Last week, Dennis McNally taught us that we do not receive because we earned it. All we receive from God comes because of His grace, not our good works. It is always a pure gift. But, he did tell us that we have a part to play in receiving from God. He said we need to “position” ourselves to receive. How do we do that?
Dennis mentioned, having a prayer life with God, reading the Bible, and being a part of genuine Christian relationships [fellowship in a local church].
I want to look at another way we position ourselves to receive more of God in our lives. That is, stepping out of our comfort zone.
After listening to my sermon, someone asked me – Is accepting your weakness really justifying sin?
No, weakness and sin are two different things.
Weakness has to do with a lack of natural ability [mental or physical], negative character traits [timidity, being over cautious, risk averse, passivity, being fearful by nature, etc.], temperament [introversion, extroversion] and other character traits that we are born with.
Sin has to do with the choices we make. It may be a sinful choice with respect to a weakness or a strength but it is not determined by our weakness or our strength.
For example; when I was young I was the smallest kid in our school. I was terrible at athletics. My one redeeming quality was that I could make people laugh, so I focused on doing just that. When I became a Christian I thought that making people laugh was “unspiritual” and so I tried to eradicate that trait from my personality.
It didn’t work.
Later I came to realize that humor could play a part in preaching and teaching. What I thought of as a weakness [always being the clown] could be used in God’s service [delivering hard truths in a way that makes then easier to receive]. Accepting our weakness allows us to give it to God to be used to display His strength.
We should accept our weakness but never accept our sin.
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