Legalistic Discipleship VS Grace Discipleship

A lot of discipleship may be rooted in the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Let me explain what I mean.  The knowledge of good and evil passed down to every human being from Adam and Eve has programmed us to think a certain way.  The world thinks, “I’m a good person if I do good things.  I’m a bad person if I do bad things.”  The Christian world thinks, “I’m a good Christian if I do the good things the Bible says to do.  I’m a bad Christian if I sin.” All of that thinking is law-based instead of grace-based.

Discipleship often has the goal of Christian behavior modification using Scripture to exhort a Christian to act good instead of bad.  The focus is on changing behavior, not replacing the knowledge of good and evil thinking with Tree of Life thinking.  In one sense, you might say discipleship is trying to get Christians to jump from the bad side of the tree to the good side.  But the good side is still the same tree and the fruit is legalism.  I don’t think those who disciple this way have evil motives or are aware of what they are doing.  They just do it because that is how they were taught. I was once one of them!

God wants our discipleship to be rooted in the Tree of Life so He can produce the fruit of the Spirit.  This means, He wants to replace our stinking thinking with grace based thinking.  No wonder Paul didn’t tell the Roman Christians to do anything for the first eleven chapters! He strategically explained the Gospel of grace line by line.  He only told them to believe and yield to God in Romans 6:11 and 14  Consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.  Present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. Then, in chapter 12, he tells them to let Christ live through their bodies and to live with a renewed mind.  What he meant was, he wanted them to let the clear Gospel message he had written to them push out their knowledge based thinking with grace based thinking.  After making it clear to them that they have a new identity in Christ which loves to please God, he tells them how believing this will change their behavior to what pleases God.

Do you ever find yourself tired of trying to change your behavior to line up with Scripture?  Are you worn out?  That’s what burned me out 25 years ago until God broke through my garrison of legalistic discipleship and began to replace it with grace discipleship.  The first one almost killed me.  The latter has given me a life of freedom, I could have never imagined, which I am still growing in.

I desperately want you and/or someone you care about to hear about grace discipleship. Please accept my invitation to join me in person or by Skype, Wednesday night, October 21, from 6:00-9:00pm.  I will be teaching Romans 5, one of the greatest passages of Scripture on grace discipleship in the entire Bible.   It will blow your mind and blow some of the legalistic thinking out of your mind too!

To join me, you must register so we can make sure you get the notes.  And, it’s FREE!  To register, simply email our Director of Training at Sandy@GraceLifeInternational.com.com or call us at 704-522-9026. 

Believe it! It's the Gospel.

Live Free In Christ,

Mark Maulding, President and Founder

www.GraceLifeInternational.com All Content Copyright © 2015 Mark Maulding but feel free to pass it on!

Can Christians Break Fellowship with God?

Have you ever heard that when you sin, you are no longer in fellowship with God?  It was one of the most common teachings I heard growing up in church, as well as with the Christian organization I was involved with in college.  

The picture painted was that your sin put up a barrier between you and God so that He couldn’t be close to you or bless you.  In fact, He might even punish you by making bad things happen in your life until you got right with Him again.

The solution always given was for you to confess your sins to God and to be very sincere about it so that God would know you really meant it!  Then, you could be assured that you were forgiven again. That resulted in you being back in fellowship with God.  However for years, I often wondered if I had convinced God that I was sincere enough to be forgiven.

The idea that a Christian can break fellowship with God comes from an Old Covenant mindset that if you will obey God, He will get close to you; but, if you don’t, He will turn away from you.  See Deuteronomy 28.

The good news is that none of that is true since we are people under the New Covenant.  Here is why:

1. We are united to God.  You can’t get any closer to God than that and sin doesn’t break that union.  1 Corinthians 6:17

2.  All your sins are already forgiven whether you confess them or not.  See Colossians 2:13 and Ephesians 4:31-32.  (Though it’s fine and probably healthy to tell God when you sin, that doesn’t get you more of His forgiveness.)

3. We are not under the law of blessing and cursing laid out in the Old Covenant.  We are already blessed to the max with every spiritual blessing in Christ, according to Ephesians 1:3.

The word for fellowship in the New Testament is the word we use today for intimacy.  John wanted the people he wrote to enjoy this intimacy just as he did.  1 John 1:3 We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.

