Our money is a direct reflection of the priorities of our lives. We like to disconnect the two, but really they are very connected. Jesus said, “Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be” (Luke 12:34). We will invest in our passions. If you want to find out what a person’s interests are, then take a tour of their checkbook or expense account and see where they are spending their money.

Although some make more money than others and some are more successful than others, here is the thing we all need to keep in mind: We need to take what God has given us and be wise stewards over it, investing generously in the work of the kingdom of God. God will bless generosity.

Paul wrote, “You must each decide in your heart how much to give. And don’t give reluctantly or in response to pressure. ‘For God loves a person who gives cheerfully’ ” (2 Corinthians 9:7).

Am I saying that if you give, then God will make you rich?

No, I am not saying that at all. But Scripture connects the two. Paul follows up 2 Corinthians 9:7 with this statement: “And God will generously provide all you need. Then you will always have everything you need and plenty left over to share with others” (verse 8).

I often hear people say, “I am afraid I don’t know if I have enough faith.” How much faith do you need in order to be saved?

The Bible does not teach that you are justified because of your faith. Faith is not works.

Faith is nothing more than the instrument to receive our salvation. Nowhere in Scripture will you find that we are justified on account of our faith. The Scripture says that we are justified by faith or through faith. Faith is nothing but the channel by which this righteousness of God in Christ becomes ours. It is not our faith that saves us.

The whole emphasis on salvation by faith is clearly on the object of our faith: Jesus Christ. Jesus saves! Faith does not save us. Jesus alone does that.

Spurgeon once said, “It does not take a strong faith to save you, just faith. The weakness of your faith will not destroy you. A trembling hand may receive a golden gift.”

The apostle Paul wrote, “The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe” (v. 22). Sinners are “justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith” (vv. 24-25a). God did it this way as a demonstration “that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (v. 26). You cannot boast if you are saved by grace through faith in Christ, “For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the Law” (v. 28). Moreover, “He will justify the circumcision by faith and the uncircumcised through faith” (v. 30).

The Apostle Paul tells about a lovely woman who found herself married to a demanding perfectionist. He laid the law down to her day after day. He made insistent demands on her behavior. There was no escaping his tyrannical guilt trips. No matter how hard she tired nothing she ever did was good enough to please him. It was impossible to live up to his standards of behavior and conduct. No matter how hard she tried, she was a failure.

Because of his insistent attitudes, her feelings altered between fear of his exacting demands and judgment to a sense of complete failure, guilt, resentment and hostility. Her situation was hopeless. He was perfect and she was just the opposite. Living with him was impossible.

How long could she go on in this situation? Secretly she wished he were dead. Nevertheless, he was in perfect health and strict moralist. He wasn’t going to go away. He wasn’t going to die, and for him divorce was out of the picture.

Then would you know it, she met another man. This man was everything she ever wanted. Yes, he was perfect, yet it was balanced with love. There was grace about him. Her new suitor was everything she ever wanted. She found it impossible to resist his intense love for her. Moreover, she desired a mature intimate love relationship with him!

In time, he asked her to be his. Oh, yes, he was aware of her present state. She belonged to another man. She was married. Moreover, the law was very clear about adultery. “The law has jurisdiction over a person as long as he lives.” When a person dies that is the end of the authority of the law. However, after he dies she is free to marry anyone she pleases. Since her husband was not going to die, and he would never consent to divorce there was only one alternative. She would have to die! Then the law could have no effect on her. She could marry whomever she pleased and be innocent.

I know. You are asking the question, “But if she were dead, how could she possibly marry her suitor?”

There is only one way. She would have to die and rise from the dead!

Paul used a simple illustration of marriage law to show how Christians have been freed from law in order to be married to Jesus Christ. His antagonists had raised question, “But what about the law?” “Doesn’t salvation by grace through faith lead to immorality?” Legalists still argue the same point, “Doesn’t the gospel you are preaching annul the law or set it aside?”

Paul’s argument is that the law is fully honored and satisfied in the good news of God’s free justification of the sinner based on the atoning death of Christ. The very salvation God provides in Christ fulfills the law. Moreover, it liberates those who have been held in its bondage so they can produce righteousness.

 Remember, “we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing that our old self was crucified with Him, that our body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him” (6:5–8).

