Thoughts on Grace

I have been overwhelmed as God has been my sanity and strength these past few months. Being pregnant while starting a church while moving to a new city...Life is messy, but God is able to overcome it all.

God just keeps emphasizing my need and the need of those around me to understand that our daily lives are all about living in relationship with God, which has been accomplished by His grace. Even "good" works that do not come from an overflow of our relationship with Jesus are fruitless, dead and at times even harmful. Why is it that we are drawn to equating our value in God's kingdom to how we act? Especially when Jesus went through so much for us to be free from the law. Why is it so hard to accept that gift and not still feel obligated even calling it acting out of a"grateful" heart? Is it culture? Is it sin nature within us?

^{Galatians 5:1 says}
For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

Many of the women in a bible study group I am going to were discussing how most of us have our "To Do" lists and sometimes we translate that into our relationship with God. I think God would say that the only thing that should be on our spiritual "To Do" list is to KNOW HIM. That's it. How does that sit with you? Can that be enough for you? If not, why? If it involves you doing something, is it still God's grace? Yes there is more to our lives as children of God that involve serving Him, but all that, everything, is an overflow, a fruit, of our relationship with God.

Philippians 3:8 - 11 says (emphasis mine)
For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having^V)"> a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

I am amazed at how this is such a recurring theme in the lives of those I keep meeting. How the enemy is using "good works" to deceive people out of an authentic, life-giving, joy producing relationship with their heavenly Father. Then I remember He is jealous for me and for us as his children. He will not give up on the pursuit of our hearts.