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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Judah Smith
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November 20 - December 19, 2024
We turn relationship into religion.
Our solution is also our problem. Is “not sinning” really what it’s all about? Is that God’s top priority?
not fear that saves us—it’s faith. Fear of failure has a sneaky way of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. We focus so much on what we don’t want to do that we are drawn to it like a moth to a flame. Or like a mosquito to a bug zapper, since we’re
now. Make rules and follow rules as needed, but don’t focus on rules. Focus on faith. Focus on grace. Focus on Jesus. Sometimes in our zeal to avoid sin, we set aside the grace we need to do so. Despite the fact that we’ve made a mess of things in the past, we tell God, “Thanks for forgiving me and all that. Now I’ll take it from here!” And we run full tilt into a brick wall. Then God puts Humpty Dumpty back together, and we thank him for his forgiveness, and we do it all over again. I don’t hate rules, but I think we need to keep them in their place. And more than that, we need to recognize
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The word grace in the Bible actually has a dual meaning. On one hand, it refers to God’s undeserved favor toward us. Beyond that, though, it refers to God’s power at work in us to accomplish more than we could on our own. Grace is God-given power to live differently.
by others or by ourselves. They are usually meant to stop us from doing what we want or to motivate us to do what we don’t want.
Rules address behavior, but they don’t deal with the heart. They don’t adjust attitudes. They don’t heal the inconsistencies and fractures deep in our souls that could destroy us in the end.
Grace, on the other hand, is internal. It works on a heart level. Where rules attempt to force us to do the opposite of what we want, grace actually changes what we want. It creates internal consistency and integrity. Doing what is right becomes much easier.
When we focus on Jesus instead of a code of conduct, when grace changes our desires so we are internally motivated and not just externally restrained,
Grace motivates us to live right because it first draws us close to Jesus. As we get to know him more, we want to be more like him. It’s natural, it’s organic, and it’s effective.
Grace focuses on the abundant life Jesus freely gives us. What I give up is completely irrelevant because what I gain is so awesome. Until you’ve experienced it, it’s hard to describe what the goodness of God feels like. But it’s as far away from a list of dos and don’ts as you could imagine.
Once you savor God’s goodness, sin holds no lasting appeal.
earth.” Worthy World’s motto is “You only get what you deserve.”
That sounds like humility, but it’s not. It’s false humility, which is just pride masquerading as modesty.
Pride is one of the greatest enemies of grace.
Sometimes we get way too fixated on how powerful sin is and how weak we are. We worry that if we relax for a second, we’ll mess up royally and ruin everything. Ironically, our paranoia only serves to make us more conscious of our sinfulness. It’s like staring at a donut and hoping it will motivate us to lose weight.
that we need a bigger estimation of God and a smaller estimation of sin. Some of us are so overwhelmed by the enormity of our failures that we can’t believe Jesus could love us. That’s a problem. That’s a far bigger problem than the sin itself, because sin isn’t a big deal.
Is sin a big deal? It depends on how you look at it. Sin has three major components: guilt, power, and effect. First, the guilt of sin refers to my status of “guilty” when I sin or violate a law. For example, if I park illegally, I am guilty of breaking the law. I can be punished. And if I happen to be in downtown Kirkland, where I live, I will surely be caught and prosecuted to the full extent of the law, because we have a parking-meter monitor who rivals the CIA in stealth and effectiveness. The government would have found Osama bin Laden years earlier if it had put her on the case. She has
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Sin is a big deal when you consider that all sin is rebellion against God. It is a big deal when you realize we are often slaves to our sin, doing things we really don’t want to do, because something inside us controls us. It is a big deal when you look around the world and see all the pain and suffering sin causes. And it is a big deal when you realize that death exists because sin exists.
The point isn’t to quit thinking about sin. It’s to quit thinking about self and to think about Jesus. It’s to become God-conscious, not me-conscious.
One guy wrote: “Judah, you’re truly the most extraordinary young man I’ve ever met.”
“You’re an inspiration to me and all Christians alike. I have the utmost respect for you. Your daily devotion and love for Jesus helps everybody around you.”
“Judah, you’re probably the person I respect most at this school.”
