Fellowship Memphis

Listening to the teaching of the current series, Saving the Saved: The Gospel to the Religious, could easily equip the hearer with the ability to recognize the legalism in the church he grew up in or even in the lives of his friends and neighbors. It takes something less comfortable to examine the religion in one’s own heart.

One of the members of Fellowship Student Ministries recognized this need while at camp this summer.

“I never really knew life without God. I loved Jesus, or so I thought, and I was pretty sure I had asked Him to be in my life. I had always made good grades, respected my parents, gone to a good school, and had good friends. I just didn’t see anything that I was doing wrong. I assumed I was good enough.

The part I didn’t understand was that I didn’t have to be good enough, and even though it seemed like I was doing everything “right” I still had sin. My sin was thinking I was good enough, always trying to be good enough, and being judgmental of those who I thought weren’t as good as me.

It really broke me down realizing that this is the sin Jesus hates the most. I identify my self with the Pharisees and the older brother in the Prodigal Son. He wants me to realize that I don’t have to try and be good enough, or that I don’t have to fix my sin and can never be good enough. He loves me even with all my sin, obvious or not. This is when I began to understand it all. God doesn’t want me to be good enough; He really doesn’t want me doing senseless things trying to fix my sin; that is why he sent Jesus. When I love him He takes my sin away and He makes me whole.”