Please keep in mind the context of Romans chapters five and six. The believer has died to sin (6:2) and to law (7:4). He is free from sin (6:18) and from law (7:3). He is “justified from sin” (6:7) and discharged “from law” (7:6). He walks in newness of life (6:4) and serves in newness of Spirit (7:6).

The “law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good,” but it cannot save anyone. Just as the law cannot save, it also cannot sanctify. The law never produced righteousness in anyone. It can only bring condemnation because no one can live up to its holy demands. It does not empower anyone to live according to its high standards. Everyone is bound to the law as long as he or she lives. So how can we be fruitful? The answer to a holy life is not the law, but a person living within us through the power of His resurrection. That is little good, however, if we are still under bondage to the law. How can we be released from the law? Only by dying to the law. Death must terminate our old relationship in order to enter into a new, fruitful relationship with Jesus Christ. In order to produce holiness in our lives we must die to the law in order to be free for Jesus Christ. The rescuer is a person—Jesus Christ.

Great saints down through history of Christianity have never bragged, “How good I am,” but “Get away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man” (Luke 5:8). That is the authentic lament of the true Christian.

The apostle Paul shares with us in Romans seven the intimacy of his own struggle. The emotion reveals personal involvement. I love the personal honesty of the apostle Paul. I wish more of us preachers in our day were as honest.

What happens to the believer when he sins? What we see in Romans seven is the mature believer and how he responds to the sin that dwells within him.

In Romans chapter seven the apostle Paul is still a sinner, no matter how much out of character that may be. However, Paul does reveal to us in this chapter his own experiences when he does sin. This is agonizing for the apostle. “For I do not do what I want–instead, I do what I hate” (v. 15 NET). He does not want to sin. Indeed, the desire is there to resist temptation, but he failed. He does not want to sin, but he is weak in the flesh (v. 16). When Paul thinks about the sin he ponders, “nothing good lives in me” (v. 18). And he reasons, “For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh, for I want to do the good, but I cannot do it” (v. 18 NET). It is very clear in this paragraph the apostle does not deny his personal responsibility, for he knows he is the one who sinned. It is not a figment of his deluded imagination. “For I do not do the good I want, but I do the very evil I do not want!” (v. 19 NET).

What is the problem Paul? Sin. It is sin living in me (v. 20). The principle of sin is at work. I sin in spite of the fact that I have been spiritually regenerated. “Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer me doing it but sin that lives in me” (v. 20 NET). The old nature leads him to sin even when he does not want to. There is within the apostle Paul a power of evil that is too strong for him for he is enslaved to sin, and a prisoner. He is led captive by the law of sin. Sin was not eradicated when Paul was born again.

These facts did not give Paul license to sin, however, and neither do they give us freedom to sin it up. It is not characteristic of his life, but the exception. Normally, he lives in victory. The emphasis Paul is making is that, yes, the believer does sin, and when he does his conscience is alive to the horror of it. It does not matter to Paul that it is occasional; it is of concern to him that it happened at all.

How tragic when Christians do not see the seriousness of their sins and live in ease. No one is so blind as the person who will not see and repent of his own sins.

The apostle Paul shares the intimacy of his own personal struggle and reveals his own efforts to live in a manner pleasing to God. We love him as an apostle and teacher because he can identify with us. These are the emotions and responses of a mature Christian revealing his own experience before God.

“What a wretched man I am!” does not sound like an unregenerate person. These are the words of someone who is a believer and sensitive to the work of the Holy Spirit in his heart. He is aware of his inability to always do what is right.

Calvin said, “We are so addicted to sin, that we can do nothing of our own accord but sin.” The apostle wants to do right, but he cannot in his own strength.

The whole point Paul is driving at is the more we grow in Christ-likeness the more clearly we realize that we fail to meet the high standards God sets before us as Christians. This fact forces us to look to Jesus Christ and the strength He gives in His Spirit to live the victorious life “in Christ.”

The power of persistent prayer is incredible. Strength rises up in your voice as you continuously seek God’s answer to your prayers. Rest assured that He will always answer: through fulfillment of your prayer, a firm “no,” or by guiding your heart in a different direction, causing you to no longer seek the answer to that prayer. Go ahead and pray a specific prayer daily.

