The Great Exchange

I have been consumed as of late, a prisoner of my own perceptions and the last hour or so where this song has played on repeat on my computer, much of my perception has been corrected...all because of the Great Exchange.

As I sat here listening to this song, these powerful words flowed out of me...

A fix for your sin has already taken place. If you are waiting on God to do something, you are a couple thousands years too late. That ship has already sailed.

Every voice in your life that deals with you based on your sin, failures, shortcomings and the like is a voice standing in opposition to what God is trying to do in your life.

Self righteousness takes such subtle forms. We want so desperately to hold on to some fallen sense of control that will leave us just a tiny bit in control of God's opinion about us.

You do not need to die to yourself... because that fallen sinful nature is not who you really are in the first place. "Dying to it" infers a struggle of some sort. You could say that you should die to your fake self but even that puts the focus back on your sin instead of on Jesus where it belongs. That's why the Bible says the mind set on the flesh is death. Even if the mind is set on dying to the flesh, it is still set on the flesh no less.

We have greatly underestimated God's deep desire to be intimate with our souls. Religion has built walls around God's heart offering to only lower the drawbridge if our actions line up with what that religion says. In reality, the love and passion of God's love marched around the castles of our brokenness and those walls all fell down completely.

God's Grace is an absolute scandal. A completely one-sided injustice that sees Jesus take the fall for every wrong we have ever done while we walk away not only free from paying for our own sin, but we also walk away with fresh, open access at will to everything that was and is His. He is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters.

In Gethsemane, Jesus didn't have second thoughts about you. In fact, fellowship with you is the passion that drove Him into ultimate obedience to His own plan. That's why Hebrews says for the Joy set before Him, He endured the cross. You and I were that Joy!

The person paying for your meal unexpectedly is never about the few dollars they saved you, it is instead a very small reflection of God's ultimate Grace in paying our sin debt. You had no foreknowledge it was coming, you had no control over the person paying your check without your knowledge. It humbles you and once humility arises, it begins to shrink pride to the point that spiritual eyes can begin to see things how God sees them.

The Bible can only be understood properly as its author grants you His Spirits of Wisdom and Understanding. Every false doctrine is birthed from the fallen mind trying to make sense of scripture without the lenses of Jesus' Wisdom and Understanding.

Jesus' free gift is so hard to accept at face value because it requires us to admit that we do not control God like we think we do. He is the author and finisher of our Faith. That leaves exactly zero room for us to manipulate salvation itself and that brings us face to face with our own self righteousness. We either surrender to His Love or we walk away from it.

Salvation is a person, His name is Jesus. The more we accept His Spirit into our hearts, minds and lives, the more He reveals Himself to us personally and this revealing undoes what the bible calls strongholds in our thinking about ourselves and others. How do you forgive what cannot be undone? You allow Jesus to have deeper access to your heart, mind and life. As He gently brushes against the painful places with the skill of a surgeon, spirits of retaliation and revenge start to lose their grips. 

His loss became my gain... at the Great Exchange.