Learn three different ways to look at your relationship with Jesus that I experienced and discover some new truths to building a better walk with Jesus.

Hey, everyone, this is Pastor Cindy saying thank you for coming to today's podcast, where we'll be talking about building a better relationship with the Jesus, we are continuously growing and learning more about our friends and family and getting closer and building a deeper relationship. So it only makes sense that we would do that with God too, and, and getting to know them better and continue building that relationship and learning more about him, knowing who we are to him, and who he is to us. And I've also discovered over the years that salvation is truly the greatest miracle. So it only makes sense that we would want to know more and grow in our relationship with Jesus, who is our Lord and Savior. One of the reasons I decided to do a series of episodes about salvation, is because, on July 17, 2019, I'm celebrating my 37th year of walking with Jesus. And I did some reflection and realized I could pretty much bring it into three different phases of my walk, and I want to share them with you. So I'm hoping as I share these three areas that some of them will be relatable to you, and maybe bring some understanding to your walk with God in three areas that I realized two of them, I did not have my understanding and perspective on who Jesus was and what he had done

for me correctly. And then the last one is when I got my understanding correct about Jesus, and what he had done for me, and how everything changed after that. The first one that I want to talk about is the timeframe that I dealt with, probably 20 years, or more, which I'll call law. And I don't mean like the law of the United States are breaking the law here in the States, I'm talking biblical law. And in the Old Testament, it talks about there were 613 laws and the 10 commandments. But what happens is, when you are under that mindset of operating in the law, one way you can know, if you're dealing with that is if you always have this thought of doing good, get good, do bad, get bad from God. I don't know how many times I felt like if I let God down or did something wrong, he was going to strike lightning at me. And now it's just like, you know, I know how loving he is. And I knew he was loving back then. But I could even love him with all my heart. And I loved having a relationship with him. But it was just a struggle in how close I felt to him because I felt very distant from him. And that I found out was not on his end, that was all on my end because I had a misunderstanding. And that that was where the whole problem was, is I just had a misunderstanding of who God is. And didn't know how much he loved me. And it took me 19 years of my 37-year walk to really, really believe that he truly loved me just the way I was in all my mess. And once that happened, things started to change. But then I entered a new phase. The next phase is what I call the religious mindset. And in that one, it's you have to have this, do this, do this to become this, or do this and then do this again. But don't do this. To become this didn't keep me from loving God. I just thought this is the way it was.

And I thought everybody did this. And now I'm happy to say that I entered the righteousness phase. I cried and cried. And yes, it was a happy cry, not a sad cry. I was so happy that I finally got it I finally understood righteousness. Yes, that one word made a big difference. In everything that how, I saw how I saw God, how I saw Jesus, how I saw myself and how he I kind of started seeing how he saw me. And it was so much better. So because it's so much better, I'd like to reiterate the differences between the three, law does good, get good, or do bad, get bad from God. religion says you need to achieve this, you need to do this, you need to do more. You need to do this again. But don't do this, to become this. And then God will bless you. Then righteousness says that you have already become because of what Jesus did on the cross. Religion gets you focused on your obedience, your actions, and your self. Righteousness gets you focused on Jesus and his obedience going to the cross to make us righteous. If we stay occupied, occupied on him by beholding him and what he did for us, things will change for the better. Now I'd like to read some of my favorite passages from the Bible that have really helped me. The first one is Colossians 1: 19 through 23. In the New Living Translation, for God in all His fullness was pleased to live in Christ. And through him, God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ blood on the cross. This includes you who were once far away from God, you were his enemies separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. Yet now he has reconciled us to himself through the death of Christ in His physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless, as you stand before him

without a single fault. But you must continue to believe this truth and stand firmly in don't drift away from the assurance you've received when you heard the good news. The good news has been preached all over the world. And I Paul had been appointed as God's servant to proclaim it. I love that verse. And it just says everything it says pretty much everything in a nutshell. But there are so many more verses that share about this. And so back 1500 years before Jesus came, God had, through Moses installed the law, the whole system of the law, and before that with Abraham, and before that there was like 2500 years, that was done with grace. But during the

1500 years of law, there was 613 laws and 10 commandments that were put in place by God for the Israel people. And in James 2:10 , Paul, or James tells us that if you broke one of the laws, you broke them all, it was no different. So it basically was impossible to keep all the laws and not ever fail. And God did that with several intentions. But one of them was for people to realize that they would need a savior and that they couldn't do it on their own, and they couldn't perform and save themselves. And so that's why he would do that. So that when Jesus did come, they go Yeah, we want to save you because this is just too hard to do this on our own. During those 1500 years of law, if they sin, they had to make a sacrifice that with an animal, and the blood of that animal covered their sin, but it didn't remove the condemnation. And it didn't permanently remove, but it just covered it enough that it was in the way God said to do it. So because God said to do the sacrifice that way, he still continued to bless them after they made that sacrifice even though they had sinned. While Jesus in the book of Hebrews, it tells us that Jesus came and he only did it once he was on the cross once and shed his blood once. And not only did it do more than cover our sins, it removed them. And in Romans four, eight, it also tells us that the punishment was taken off of us because

all the punishment was put on Jesus when he was on that cross, along with our sins along with everything that he did on the cross. So for Romans 4:8 tells us that sin is not imputed to us, only on Jesus. And then in Hebrews 8:12 and 10:17 . It says that God's telling us that he does not remember our sin anymore, which is absolutely amazing. To me, I really struggled with that one for years when I heard that it just how could God forget my sin, I certainly remember it. Even though I had asked Jesus to forgive me. And he had forgiven me and cleansed me. But I still had that either law mentality or religious mentality that affected the way I received his love and the way I received his forgiveness. You know that that's a huge statement right there, to receive His love, but also to receive His forgiveness, to receive what he did on the cross. And that work that he took all of that punishment. He was beaten, he was crucified on the cross, all for us. About a year into the timeframe that I started realizing that I was walking in righteousness and not condemnation in law, right religion anymore. I was in my concordance. And I just love looking up words in the concordance because it makes verses come more alive and get a better understanding. And it really helps my mind to see what the verse is trying to say. And one day I decided to look up the word salvation, both in the Greek and in the Hebrew. And I was amazed at what salvation means. It actually means five different things. It means saved, made well

delivered, prospered and protected. We receive all of that when we get saved and accepted Jesus as a relationship with Jesus. All of that is instantly ours in our spirit. I remember thinking before I found that out, that I knew that I had access to healing, and prosperity and protection because the Word of God told me, but again, I thought it was something I had to earn. It was something I thought I had to do this and do this to get to become that.

And here the whole time, I already had it. And it was at my disposal whenever needed. And I just didn't know it. This is why I'd like to encourage you to really do what you can to really start studying about your identity in Christ, and that you're a child of God and you're loved by God, and that you have a great savior that did everything for you. He took all the punishment of our sin on his body, so that we can have direct access with God again, we have dominion again, we have authority. And it's just amazing all that Jesus did for us on the cross. And it's really fascinating once you get into the word and start studying it. So if you haven't done it before, I'd really encourage you to do it. It's just an awesome journey. Another story in the Bible that I'd like to share about is back in Genesis 15. And it was God and Abraham