1. Everything in the Christian life depends upon what Christ has done for us on the cross, and what He continues to do in and through us as He lives His life in us. Not only has He died for us, but also through a mystical union of the believer with Him we are “in Christ,” and He is “in you.”
   The most important principle of sanctification is counting as true what God Himself has already done for us. We are to count as true what is, according to God’s Word, true.
   The key to our progressive sanctification is in knowing that God has taken us out of Adam and has joined us to Jesus Christ. We are no longer subject to the reign of sin and death, but are now transferred to the kingdom of God.
   The apostle Paul says our responsibility is to “consider [reckon] yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:11). He uses an accounting term in the imperative tense. Be constantly counting upon the fact that you are dead to sin, but also alive to God in Christ Jesus.
   The word translated “reckon” or “consider” is a key word in the apostle Paul’s teaching on sanctification. He calls upon us to “count, reckon, impute” on certain facts. It is an accounting word that means to take into account, to calculate, to estimate. We are to impute or “to put to one’s account” certain facts. The idea “to reckon” means “to put to one’s account.” It simply means to believe that what God says in His Word is really true in your life.
   Paul is admonishing the believer in Christ to recognize something that is already an accomplished fact. Consider, and keep constantly before you, this truth about who you are in Christ. We are commanded to reckon as facts who we are in our relationship with Christ.
   How tragic that most Christians do not know who they are in Christ. They have no idea about their vital union in Christ.
   They are to “count themselves “dead in reference to “sin but alive to God.” When did you die? When you put your faith in Christ and were born again. Since they are dead to its power (Rom. 6:2), they ought to recognize that fact and not continue in sin. Instead they are to realize they have new “life in Christ,” and they share His resurrection life (Eph. 2:5-6; Col. 2:12-13).
   Our sins have been reckoned to Christ and punished in His death on the cross. This is a fact that cannot be changed. His righteousness has been credited to our account. This happened the moment we put our faith in Christ as our Savior. Jesus actually died for our sins as our substitute. He suffered our transgressions (Isa. 53:5-6). “The wages of sin is death,” and Christ paid that debt in full. That is a fact to be reckoned upon ever day of our lives. It is our responsibility to count upon this fact and apply it to our daily lives.
   Moreover, He not only died for our sins, but God has credited the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ to our accounting ledger. His right standing in the Father’s sight has been transferred to our account, and God now accounts us righteous in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:21).
   The critical point is that the born again Christian count as true this great fact as God sees it. It is a completed transaction. God has acquitted us forever. We must reckon as true what God has already done for us.
   We are no longer subject to the reign of sin and death. We are now under the power of the kingdom of God and His rule by grace.
   The apostle Paul did not tell us to feel a certain way, but to act on God’s Word and claim these truths for ourselves. When we count on these facts they result in actions and changes in our behaviors. We act by faith on what we know to be the truth. The result is a behavioral change.
   Remember, Paul is using an accounting term. If I give my employees a check and say there is money in the bank to cover your check I expect them to go to the bank and cash their checks and collect their money. If they do not they are not reckoning or counting on the money being theirs in the bank. Reckoning is acting on the fact that the money is there.
   In these Scriptures God does not command us to become dead to sin. He tells us that we are already dead to sin and alive unto God. He commands us to act on this great truth. These facts are still true even if we do not act on them. That is the tragedy in many believer’s lives. They do not act on the truths about their relationship with Christ.
   “We are dead to sin” does not mean we are immune to sin. It does not mean that sin as a force in me is dead. Sin is a force in me, even though its effective power over the believer has been broken. We no longer have to be slaves of sin (Romans 6:6). Sin does not have to dominate our bodies. We do not have to yield to it. We now have a new power within and available to us at all times. We are to learn to think of ourselves as individuals who have been delivered from the power of sin. It does not have to rule over us. There is a sense in which we can be as holy as we want to be.
   Sin has not been eradicated from the believer, but we are freed from the bondage of sin. We were slaves whose bondage has been broken. We were slaves to our sinful nature, who have now become new creatures in Christ. We are to count upon the fact that we are dead to sin, and alive to God in Jesus Christ.
   Sin is not dead in Christians. It is something that we have to deal with daily because we are sinners. We do face temptation daily, but we do not have to yield to it. Its power has been broken.
   Sin has its hold on the believer through our bodies. Sin dwells within. The new man in Christ is dead to sin meaning that the hold is on my body. I now have a choice as to whether I will use my body to serve sin or God. Sin cannot dominate or destroy what I have become in Christ. I can yield to sin, but the new person will abhor sin and long for righteousness. This is why Paul admonishes the Christian, “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts” (Rom. 6:12).
   We often do sin; therefore, Paul exhorts us to not yield our bodies to sin because we do not have to. We have other options. We are pressing forward to new goals because we no longer are satisfied by what the body of sin offers (Phil. 3:12-14; 2 Cor. 5:17-18). The sharing in this resurrection life of Christ begins at the moment of regeneration, but it will continue as a believer shares eternity with the Lord. Resurrection life is eternal in quality and everlasting in duration.
   “Do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God” (Rom. 6:13). Sin does not have to be master over the true Christian. “For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace” (v. 14).
   A life of holiness begins with a change in the way we think about what Christ did for us. “Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Then we must always act on what we know to be the truth.

