Please enjoy this excerpt from the Gospel Rich Book’s release, “It is Finished”.
Relationships, even the strongest of them, are fragile things. At work, you can be rocking and rolling along, hitting all of your goals, getting good reviews, and then one day your boss doesn’t interact with you like he or she normally does, and you think, “Uh oh, is my job in jeopardy?”
When parents correct their children, even when they do it biblically, a child can still think, “Mom and Dad are upset with me. Do they still love me?”
But it is probably Mom and Dad, husband and wife, who have to work through these insecurities the most. We ask questions like:
“Honey, do these jeans make me look fat?
“Do you still think I’m pretty?”
“Don’t you appreciate all the hard work I do for this family?”
Sometimes, there is great fear attached: “Are you cheating on me?”
I’m hesitant to give too specific examples because I fear it might dredge up fears that you have finally conquered. But the reason I mention this is that so often, we structure our lives around the fears we have in relationships. Our lives are governed by the “eithers”.
We either slavishly give ourselves over to try to win people’s approval or at times we stand as far back emotionally as we can from folks to say, “I don’t need you.”
Either direction you take there, you are living your life based upon your relationships with others.
Either slavishly going after approval or standing off from others – either one is still saying, “Hey I am directly based on you.
Either you are loving me or I’m proving to you I don’t need you, I’m still basing things off of you.”
These patterns cause so much damage: alcoholism, porn addiction, co-dependency, slavish work habits to prove you can provide. Entire personalities are built around these issues. Whew, it sounds almost like there is no hope in these things. And I will say, “There isn’t except for one thing, and that one thing is Jesus.”
As we approach Easter where we gather to celebrate Christ’s finished work for us on the cross, we need to recognize that Christ has made our relationship with the Father secure. Every single thing necessary for you to be loved, accepted, and forgiven, Jesus has done. You don’t need to, and cannot, add one thing to what Christ has done for you.
That truth, that realization, should give you rest, should enable you to find that peace that you have never had in any other relationship and it should also free you up to love and live in other relationships with vitality. The question is, “Do you believe Jesus has accomplished everything for you? Do you live out that belief?”
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“It Is Finished” is a sweet meditation of the scriptures surrounding the events from Good Friday all the way to resurrection morn. You can find it here.
The second is “Easter – Simple Sermon Solution”. This book follows the same themes, but its focus it to help any who might have the privilege of speaking or leading a Bible study around the Easter Season. It offers a great methodology for organization and delivery. You can find it here.
No matter what, please take this Easter season to rejoice yet again for the finished work of Christ. It is our sole hope and joy for this world and the world to come.
Gospel Rich Books
If you would like to learn more about Gospel Rich books, we offer a host of challenging and encouraging resources. You can find them below:
Gospel Rich Books Amazon Catalog
And to enable more writers to publish their works, we offer the BestSeller Template which is a publisher ready resource that authors can cut and paste their works into to make them Amazon ready.
If you want to follow more of what’s going on with Gordon, check out the website www.jgordonduncan.com and his recently launched podcast at
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/this-is-gonna-hurt-the-podcast-of-j-gordon-duncan/id1356352968
Gospel Rich Books 