When we sin, we do not lose our fellowship with God, that is, our intimacy with God.  It’s impossible because Jesus has finished everything required by the Father to get us into fellowship with Him and to keep us there.  It’s totally based on Jesus’ performance on the cross, not ours.

Enjoy your fellowship/intimacy with God without fear that you will break fellowship with Him.    You can’t!   You can relax and live in confidence each day as a fully forgiven, permanently united, free from the law and sin, child of God, because The Cross worked! 

Believe it! It's the Gospel.

Live Free In Christ,

Mark Maulding, President and Founder

www.GraceLifeInternational.com All Content Copyright © 2015 Mark Maulding but feel free to pass it on!

God's Answer to Survival of the Fittest

At age 13, I distinctly remember one conscious thought which gripped me through high school and beyond.  It was this.  "I want to be the best."  I wanted to be the best dressed, the best basketball player, the best looking, the best student, the best classmate, and the best son.  I failed at most of those, but not all. For the most part, I wasn't the best at all.

At age 19, when Jesus became more real to me than He'd ever been, I wanted to be the best Christian, too.  In fact, I so much wanted to be the best that I wanted God to look down on me and say, "You're the best Christian I've ever seen, except for maybe Paul."  And I wanted others to at least think it.  It seemed to work for several years but eventually, it all came crashing down around me. 

At age 31, this drive to be the best drove me into the ground.  I kept failing and the more I failed, the less I thought of myself.  I ended up deeply depressed, discouraged and miserable. Underneath my pursuit to be the best was really the drive to be important, that is valuable.  The desire to feel valuable is actually a God-given need. 

My problem?  I had been born with the survival of the fittest mentality.  Survival of the fittest is the thinking that only the best are truly valuable in this life.  It's not just about biology but it's about theology.  This thinking is a lie.  Jesus said, The last will be first, and the first will be last.  (Matthew 20:16) 

This dysfunctional thinking is in all of us.  That is why people relegate themselves to one of three categories.  They believe they are in the successful crowd, the failure crowd or the ordinary crowd.  

This survival of the fittest didn't start with Darwin.  It started in the Garden when our great, great, great, grandparents ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  "But you must never eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because when you eat from it you will certainly die." (Genesis 2:17)  When they did, their mind was immediately filled with "anti-grace" thinking.  "If I perform well, I am a successful person.  If I don't, I am a miserable failure."  It was a real tree which dispensed real knowledge which has poisoned the human mind of every person ever born. 

God's answer to the survival of the fittest is the survival of the weakest.  We have no strength at all to fill our need to feel valuable.  Only Jesus has been able to do this for us.  In His weakness, dying on the cross, He succeeded in making us what we have always wanted to be - important regardless of our performance.  See how very much our Father loves us, for He calls us His children, and that is what we are!  But the people who belong to this world don't recognize that we are God's children because they don't know Him. (1 John 3:1 NLT)

Believe it! It's the Gospel.

Live Free In Christ,

Mark Maulding, President and Founder

www.GraceLifeInternational.com All Content Copyright © 2015 Mark Maulding but feel free to pass it on!

Obssessive Christianity Disorder

In his book, The Naked Gospel, my friend, Andrew Farley, writes about a debilitating disorder that is spreading among many Christians.  It's called by the same title as the first chapter of his book, Obsessive Christianity Disorder.  Let me share a few excerpts from that chapter.

MEDS, THERAPY, AND A MENTAL HEALTH FACILITY - THESE WERE the solutions I was offered. One counselor suggested that my condition wouldn't change for the rest of my life and that I'd always need medication.  As desperate as I was, I just didn't buy it. There had to be some other answer to my problem.  After trying several Christian therapists, each of whom employed a different approach, no one could alter the patterned behaviors I was stuck in.

After all, obsessive Bible study and street evangelism are not your run-of-the-mill symptoms. (p 19)

Soon all of the exertion with no payoff took its toll. I began spiraling into a deep depression.  A few months later, I found myself lying on the floor of my apartment, sobbing for hours on end: "God, I'm doing everything I'm supposed to do, and I still don't feel any closer to you. In fact, I feel worse than ever!  How could this have gone so wrong? I can't see any way out.  Help me!"  (p 22) 

It's been seventeen years since I lay sobbing on the floor of that apartment. Today, I wouldn't trade my relationship with God for anything. In fact, I would wish my relationship with him on everyone! Through my desperation, my surrender to God for real answers, and my willingness to leave behind everything I had presumed before, I was introduced to the "naked" gospel. (p 23)

Maybe you can relate though your story may have different details.  It's a story we hear every week at Grace Life International. Christians living in a state of "have to Christianity" instead of "want to Christianity."  And the solution is that same "naked gospel" with no man-made additives.   We share this to help other Christians experience the internal rest God always wanted us to have from the start.  After all, we are human beings, not human doings!