Our progressive sanctification is an ever putting off all that belongs to the old man, and putting on all that belongs to the new man in Christ.

The old nature of man in Adam has not evolved better over the last two thousand years. Has the carnal mind with its urges become so good to the Holy Spirit that we no longer need to subject it to the Holy Spirit? Undisciplined self-gratification has never been compatible with strong, vibrant, mature spiritual growth. You cannot be a mature believer and live anyway you choose. You cannot give nature all that it desires without defrauding the grace of God.

Romans chapter seven pictures every Christian’s spiritual battle in progress. Our old nature, though judged and condemned and deposed in the death of Christ is forever revolting against the sentence of death. It struggles daily to regain its lost supremacy.

The believer who is in Christ not only has died with Christ, but is bound to “die daily” with Him so long as he is in the flesh.

The two natures, at present are dwelling together, even though they are at perpetual war with one another. When one is weak the other is strong. When one loses the other conquers.

We are new creatures in Christ whose inward man is “renewed day by day.” The new man from above battles daily with the forces of evil.

The cross and the resurrection of Christ extend their influence and power over the Christian’s life until the day we are presented perfect to our Father in heaven. The development of the Christian toward perfection is always going in two opposite directions. There is the mortifying, suppressing, subjecting the natural man, and the nurturing, renewing and developing the spiritual man who lives within.

In the crucifixion of the old man we make the death of Christ our own. The carnal mind must always be delivered up to death for Christ’s sake. This is our life-long experience.

If we are to become like Christ in our daily practice we must subdue our sinful desires, behaviors and bring them under the influence of the cross.

Our sanctification is prolonged and perpetuated in our daily experiences.

We are to have the same mind of Christ. We have been judged in the person of Christ knowing that He bore our sins in His death, follow on in the path of the cross judging and mortifying all that we find in our lives contrary to Christ. Anything that is opposed to Christ in our lives must die. We must deny and die to the expression of the old life as we knew it before we become Christians. We must refuse the indulgence of the old man.

The Holy Spirit is always bringing us to the surrender of self in all its forms to the will of God.

Our Savior’s suffering is never more beautiful than when reproduced in our daily lives as we die to self, fleshly desires and unholy ambition.

However, no amount of self-denial of the old nature will make us holier, unless we are brought at the same time into a deeper intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit. As we abide in Christ we walk as Christ walked.

Daily communion with Jesus is a certain way of overcoming sin in our lives. Our growth in grace and knowledge of Christ can never fail to promote the subjection of nature. Our natural man cannot endure the burning heat of the unclouded presence of Christ.

May our steady gaze upon Christ blind our hearts to the desires of the unregenerate life-style.

Oh, blessed day when the battle is over and we cease from our putting off and putting on and we are presented spotless in Christ “when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortal.

Even so, come Lord Jesus.

“We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.” Romans 12:6-8 (NIV) 

Our sweet spot is that place where our greatest passions and our talents or abilities intersect.

Living in the sweet spot means having courage to follow our dreams, take risks and work harder than we ever thought to accomplish our goals.

Don’t let the fear of falling short deter you from trying. You will make mistakes. You will mess up. You may have to admit defeat. Keep going. Use them as opportunities to discover what doesn’t work, but always persevere.