Faith Established Your Righteousness

Good morning to all on this wonderful and glorious Thursday. We are all blessed because we awoke to see another of God's day; we are in our right mind; and we have an opportunity to fellowship with the saints of God. Waine is in Jamaica until tomorrow and is safe. The flooding in Kingston didn't affect us and of course since God was watering this little island, the golf courses are nice and green! Thank you for your prayers for Violet, Waine's Mom. She is being discharged from the hospital today and will get some much need rehabilitation for the next 7-10 days. I was able to break bread with ET and his wife on Tuesday and he looks great! We were able to pray and touch and agree for his continued healing. Please continue to pray for ET and his family.

I am continuing my journey in Romans 3 verses 21-31, "But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in His blood. He did this to demonstrate His justice, because in His forbearance He had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— He did it to demonstrate His justice at the present time, so as to be just and the One who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. On what principle? On that of observing the law? No, but on that of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law. Is God the God of Jews only? Is He not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too, since there is only one God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith? Not at all! Rather, we uphold the law. Amen.

Paul is brilliant! He is having to teach the Christian Jews in Rome to abandon their long held belief that their salvation and atonement is based on "works" and instead understand the concept of FAITH. These Jewish Christian had been taught for generations that righteousness was based on works such as getting circumcised or keeping the 10 laws of Moses. Paul had the same teaching; remember although Paul was a Roman he was also a trained Pharisee or religious ruler and because of his conversion now had a great understanding of the fact that righteous comes through faith versus his previous instructions that righteousness was a result of works. Paul is now trying to impart the same wisdom to these Roman Christians. Can you imagine what a task this was. Jews had always set themselves apart from the Gentiles and now had to embrace the Gentiles as their spiritual equals. The concept of the "chosen race" was being abolished right in front of their noses. Under Christ we are all chosen and JUSTIFIED THROUGH OUR FAITH! Under Christ we are all sinners and have fallen short of the glory of God. Christ is the great equalizer! The GOOD NEWS is that when we are restored to God through our FAITH in Christ we are also restored to GLORY. We become glorious creatures; we are to walk in  this faith each day and be assured of our glorious nature by claiming abundance.  Think about that for a minute. Am I living in abundance or am I living in fear? Am I truly living with the cloak of righteousness or living by circumstance? My perspective is that if Christians truly understood our conversion, the strife that we subject ourselves to daily would be a distant memory. For example, I am reflecting on my day yesterday and reflecting on the issues which caused me distress. The fact that I had any distress or any moments in which I forgot that I was the child of the King means I was not ordering my steps in Faith but was ordering my steps in "works". Before we gave our lives to Christ through faith, we justified our lives through works--people like you because you are attractive; you get promotions because you work hard; you have material wealth because you have a good job--WORKS, WORKS, WORKS! Christ, His death and Resurrection shattered all that! We are JUSTIFIED THROUGH FAITH. You can live in abundance not because you deserve it; not of us deserve the abundance and richness of God. We live in abundance because Christ justified us and we then can commune with God the way He intended when man was in the Garden with God. No fear, no disease, no worries--just peace, happiness and abundance. The blessed thing about Faith is that you don't have to "work" at it--you just have to let go of SELF and accept the abundance that awaits you on a second to second basis. Hallelujah and amen.

Stephanie