Today I am in downtown Pittsburgh, PA. The heart of french fries (they eat them on their salads here...)– hot wing – pretzels – sub shops – doughnuts – bagels – coffee … you name it. It’s downtown USA… oh so tempting. There are soooo many tall high rise – steel (of course, remember that they named their football team all about that steel stuff) buildings. Each building is loaded with people, tons of people working all day long and needing french fries – hot wing – pretzels – sub shops – doughnuts – bagels - coffee… you name it.
Did I join them this morning? You betcha. Bruegger’s bagels is in the middle of the town square, great coffee and bagels and good spot to sit and read my book, The Equipping Church by Sue Mallory. It’s about serving together to transform lives. Awesome read.
Afterwards, I hit the exercise room at the Hilton where I’m staying. It has a bunch of treadmills. So today I ran for 30+ minutes with my good friend Perry Noble of NewSpring Church. All I could do is just listen and hear God talking to me thru Perry. It was awesome. I couldn’t get a word in edgewise, my heart rate was up around 155 beats per minute according to the monitor and Perry was talking 200, 250, 300 wpm so I just shut up and listened. He was talking about losing your salvation. Can you? Well… he kept talked about it for 54 minutes.
Did you realize that as a believer, sin is knowing Jesus and denying Him? Huh? Did you know that? Huh? I did… but I guess I never really looked at it that way. Peter denied Jesus, even though he followed Him, loved Him, believed in Him, prayed to Him… he denied Him. Jesus knew beforehand that he would. Read it again, Jesus knew beforehand that he would deny Him and yet He still loved Peter and forgave him and NEVER took away his salvation.
Wow. That’s Grace.
Perry asked me if I ever did the same thing, you know… deny Jesus like Peter did. And I’m like dude, no way, deny Jesus, you gotta be a fool to do that AND have a death wish on yourself. Really? He said. Don’t people deny Him every day when they look at others in a lust full way, or when they have a couple of drinks, or gossip about others or not help people in need? After all Jesus said we need to be like Him and I don’t remember reading where He did any of these things. My heart rate was now hitting the 175 mark… I was being smacked in the face with a hand held mirror. “Denier denier you’re a denier, nah nah nah nah nah.”
Grace baby, grace. God’s grace. God’s love. He knows every thing about you,even that you will deny Him BEFORE you will do it. The Apostle Paul (and he was a huge mess) says in Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” Did you get that? No condemnation as a believer. And No condemnation means no loss of salvation.
Wow. That’s Grace.
Oh yea, you too can exercise with Perry, or Rob, or Andy Stanley, or John Piper,or Jud Wilhite or Bill Hybels or any one you wish… just like I do… on my MP3 player. They are all available for free download via podcasts with iTunes. This way they can become you’re good friends too.
Wow. That’s Grace.
