{"id":167,"date":"2009-10-07T14:33:45","date_gmt":"2009-10-07T19:33:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newlifedesign.wordpress.com\/?p=167"},"modified":"2009-10-07T14:33:45","modified_gmt":"2009-10-07T19:33:45","slug":"the-work-of-grace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anewlifedesign.org\/wordpress\/2009\/10\/07\/the-work-of-grace\/","title":{"rendered":"The Work of Grace"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><em>&#8220;For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men.\u00a0 It teaches us to say &#8216;No&#8217; to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age,&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:right;\"><em>~<\/em>Titus 2:11-12<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">Grace is much more than forgiveness for our\u00a0sin.\u00a0 It is what teaches us not to sin in the first place.\u00a0 I have struggled with letting go of\u00a0my incredibly legalistic\u00a0way of living\u00a0(my brand of flesh) because I&#8217;m afraid that if I don&#8217;t follow the rules, my life will begin to spin out of control.\u00a0 I think this may be a common fear that keeps many people trapped in legalism.\u00a0 We&#8217;re afraid that if we focus too much on grace, we&#8217;ll end up sinning more.\u00a0 But the Truth is actually the opposite of what we think.\u00a0 <strong>It&#8217;s the law that urges us to sin (Romans 7) and grace that teaches us not to<\/strong>.\u00a0 Living by grace gets our self-effort in doing the right thing out of the way so that the Holy Spirit can produce His fruit in us&#8211;love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,\u00a0faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">Rebecca \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men.\u00a0 It teaches us to say &#8216;No&#8217; to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age,&#8221; ~Titus 2:11-12 Grace is much more than forgiveness for our\u00a0sin.\u00a0 It is what teaches us not to sin in the first place.\u00a0 I have struggled with letting go of\u00a0my incredibly legalistic\u00a0way of living\u00a0(my brand of flesh) because I&#8217;m afraid that if I don&#8217;t follow the rules, my life will begin to spin out of control.\u00a0 I think this may be a common fear that keeps many people trapped in legalism.\u00a0 We&#8217;re afraid that if we focus too much on grace, we&#8217;ll end up sinning more.\u00a0 But the Truth is actually the opposite of what we think.\u00a0 It&#8217;s the law that urges us to sin (Romans 7) and grace that teaches us not to.\u00a0 Living<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anewlifedesign.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anewlifedesign.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anewlifedesign.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anewlifedesign.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anewlifedesign.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/anewlifedesign.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anewlifedesign.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anewlifedesign.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anewlifedesign.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}