Convicted or Condemned (You Choose)

God does not condemn, He convicts.

We condemn ourselves.  We rebelled against God. He was always good, is always good, and will always be good.  He found us going away from Him.

He speaks to turn us back without making us come to Him. God refuses to make us accept His leadership. So He speaks with an open heart, "come unto me."  

He does this by truth. Always.  Jesus is the manifestation of God's word. He is the truth, the way, and the life.

Jesus IS the truth.  There is no lesser version... A more palatable version... A less demanding version... of truth. There is just Jesus' life staring at us in all its humility, courage, peace, resilience, vibrancy, and power.

Most don't want to live an undefeatable life.  They would rather be victims, blaming, jealous, gossiping, hurting, wounded, hoping to some day win the world and bitter that it isn't happening sooner... Though this power-filled life of patience, faith, joy, peace, and the like is right there for the taking, most won't, because it requires we embrace conviction and not see it as condemnation.  Pride refuses to bend the knee.

The Christian religion is failing because it never delivered people to the cross.  Religion is a substitute for relationship.  Religion can only leave me trying.  A true relationship with Jesus leaves me dying to my self leadership and effort and resurrected in the conviction that the way I live on my own doesn't actually work.

The cross is the power of a life in God... The cross gets my flesh out of first place to be resurrected into second place. God is always convicting me to give up trying to do things in my own understanding and power, because it simply doesn't work.  I have to accept a lower place than my flesh wants.

1 Corinthians 15:23-28 NKJV — But each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ’s at His coming. Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death. For “He has put all things under His feet.” But when He says “all things are put under Him,” it is evident that He who put all things under Him is excepted. Now when all things are made subject to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subject to Him who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.

Human flesh hates second place.  Adam and Eve infected it with a delusional desire to be above God.  But God convicts.  He convicts where we elevate ourselves both in pride and shame. Where we take too much upon ourselves in the areas of self leadership we fail at, and don't take on the basic responsibility to humble ourselves under His mighty hand... The one area we could have 100% success at: being weak.

If you are blessed to hear the truth about the cross and see the beauty of the resurrected Man, grab onto Him!  

Philippians 3:10-13 NKJV — that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead,

If you hear Him, lay hold of Him!!! Don't let Him go.  Learn to love being exposed, convicted, and redeemed...

John 3:17-21 NKJV — “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. “He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. “And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. “For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. “But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.”

If conviction can only feel like condemnation to you, it's because of pride and shame.  If we cannot be convicted and walk forward in hope and change, then we cannot be saved.

1 John 3:1-4 NKJV — Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure. Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness.