This past Monday while waiting for the Dr's office to open

 7:30am…I scanned RELEVANT magazine that came in the mail. I scanned some of the articles, passed over others and read one or two. Most were light reading at best but then came a title that caught my attention.

Titled Focusing on Sin Never Works Tullian Tchividjian, Pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church and grandson of Dr. Billy Graham, these words grabbed my attention and my heart.

“Christianity is not first about our getting better, our obedience, our behavior and our daily victory over remaining sin-as important as all these are. It is first about Jesus! It’s about His person and substitutionary work-His incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension, His seat at the right hand of God and his promised return…” Tichividjian continues, “My greatest need (and yours) is to look at Christ more than we look at ourselves, because the Gospel is not my work for Jesus, but Jesus’ work for me. Because we’re so naturally prone to look at ourselves and our performance more than we look to Christ and His performance, we need constant reminders of the Gospel.”

For a number of weeks I have been captured by an Idea I have regarding worship. Stated like this, true worship leaves me feeling better about my Savior. Unfortunately I approach worship as needing to feel better about myself. I think the former is truer of what I really need. I know and feel where I am and have tried and tried and tried to be better, do better, think better and have failed like a led zeppelin. You know crashed and burned every time. Honestly, there is not much to feel better about in that. Nor is there much hope or promise for the future there either. That’s just the point. There is no hope or promise within me. Hope and promise are found in Jesus alone. Tichividjian went on to say,

“We’re justified-and sanctified-by grace alone through faith alone in the finished work of Christ alone.”

Easter is the evidence we need to see the complete work of God in my Savior Jesus. My natural tendency is to focus on me and my situation but Christ has paid my tax for sin and risen from the grave so that while death and taxes are laws of the universe they are not final because of Jesus.

Now He is someone to feel good about! Would you agree?

I need to be reminded of that fact everyday each moment of the day because I don’t live like that is true. It’s my nature to live in the here and now TODAY and not THAT DAY. Because what is me now and my situation now and my failure now in not the way it will be “when the fat lady sings.” I mention that because God is the FAT LADY. He alone has the final say and “it’s not over ‘til it’s over” and only God says that. Oh, don’t forget Jesus is at the center in the end.

Now he is something to feel good about!      

I hope I don’t get over this anytime soon.

He makes me feel good about so many things.

In HIS Service and Yours,

The Rev