Recently, I ran across an old book put out by the Billy Graham Association that I found fascinating, entitled What The Bible Is All About. When I got to Galatians, the great grace book, I ran across this statement:

Many people are afraid to live under grace instead of law for fear it will lead men to “live as they please and do as they like.” Grace will always lead a man to live as God pleases and like what he likes.

What a statement! The author of the book is Henrietta C. Mears and I find that she has a great ability to explain the Bible in very understandable language. Grace is a vastly deep subject, perhaps as deep as God, Himself. Honestly, in light of some very incredible sermons I have heard on grace, I don’t feel qualified to jump into a discussion on the subject. Nevertheless, before we stumble all over ourselves trying to produce deep thoughts on grace, at first glance, to me grace is very simple.

If you do not live in the liberty of grace and reject it, you will end up in legalism. Legalism, in my opinion, is a very cruel practice that will ultimately land the participant in bondage. Legalism is living by a set of rules, do’s and don’ts. Usually the list has a lot more don’ts than do’s. Legalism focuses on outward behavior. The person practicing it, may look like a real good Christian on the outside, but his heart may be cold and judgmental. Usually the legalist is judgmental of those who don’t obey the rules that he does, or subscribe to his particular flavor of Christianity, which is no Christianity at all.

Grace, on the other hand, is God’s power or enablement poured out upon you to live and walk in a vital relationship with Him. The key to grace is to understand the nature of God, what He is really like. If you get to know Him intimately, then walking with him is a true delight, and you cannot help but like what He likes. The key to living in grace, I believe, is spending time with Him so that you really get to know Him.

In my early Christian life I thought that God had a great big stick and he was ready to whack me whenever I stepped out of line. That’s what legalism does to you, becuase early on, there was an abundance of legalism in the church. It’s awful, really…a terrible misrepresentation of God.

I once heard a preacher say, “Don’t follow the rules. Follow Jesus, and the rules will take care of themselves.” That statement might scare the legalist right out of his britches, because rules are the substance of the legalist’s religion.

The statement might first appear scary, but the statement is entirely true.

When you are living in grace, and really understanding who God is, you begin to like what He likes and want what He wants. Grace is the power God pours out on you to be able to live in a vital joy-filled relationship with Him.

It’s a journey.

You’re not going to get 

there all at once.

Grace is God’s power poured out

upon you to enable

you to get there.

 

A New Printer!

We are deeply grateful to Gospel Outreach Ministries for letting us use their printer to print our newsletters for the past year. Your contributions go towards items such as our new printer. We can now print our letters right at home. The Hewlett Packard laser replaced our old portable, 80 dollar printer. Praise the Lord!

 

Travel

 

The last two months we have been on the road about half of the time. We just returned from a 17 day road trip, primarily in the Minneapolis area. It felt like we did a gazillion meetings. One of the meetings was with our new web builder. Our website development is now in progress!

We also had some fun between meetings. On the way back from a meeting in Onalaska, Wisconsin we stopped on the shores of Lake Pepin and checked out the beautiful marina.

We also took in a day at the Minnesota State Fair. The fair broke attendance records on two different days this year. There was somewhere in the neighborhood of 220,000 people there.

Our service at Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Waskish went especially well.  Betty Ausmus informed us later that week she had shared some of my sermon content with the Bible study.

In His Service,

George and Lorraine Halama

All contributions are tax deductible

 

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