Future Grace

I'm beginning to believe that the church does a great job at explaining the Gospel of confession and our need for repentance when we are first seeking the truth. We confess and repent and recieve forgiveness and grace for our past prior to knowing the Lord. We become believers but are rarely taught how to live out that same Gospel in our everyday lives. Believing on that promise of future grace, continually confessing, recieving grace and forgiveness and living in that freedom of being exposed, genuine and still loved. Experiencing that tangible expression of the Gospel from the Lord as well as other believers is the key. That freedom becomes our motivation for passionate service to the Kingdom of God. So, rather than be frustrated and angry with the church, I realize that this knowledge is quickly becoming my motivation to serve the Kingdom. Among other things, this season in my life may very well be God showing me my role in the body of Christ. I get excited and passionate about this idea of redemption, healing and restoration. My perspective on the Lord and my faith in his ability to do miracles in the hearts and minds of believers is stirring something in me so strong. I'm looking forward to what ever the Lord has planned for this. Whatever it is that is holding you back, whatever walls you have up, whatever pain you are holding so tight to...confess it, bring it into the light and God will begin to work with it. But you've got to open your hands, he won't do anything with unaknowledged sin.

A quote by John Piper from his book, Faith in Future Grace:
"She taught me to live my life between two lines of 'Amazing Grace'... 'Tis grace has brought me safe thus far' The second line: 'And grace will lead me home.' Before I could explain it, I learned that believing the first line fortifies faith in the second line; and believing the second line empowers radical obedience to Jesus."
"...the Bible rarely, if ever, motivates Christian living with gratitude. Yet this is almost universally presented in the chuch as the 'driving force in authentic Christian living.' I agree that gratitude is beautiful and utterly indespensable Christian affection. No one is saved, who doesn't have it. But you will search the Bible in vain for explicit connections between gratitude and obedience. If gratitude was never designed as the primary motivation for radical Christian obedience, perhaps that is one reason so many efforts at holiness abort. Could it be that gratitude for bygon grace has been pressed to serve as the power for holiness, which only faith in future grace was designed to perform?"

Alister McGrath, Oxford Theologian:
"Evangelicals have done a superb job of evangelizing people, bringing them to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, but they are failing to provide believers with approaches to living that keep them going and growing in relationship with him..."