As I was reading Andrew’s book, Grace, the Power of the Gospel, it startled me to read this:
We’ve been corrupted through thinking things contrary to the Gospel. If we could just break free from a performance mentality to truly understand God’s grace, we would wind up living holier accidentally than we ever have on purpose (p. 110).
Even after being born again, I still chased after “being good.” It was years before I heard the message that grace was the power of the Gospel and that it would set me free from trying to live out my salvation through performance. An incident in my life really highlights that although I had received the Good News of the Gospel and had been radically saved, my moral upbringing also had to be surrendered to receive the grace for living the Gospel.
As I was dropping off my two-year-old at childcare, I heard myself say, “Be a good boy for Miss Sandy.” Then one night before bed, my son hugged me and said, “Mama, you’re a good boy!” I laughed, knowing that this was a compliment of love flowing out of his heart. But then I gasped as I realized,I’m training him to be a good boy, just like I had been trained to be a good girl. The performance mentality had seeped into my marriage and was springing up in me as a mother.
Ignorantly, I had gone from receiving the Gospel by faith to trying to live out my salvation by being “good.” Andrew describes it this way:
When the Scripture says that the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation, it’s not just talking about how to be born again and have your sins forgiven. It also means that the Gospel—the grace of God—is the power of God…unto everything that comes to us as a result of being born again. It’s talking about your relationship with God (pp. 14-15).
This truth always confronts any religious thoughts still buried in us. Andrew says the Enemy is quite happy to have us as Christians receive “the event” of salvation but then “earn the things of God…to put our faith in what we’ve done instead of faith in Christ as our only means of receiving from God. This is his biggest weapon against us!” (pp. 15-16, emphasis mine).
Even if I train my son to love Jesus, unless I receive the power of grace to work in me as a mother, I will have trained him to be a “good boy” rather than to have a relationship with Jesus, which is another gospel! If you’d like to learn more about establishing the true Gospel of grace in your heart, check out Andrew’s teaching called Grace, the Power of the Gospel. This teaching is available in many formats: CD, DVD, book, and by television broadcast. If this has ministered to you, please post a comment below.
