month. You can also send your first check made out to and mail it to Grace Life International, 1337 Hundred Oaks Drive., Suite EE, Charlotte, NC 28217. We will send you a receipt and envelope for the next month. Or, we can do automatic check withdrawals for you each month. Just request a form at Info@GraceLifeInternational.com. All gifts are tax-deductible.

   Would you pray right now and ask Father about helping these needy Christians and at what monthly amount? He may even surprise you and ask you to give an amount beyond your ability. If He does that, then you simply tell him, "Lord, if You will provide that amount, I will give it each month." I think you will be blessed by what He does for you and through you! Let's work together to restore and strengthen our brothers and sisters in Christ who need God's healing, freeing grace.

Merry Christmas in Christ,


Mark Maulding, President and Founder



www.GraceLifeInternational.com 
All Content Copyright © 2012 Mark Maulding

Celebrate Christmas by Surrendering Your Rights

As we approach the celebration of the Incarnation, God the Son becoming human, let's reflect on what happened in heaven before that blessed event.

In Philippians 2:5-7 we read, "Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus who although He existed in the form of God." (NASB) Jesus, being God the Son, is equal to God the Father. Because of this, He had every right to remain in heaven. He did not have to leave and miraculously be born as a human. Yet, He did not hold onto this right but gave it up in order to obey His Father and to redeem us. In doing so, He put Himself in a position to depend upon His Father in heaven and in Him to live, minister, die on the cross and be raised from the dead. As a human, though He would still be 100% God, He would never once depend on His own deity to do one miracle or live one moment. Another way of understanding what Jesus did is that He gave up all of His rights to live as God the Son.

We are exhorted to have this same attitude or "thinking" in our own lives. God wants us to surrender our rights we are holding on to, to Him. For example, we all want to be loved and accepted, especially by certain people. That desire is from God. However, it is very easy to turn that into an expectation and then a right. Once we believe it is a right, if we do not surrender it to God, it puts us in bondage because we become disappointed and angry when a person does not come through for us.

There are many other rights that we need to surrender to God. How do we know what those rights are? Usually when we feel afraid or angry, that is like the "check engine" light in our car. It lets us know there may be a right God wants us to surrender. We need to ask God about that and see what He shows us.

Here is a suggested prayer for surrendering our rights. "Father, just as Jesus, who lives in me, surrendered His right to stay in Heaven and live as God so He could become human, I surrender my rights. I surrender the right to ________________ (Fill in the blank with each right the Holy Spirit shows you to surrender.) Having surrendered this right, Father is there an exchange you want to give me in its place? (Wait a few moments and listen to the Lord for each right you surrender.) Thank you Father. I receive that gift from you as an heir to one of my blessings in Christ Jesus. Amen."

Surrendering rights is not a one-time event. Throughout our lives, we will need to surrender our rights to God, some of them over and over. We will experience much more peace and freedom as we do so.

May your Christmas be bright as you surrender your rights to God even as Jesus, Who is our Life, did before being born into this world!

Live Free In Christ,


Mark Maulding, President and Founder

www.GraceLifeInternational.com
All Content Copyright © 2012 Mark Maulding