whizzpopping:

One of the worse mindsets perpetuated by the church today is the idea that you need to ‘get right with God’ — as if there was something you could ‘do’ in order to ‘be right’ with Him. 

Isn’t that called self-righteousness?

The reality is that if you are a believer, you are ‘right with God’ solely on the fact that you have believed in Him and have *been* made His righteousness in Christ, not because you’ve performed well. 

We’re trained to think that the more spiritual activities — retreats, events, outreaches, prayer meetings — we do, then we are more ‘on fire’ and more ‘right’ with God. And then when we get back to life and don’t do as much, we feel like we’re in this ‘wilderness season’ and we feel distant to God because secretly believe our “do’s and don’ts” determine the way God sees us. 

This creates a cycle of trying harder because you feel guilty for doing less, so then you try harder only to fail again, which only causes you to want to do more ‘right’ to make up for it. 

This leads to the cesspool of guilt, shame, condemnation, hopelessness, fear, anxiety, and worthlessness because you fail to meet this ‘standard’ you’ve set up for yourself.

The reality is, ‘living right’ is a natural byproduct of understanding *you have already been made right*. Good fruit is the result of understand you are a good tree. 

The end of ‘roller coaster Christianity’ happens when you realize you can’t earn your right-standing and that also means cannot maintain your right-standing by your merits. 

So now in the light of sin/failure, you can rest, knowing that you’ve been forgiven. You won’t have to plead and apologize for an hour to ‘earn’ forgiveness — you already have it! So you’re free to stop begging for it and actually believe that what Jesus did was enough. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pcmUfUftS0