“You have your beliefs and you stick to them. That’s awesome.” Wow. It wasn’t awesome when I sat by myself sometimes in the lunchroom. Didn’t feel awesome.
There is a way for us to get God’s perspective of us. It’s called the Bible—but most of the time we skim the grace parts and highlight the sin parts.
If Jesus wrote in your yearbook, I think you would be blown away by what he really thinks about you. I think you would live differently because Jesus is crazy about you. He is obsessed with you. He is proud of you.
Contrary to popular opinion, God is not mad at us. We can hurt God. We can grieve God. But his wrath against sin was appeased by Jesus’s death. For those who accept that sacrifice by faith, he no longer looks at our sin. When he sees us, he sees his Son.
find a way to accept themselves. Sometimes our brains are our own worst enemies because grace isn’t logical. It doesn’t work on a cause-and-effect basis like everything else in life.
paychecks. That’s cause and effect too. When it comes to grace, there’s just effect, at least as far as humans are concerned. We didn’t do anything to cause it. It’s already been caused, and we should just enjoy it.
Because logic gets in the way when we talk about grace, we limit the scope, the magnitude, and the significance of grace. We try hard to comprehend it in our humanness, in our shortsightedness. We get out our logarithms and algorithms and try to reason grace out.
Then Jesus told her accusers that whoever had no sin should throw the first stone.
“Neither do I. Go and sin no more.”
My mission has become to remind my church that Jesus is still the answer. Grace is Jesus, and Jesus is enough.
This isn’t a very spiritual thing to admit, but I like to sleep. A lot. Rest and relaxation are high on my priority scale.
At six in the morning, I am of no use to God or anyone else. Except for maybe the devil, because I act more like him than anyone else at that ungodly hour.
My idea of an early-morning prayer meeting is ten in the morning. I’m feeling that one. That’s a word from God.
And I’m thinking, Man, I’m going to hell. Because if anyone tried to wake me up that early, I’d cuss at them. I know I would.
Here’s a question I never get asked. “What’s your least favorite verse?” I’ve actually thought about that. Maybe I’m on thin ice here, because it’s the Bible, and we are supposed to like all the verses. But I can tell you exactly what my least favorite scripture in the entire Bible is. It’s Proverbs 20:13. “Do not love sleep, lest you come to poverty. Open your eyes, and you will be satisfied with bread” (NKJV).
So, I like sleep. I don’t love it, because the Bible says not to. I just like it. A lot.
Proverbs has another verse on sleep, and this one is more to my liking. Proverbs 3:24 says, “You can go to bed without fear; you will lie down and sleep soundly.” That’s the verse I’m holding on to.
Matthew 11:28–30.
Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”
When we think of the term law today, we think of government-imposed restrictions. But to Israel, law meant more than not driving your camel too fast in a school zone. It referred to the law of Moses.
The most famous of these laws were the Ten Commandments, but that was only the start. The law of Moses was much more detailed than that. It affected every area of life. The Israelites were commanded to keep this law down to the smallest detail, and if they failed in any way, they were guilty of sin. Because no one could keep all the law all the time, they had to offer continual animal sacrifices for sin, as I mentioned earlier.
In the last chapter, we discussed rule-based living as opposed to grace-based living. This is exactly where Israel had ended up. That wasn’t God’s intent when he gave them the law—it was just human nature.
When Jesus came on the scene, people were stressed-out and worn-out trying to please God. They were so busy trying to do good in order to be good that they couldn’t see how good life was. They couldn’t enjoy God because they never quite measured up—they always needed a little more holiness and a few more good deeds before God could accept them.
Jesus promised an easy burden and a light yoke, which was a reference to the yokes farmers placed on oxen and the burdens they bore. Jesus was saying that he came to make life easier.
We are worn out and desperately in need of rest. Not physical rest. We need spiritual rest. We need peace with God and with ourselves.
Jesus continues, “But I say, if you are even mad at someone, you deserve judgment. If you call someone an idiot, you should go to jail. And if you curse someone, you might wind up in hell.”
“But I say, if you even look at a woman lustfully, it’s as if you’ve already slept with her.”
