Fact or Fiction - Romans 4 (4)

 here is the conclusion to Fact or Fiction?

What are the fictions in my life? What are the areas that I think I can control? What are the promises of God that I don’t trust God to fulfill, and that I am trying to fulfill on my own strength, my own wisdom, my own knowledge, my own ability?

What about you? What about us as a church?

Are we living in the fact of God’s supernatural life and Presence, or in the fiction of our own thinking and ability?

Abraham believed in a God who calls things which are not as though they are – and who gives life to the dead.

Abraham and Sarah’s bodies were dead, yet they kept believing God to fulfill His promise of a son.

And then after that son was finally born God told Abraham to sacrifice him – Genesis Chapter 22.

Hebrews chapter 11:

17 By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was offering up his only begotten son; 18 it was he to whom it was said, “In Isaac your descendants shall be called.” 19 He considered that God is able to raise people even from the dead, from which he also received him back as a type.

Are we living in the fiction that God will not require everything from us? Are we living in the fiction that we can hold parts of our hearts and lives back from God? If God required Abraham to offer Isaac, and if God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, do we really think we can live the Christian life without offering anything and everything to our Lord Jesus Christ?

Who can measure the love that Abraham had for Isaac? Who can measure the love that the Father has for His only begotten Son?

What is there in our lives that we refuse to offer to God? What is there in my life that I say to God, “You cannot touch that?” What about your life? What about our life as a church?

It is only as we experience the death of the Cross that we can experience the resurrection life of Easter. God calls us to die with His Son so that through us others may live.

22 Therefore it was also credited to him as righteousness. 23 Now not for his sake only was it written that it was credited to him, 24 but for our sake also, to whom it will be credited, as those who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, 25 He who was delivered over because of our transgressions, and was raised because of our justification.

Are we living in the fiction of religion, of religious tradition, of self-righteousness; or are we living in the fact that in Christ alone we have justification and new life and purpose and destiny?

One way I can tell whether there is fiction in my life is how I react when someone questions my fiction, when someone approaches it, challenges it, questions it…

What fiction is there in my life, in our life, in our life as a church – that we need to offer up to God?

How is our heavenly Father and our Lord Jesus Christ challenging us to live in the fact of the truth of the Gospel and the Word of God today? What is there in our lives, in my life, in your life, that God wants to renovate, to tear down in order to build up so that we can live in the glorious freedom of the sons and daughters of the true and living God?

AMEN.