#1. I need to clean up my act before I can get born again
You can never clean up your act enough to deserve salvation. It's salvation that will clean you up. The sin nature is replaced by the new creation in Christ the moment you accept Christ.
Romans 5:6-8 MSG
Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn’t, and doesn’t, wait for us to get ready. He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready. And even if we hadn’t been so weak, we wouldn’t have known what to do anyway. We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.
#2. God shuts me out when I do bad things
God doesn't act like we do, how we give a cold shoulder to people who make us mad. He commands us to forgive those who trespass against us. He doesn't request a higher standard from us than He lives by. He is perfection.
Hebrews 4:14-16 MSG
Now that we know what we have—Jesus, this great High Priest with ready access to God—let’s not let it slip through our fingers. We don’t have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He’s been through weakness and testing, experienced it all—all but the sin. So let’s walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help.
#3. I need a special man of God to set me free from my weaknesses
The one you need is Jesus. He already paid the price for everything that might take away our peace. You need to surrender to him and accept that he paid for all your sins. It is his GRACE that makes us able to overcome and gain the mastery over the things that easily entangle us. As long as we're trying by our own strength we will not succeed.
Look at Paul's experience:
2 Corinthians 12:10, 7-9 MSG
Because of the extravagance of those revelations, and so I wouldn’t get a big head, I was given the gift of a handicap to keep me in constant touch with my limitations. Satan’s angel did his best to get me down; what he in fact did was push me to my knees. No danger then of walking around high and mighty! At first I didn’t think of it as a gift, and begged God to remove it. Three times I did that, and then he told me, My grace is enough; it’s all you need. My strength comes into its own in your weakness. Once I heard that, I was glad to let it happen. I quit focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ’s strength moving in on my weakness. Now I take limitations in stride, and with good cheer, these limitations that cut me down to size—abuse, accidents, opposition, bad breaks. I just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become.
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