One of the topics that usually comes up in everyday conversation is how people's jobs are going. 'How's work been this week' is a typical question to be asked. Sometimes, people experience uncertainty, whether it's through losing their job or uncertain if they will keep their job after the next company review - a situation I've experienced in the past myself and I've heard work colleagues say 'it's the not knowing I can't stand'. A Christian is supposed to live from the standpoint of knowing what God did through the saving work of Jesus Christ. This was evidence of God's mercy towards us: Romans 12v1 says: Therefore, I urge you...in view of God's mercy... The phrase in view of hints at keeping something in our vision, holding to it, keeping it at the forefront of our thinking. The passage continues with a plea to live in an attitude of worship to God in view of knowing how He has helped us. It then encourages us to let God change the way you think - Romans 12v2a (CEV).
Herein lies the key to a transformed life from living in a place of uncertainty to a place of knowing: we have the opportunity to let God change the way we think. God gives us space to choose certainty, to take it or leave it. What takes place in this pause is our choice.
What often happens is that we hear the wrong thing or rather hear it in the wrong way. As soon as we hear an instruction like I urge you from the Bible or one that is prompted in our life, our first thought can be 'regulation', law, another layer of requirement or restriction for us. Then we put pressure on oursleves to perform or to live up to some perceived standard. If we fail to achieve this standard we can feel guilty or unworthy and see ourselves as failing to live a transformed life. This scenario and accompanying mindset illustrates the difference between religion and relationship. Religion = doing things to earn acceptance; Relationship = responding from a place of certainty that we are accepted already.
Are we responding to God and His revealed truth in Christ from a place of 'knowing' or uncertainty?
The apostle Paul writes to the church at Rome (and all Christians everywhere) about God's sure and certain mercy in Christ, speaking later about those who were like broken off branches being grafted into salvation (see Romans ch11). Rom12v1 is a challenge to what I call our 'start up view' when we are called to live at a higher level. WE OFTEN START WITH WHAT WE ARE BEING ASKED TO DO, NOT WHY WE ARE BEING ASKED TO DO IT. Paul is urging us to have an earlier and clearer view of what God has done for us and not delay living it out as a present reality. When this viewpoint is our startpoint it empowers us towards a grace response to a gracious and merciful God who sent Jesus to pay the debt of sin we could never pay (ref Romans 3v23). We are being shown here that when we allow the Truth of God's love in Christ to fill our thoughts, then we cannot help but live a life in response. Is it too much to ask to live wholeheartedly for the God who has given so much to us and keeps on giving? LAW DEMANDS A REQUIREMENT FROM US; GRACE EMPOWERS A RESPONSE WITHIN US. Let us start in the right position. Let it be a position of knowing.
