Just a little reminder to myself...

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast." ~Ephesians 2:8-9~

This verse I really needed to see and remember...so thanks to my Bible Gateway verse of the day emails..lol..I was reminded that we are not saved by works..and God is not looking down condemning us all the time. God has given us the GIFT of salvation by us having faith in Him and his wonderful grace!

Lately, I have been having many revelations about who God really is. I realized my view of who He is happens to be very skewed by my own ideas and experiences in my life. I felt as though God is looking down on me always upset and angry and I always feeling like I need to do more to please Him. In the midst of that, I realized that even though I know in my head this is not true and that salvation is not by works...I have been living unknowingly as though it is. I can testify that living this way is VERY tiring and will always end up in a feeling of failure and exhaustion because we will never be able to DO enough...God does not require us doing..he requires us knowing Him,He is more interested in the relationship He desires from us rather than our good works done in His name. I think the reason for this is because God knows that when we are consistently living in relationship with Him, all the other things we are trying to make happen on our own, like good works, happen naturally as an overflow and outpouring of God's Holy Spirit inside of ourselves.

I know this concept is almost elementary to write about because as a person raised Christian we know this verse from Ephesians and have heard it before. We know that it is not by works but by grace through faith, but I guess this just hit me in a different way this time...I have come to see that most things that I "know" about God...are all head knowledge...they are not really heart knowledge. SO therefore, it is not something I am living, its just something I talk about as the right way, but these things have not been penetrating into my soul and my spirit so that everything about me lives like I really do KNOW these truths that I have been raised hearing for so long.

One thing I do KNOW is that I do not want to get to the gates of heaven and have God tell me "I never knew you, away from me, you evildoers!" like He did even to people who had performed miracles and prophesies in Mathew 7:23. I KNOW I definitely do not want to be that person. Deep down in the core of who I am, I desire to be living on fire for Christ and I want Him to affect me in such a way that every moment of every day is spent in relationship with Him...always on my mind and always acting out in accordance to what the Holy Spirit leads me to do!

This is my prayer Lord!