Righteousness Opens the Door, But I Had to Receive the Love

For a long time, I have been listening to Pastor Joseph Prince's sermons.

He often talked about people who struggled with different addictions, especially sexual addictions, whether it was masturbation, sexual fantasies, numerous encounters, etc.

I would repeat "I am the righteousness of God in Christ" numerous times when I engaged in whatever perversions I was caught up in.

Yet I found that I was still caught up in the sins. I needed to engage in the behaviors.

Righteousness matters, don't get me wrong.

With that righteousness, we then are no longer afraid to come to God with our problems. We know that He will never condemn us. He will never walk away from us or throw us away.

Righteousness matters. It certainly does.

Yet ... there's more that needs to be received, revealed in us.

That sense of love, that sense of sharp, warm ecstacy is so crucial for all of us.

That sense is so strong, that knowledge that we are cared for, no matter how we feel, is so necessary for us, that we will take any substitute we can find.

We will settle for less if we think that we cannot have the best.

For me, I didn't believe that His love was good enough.

Or I believed that I could not appreciate God's love as long as I felt these perverse struggles inside my flesh.

Knowing that I was righteous freed from a sense of never-ending condemnation, the cycle of self-absorbed doom. At that point, I never felt that I had to do something about the sexual perversions, or any perversion, in order to avoid God's wrath.

Yet I could not break free.

I was so busy focusing on what I needed to stop doing. What I needed to do was ... understand how much God loved me. His love for me and in me did not depend on my doing something. That's what makes unconditional love "unconditional", right?

I needed to realize that His love is alive, vibrant, good to receive!

Righteousness allowed me to come to God, to open the door, but I still needed to realize that there was nothing that would stop me from receiving His love.

NOTHING.

Of course, Paul had written about this powerful revelation. It's amazing how alive God's Word has become for me the more that the lies are pushed away:

"Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. 38For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, 39Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:37-39)

I have become far more persuaded, that's for sure!