Graceriver

The Gospel is not good advice, it is good news and there is a profound difference between the two. • Good News is the news of something that has already happened, that benefits me. • Good advice can only be about something that hasn’t happened yet, but might happen, ….if I follow the advice. Can you see then, that • good news leaves your attention on what was done for you, but • good advice leaves your attention on yourself; your ability to follow the advice, but salvation is not of yourself. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, lest anyone should boast. Advice, leaves your hope on yourself.

"Hear the voice of the Spirit, to a church waiting for a better day. Do not receive the grace of God in vain, for I heard you. I helped you and I tell you, “now is the time of God's favour, now is the day of salvation. (2Cor 6:2). The Kingdom of God only manifests on this earth, when God’s people operate by the knowledge of what NOW IS, not the knowledge of what MIGHT BE. For the Kingdom of the Son, is the realm of what NOW IS."

"Don’t let some fiery passionate preacher on repentance, simply lead you back to eat of the self-effort tree, rather than to partake of the Tree of life. How do you know if that is what has been happening in your life? No matter how many times you hear the Gospel, you can’t seem to help hearing it as good advice, not good news."

"Doing all the right things is not the way into the right life; God’s life for you. Such a belief has left many people very religious all their lives and yet they have ended up bitter and alone because their faith was actually in what they were doing for God, rather than in what He had done for them. They had been living on good advice, not good news. One is earthly food and the other heavenly food. Earthly food can never satisfy. Within a day you are hungry again. The last thing you need today is more good advice. You need good news, heavenly food! “Man cannot live on bread alone, but on every word that keeps proceeding from the mouth of the Father.”

Without a revelation, that we are the habitation OF God, we will always be waiting for a visitation FROM God. When you cannot see what God has done, you will spend your life grasping for something better. Here is the Gospel. There is nothing better, than Christ in you, the hope of glory. To see that we have already been blessed in the spiritual realm with every spiritual blessing in Christ, brings an end to grasping and an entering into, the rest of being whom God has made us to be, sons of God and co-heirs with Christ.

Faith, the capacity, to live from our union with Him, comes by hearing this gospel, (that’s Rom 10:17 ‘faith comes by hearing’) so what are you hearing and so believing about you and Him? • Is it the unchanging, eternal, timeless Gospel, a message that never changes in any year, because it points to Him who never changes and the sufficiency of His work? • Or is it a message that seems to change every week because it is pointing to us and what we need to do and when you are pointed to yourself, there always seems to be no end to what you need to do. In other words, are you hearing the gospel as good news or as good advice? Are you hearing the Gospel on earth, as it is in heaven?

"What is the Gospel? If believers are living shrunken lives, it is for one reason and one reason only. Honey, we shrunk the gospel.! And when you shrink the gospel, you shrink the kids.

"God is not good to you because you are good. He is good to you because He is good and to be persuaded of just how good He is, is to be set free from the self-centred religious life that can never please God, for He has always known, what so many of us are only now glimpsing for the first time; the self-life can only ever produce a self-ish life."

"If you, then God" is a message for a people who are waiting for God to do something. Here is the Gospel. God did something and He didn’t do it in response to your goodness!

You may think your greatest need right now, with so many strong opinions flying around, is to know who is right and who is wrong, that you may choose the right side of an argument. But we all have a greater need than to know the right thing to do. We need to know the heart of Him, who went to the Cross, not so that He would be right, but so that we, who were his enemies, could be right.

Ministry, wasn't where Jesus got His name from. To come out of the desert knowing your name, is to come out in the power of the Spirit.

A hope on yourself, is not a strong enough hope to get drunk on. All we do when we water down the Gospel of God’s grace, is leave men thirsty enough to go looking elsewhere for a drink. Never tell anyone they need more faith. Give them the Gospel that brings faith.

You can’t train eyes to see in the dark, who have never been in the dark long enough to see through it.

To live blind to the finished work of Christ, is to live blind to the heavenly realm. Starve believers of the Heavenly Gospel (The Good News of what God has provided for them) and feed them instead with an earthly gospel (good advice on what they need to provide for Him) and they will lose their ability to see past their natural circumstances. They will lose the ability to see in the dark. Right now, this world needs the Church to be seeing in the dark.

Religion is too tiny a pot to grow the life of Christ. Oaks of righteousness can’t grow in religious pots. The only thing that grows in a pot called self, is self-righteousness!

Repentance is not some work of the flesh to try and become something we are not, it is a work of the Spirit to remove the scales from our eyes, that we may see who we now are in Christ; a totally new creation, the bride of Christ.

To live the Spirit filled life, life in the Spirit, is to be rooted and grounded in heaven, not on the earth and the more the Church grows in this life, the more the Kingdom of heaven is established on the earth.

To speak in the Spirit, is to speak from a place of communion with God. It is to speak, not in the language of separation, but in the language of union, the language Christ spoke in. How can it be God’s will, that the body of Christ speak in a language, that Christ Himself never spoke in, the language of separation!

I believe that in this hour, the primary challenge before the Church, is to recognise that so much of what we have been doing for Him, has not come from being with Him!

Only perfectly loved people can live in a way that reveals perfect love.