Andrew Farley has written four other books, is a pastor, a nationally known respected teacher, and has his own radio program on Sirius XM radio.  He will be the keynote speaker at Grace Life International's 20th Anniversary Celebration on October 3rd.   I invite you to be our guest that evening.  You will not only hear him speak but will have great fun as well.

To sign up and for more information, Click Here

Believe it! It's the Gospel.

Live Free In Christ,

Mark Maulding, President and Founder

www.GraceLifeInternational.com All Content Copyright © 2015 Mark Maulding but feel free to pass it on!

Eat, Sing and Celebrate God’s Work at GLI’s 20th Anniversary

A little over 20 years ago, I found myself wrestling with terrible doubt and fear about starting Grace Life International in Charlotte, NC.  One of the ways the Enemy had controlled my life in years prior was to insert doubt into my mind whenever I made a big decision.  During that period, I was always worried that this doubt might be God telling me not to go forward with a decision.  It hadn’t happened in a long time but here it was again and I was paralyzed by it.

As I slept that night, I had a very vivid dream.  In it, I was standing in the kitchen of my mother-in-law, Joanne Taylor telling her about my debilitating doubts as to whether I should go to Charlotte to start this ministry.  She looked at me with a serious look in her steel blue eyes and said with conviction, “You know that’s just Satan, don’t you?”  When I awoke the next morning, I knew God was telling me that my doubts were from Satan and that He definitely wanted me to go to Charlotte.  I never looked back!   For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. (Ephesians 2:10)

My wife and I then began to make our plans to leave the Atlanta area with our young children in tow (ages 6, 5, 3 and 1) to start Grace Life International.  As those plans unfolded and I drove back and forth every month preparing for the start, I had this incredible sense of destiny deep in my heart which excited me.  Yet, this destiny was a mystery waiting to be revealed.

Now as I look back over these first 20 years, I realize more than ever that the destiny was all of the people He was going to heal, free and restore through sharing the freedom of the complete Gospel with Christians.  Let me be more specific about this.  This sense of destiny He placed in my heart included you!  He had you in mind when He led me to start Grace Life International.  Little did I know, He was going to grow us from four amazing people on staff to 40 fantabulous staff with local, national and international influence?

On this 20^th year, I want to invite you to celebrate with us on Saturday, October 3.  It is a free indoor/outdoor event which will include a pig-pickin, worship, personal stories and nationally known speaker, Andrew Farley  (www.AndrewFarley.org).   All of us really hope you will attend.   And if you can’t, you can still celebrate.  Just click the “I cannot attend but...”

To learn more about the event and how to register for free, click here http://glionline.givezooks.com/events/new-event-test-2

Warmly in Christ,

Mark Maulding, President and Founder

www.GraceLifeInternational.com All Content Copyright © 2015 Mark Maulding but feel free to pass it on!

Do You See Life in Monochrome or in Color?

Have you seen the video of the guy with colorblindness who receives a life changing birthday gift from his parents?  It is a pair of EnChroma Colorblindness Glasses invented by glass scientist Don McPherson.  He created them to help surgeons distinguish tissues and for eye protection against lasers.  Later, he accidentally discovered they gave people with colorblindness the ability to see life in color.

In the video, the moment the man places the glasses over his colorblind eyes, he immediately struggles to find the words to describe what he is seeing for the first time in his life (except for a few choice expletives which you can overlook).  Then this big tough guy starts shaking and crying at the joy and wonder of it all.  His life has just been changed forever.

We see this same response at GLI when we share in our counseling and teaching that God has provided new spiritual glasses called the New Covenant.  Many of them also see life in color for the first time.  When they do, they may cry, shake, laugh, shake their heads, and more.

Sadly, the majority of Christians have never experienced the joy of living from the New Covenant Gospel.  So, unfortunately they only see their Christianity in monochrome which they think is normal. That’s because most of their Christian friends do too.  This leaves their view of God, themselves, others, and how life works dim at best and very dark at worst.

