Blagging it.....

I've been thinking it’s so easy to "blag it" as a Christian, to look good on the outside but be crumbling within because we put confidence in the ourselves.

I have over twenty years of bible knowledge, have been going to meetings for years, I know what we should do and say but in many ways I can be hollow.

God has been challenging me again about blagging it.

Blagging it, I mean just getting by, living on yesterdays stuff, living out of past things and not present.
I know what I should do but I am not doing it.

I just can’t afford to blag it any more. Darkness is getting darker.

I think that God is moving me into a season of discipline. By discipline I don’t mean God is punishing me, but God is moving me towards a more disciplined lifestyle.

I have had a season of Grace and now God wants me to learn that lesson and balance it out with discipline.

John 1: 14 says:
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

I want to grow in and be full of not just Grace, but Truth.

I want to be full of Grace and truth

Grace
You don’t need to pray, God loves you, anyway he can read your thoughts!
Truth
1 Thessalonians 5: 17 “ Pray without ceasing”

Grace
You don’t need to read your bible God loves you, what you hear on Sunday is enough.
Truth
Psalm 1 Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.

Grace
It’s okay not to be part of a community, God loves me if I just sat in my bedroom for the rest of my life.
Truth
Hebrews 10: 25 Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

I hope you get what I mean.

Could grace keep us from growing up as Christians?

I know it shouldn't but I think it could..

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, "Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross"

I feel called to the cross and the narrow road

Mark 8: 34
“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?

In the new living translation it says shoulder his cross.

It’s grace that sustains me as I shoulder the cross, but I must be willing to shoulder it.

Am I carrying my cross am I walking on a narrow road?

Matthew 7 13 -14
“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

Grace has given me permission to walk on a wide road when it should have given me strength to walk on a narrow road.

I was called to carry a cross and walk on narrow roads, I wasn’t called to put crosses on others and make them walk on narrow roads, I am called to extend grace.

Balance

So how do I stop blagging it?

Well, I find balance.

I have been called to a full enjoyable abundant life.

I will still enjoy a bottle of wine, a few pints of Guinness or the occasional cigar. But I will find balance.

I have to find the place where I understand Grace but live disciplined.

I'm getting there.....