I finally had to put a stop to the madness, in comes GRACE.
I was on the phone with a friend of mine the other day, and he kept talking about “REPENTANCE”. He was listing all of the “Sins” in his life of what it was that he was doing. All of his addictions, all of his issues. I could hear in his voice how BAD he felt, and how he just so badly wanted to change everything… even smoking. He kept on and on about quitting all of the bad habit’s that have been built up in his life all of these years. Over the phone I could hear him in this CAGE, and he just couldn’t get out. He was being tormented by demons of pure condemnation. He kept on saying, if I don’t REPENT of these things, I will be in trouble with God. I finally had to put a stop to the madness, in comes GRACE.
Romans 3:24 and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
I immediately told him not to even worry about REPENTING. Of course the silence on the phone probably the silence that some of you have now just reading this. He was blown away at first, and then he broke the silence and said to me “OK, now I am confused, how can we live our lives with God if we all have this SIN that we need to take care of”. I told him that he hit the nail on the head. “We ALL have this SIN to take care of”. He was literally going to drive himself into the grave worrying about his sin, and wanting to repent of everything, and clean up his life. I told him the minute he tries to repent of ONE of these things, Satan will be right back at him tempting, and throwing him back into the fire, and the pressure that he was putting on himself was NEVER going to allow him to repent.
“OK”, he said, “What’s the secret?”
GRACE. God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense. Pure loving GRACE. You see, we can’t even REPENT without GRACE, we can’t do ANYTHING WITHOUT GRACE!!!! I have to say this again “We Can’t Do Anything Without Grace”. This is the Big Secret, and it needs to be received by EVERYBODY. We fall to sin, and we get back up, and we feel bad, we fall to sin again, we get back up, and we feel worse, and eventually we just DIE Trying. Our Heavenly Father see’s us with Tunnel Vision, 
through the eyes of GRACE. Once we receive GRACE, and learn to Love God because of what HE did on the cross, we’ll receive GRACE, and then the SINS will just roll off of our body like a marble. God love us, and God sees us through His Son Jesus who gave His Life on a Cross to forgive us of our sins. Once we understand that, and receive it… TRULY RECEIVE IT. We will love God more and more, and our desire to sin will get less and less. You see, whenever we try to quit sinning in our own strength it doesn’t work. We are Right back to living the Christian Life in our own strength.