Want to put on your New Covenant Glasses?  Here they are:

 1.  You have Jesus in you, not just on His throne in heaven.

However, you need a revelation from God so you can go beyond this fact of Him in you, to living by faith in Christ in you.  See Ephesians 3:14-21.  You are wearing these glasses if you enjoy fellowship with Christ in you and are asking Him to live His life through you?

2.  You are under grace, not the 10 Commandments.

When you wear these glasses, you realize you have two things which are much better.  You have Jesus in you to live through you in the power of the Spirit. (Romans 7:4)  And, you have the law written on your heart, i.e. you have a perfect identity in Christ according to Hebrews 10:16-17. 

3.  You are a saint, not a sinner.

       When you wear these glasses, though you sin, you still see yourself as a saint, not a sinner.  Romans 5:19 makes this incredibly easy to see in full color. 

4.  You are already forgiven for all sins, not forgiven one by one. 

       When you wear these glasses, you understand you are already forgiven before you ever sin according to Colossians 2:13 and Ephesians 1:7. 

5.  God accepts you unconditionally, not just because He is kind. 
        

       Wearing these glasses helps you see that God has placed His righteousness in your identity in Christ.  This has made you unconditionally acceptable to God. You can’t mess it up! See 2 Corinthians 5:17&21.

God wants you to see in full color!  And, so do we at GLI. 

We can help you put on these glasses just by attending a Grace Life Conference.  The next one is September 11-12 and you can attend in person or virtually.  Sign up on our website at www.GraceLifeInternational.com.  Pastors and spouses come free.

Believe it! It's the Gospel.

Live Free In Christ,

Mark Maulding, President and Founder

www.GraceLifeInternational.com All Content Copyright © 2015 Mark Maulding but feel free to pass it on!

God's Cure for a Shame-based Identity

Have you ever heard that little voice in your head saying "There must be something wrong with me."  It usually speaks to us after a mistake, a sin, or a rejection from someone.  It's the lying voice of the enemy of course, but it sounds a whole lot like our own.  John 8:44c says about Satan, Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

That thought, that voice, that accusation is the spirit of shame.  It's not the same as being ashamed of something I did.  This is different because this is about who I am.  This kind of shame is a gnawing feeling, deep down that says "I am defective."

It's very closely related to condemnation. Condemnation whispers to us that because of what we did, we are messed up in the core of who we are.  When we sin, the Holy Spirit points out to us that we didn't live like who we are in Christ.  On the other hand, condemnation is relentless in trying to convince us that our identity is fatally flawed. It leads us away from the truth of our identity in Christ to an identity defined by failure.  If we listen to it long enough, it will eventually tell us that we are probably not a Christian at all!

That is why we all love Romans 8:1: There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  It's fascinating that this verse follows a chapter in which the Apostle Paul shared with us how much sin defeated him, even though he hated doing it every single time!  Now that's encouraging.

We are not under condemnation because God crucified our shame-based identity in Adam which genuinely was defective and messed up.  Then He buried it in the grave forever with Jesus according to Romans 6:6. Knowing this that our old self was crucified that we should no longer be slaves to sin.  Then He resurrected us as new creations, with a grace-based identity in Christ. God says we are now perfect according to Hebrews 10:14. For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.

No way does this mean we will live sinless lives.  It does mean that our sin, mistakes, upbringing, abuse, or anything else cannot define us.

Do you operate from a shame-based identity because of your past? 

Do you operate from a shame-based identity because of your family? 

Do you operate from a shame-based identity because of that sin you can't stop doing?

Do you operate from a shame-based identity because you are divorced?

Do you operate from a shame-based identity because (you fill in the blank)?

God has crucified your shame-based identity and exchanged it for a grace-based identity in Christ.  Galatians 2:20 speaks to this, I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now life in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.

Why don't you pray right now and tell God that you are choosing to believe that your shame-based identity died on the cross with Jesus and you are now embracing your grace-based identity. Therefore if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.  (2nd Corinthians 5:17)

And as always, we are here to help in person or virtually.  Why don't you at least have a consultation with us?  Life is way too short to live under the oppression of a shame-based identity.

Believe it! It's the Gospel.

Live Free In Christ,

Mark Maulding, President and Founder

www.GraceLifeInternational.com All Content Copyright © 2015 Mark Maulding but feel free to pass it on!