I’m not lucky. I’m loved.

Steve Brown:
Hey, I’m not lucky, I’m loved. Let’s talk about it on this edition, of Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
This is Key Life, here to communicate the freeing truth that God’s not mad at His children. Steve invited our friend Jerry Parries to teach this week. Jerry is the pastor of Christian Family Worship Center, House of Grace. And the author of Grace: The Real Good News of the Gospel.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hi Jerry.

Jerry Parries:
Hey, Dr. Brown. How are you doing?

Steve Brown:
What a great time we’ve had this week.

Jerry Parries:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
And we’ve got more to come. Review what we said yesterday about.

Jerry Parries:
Yeah, well, we’re talking about the power of confession and I talked about on yesterday that you have to speak over your life and say some great things about you. Sometimes you’ve got to get up in the morning, as I do every morning, and say that I’m blessed and highly favored. The Lord’s favor is over my life and I walk that way, I talk that way and I say that man, I’m, I’m a blessed guy. If you hire me, you did a great thing because I bring favor to every place that I go.

Steve Brown:
You know, that explains a lot about you. I’ve often wondered, you know, you really do. We started this week by saying, when you walked into my study at Key Life, things worked better. I mean, the light came on. And now, I’m finding out exactly why that’s true.

Jerry Parries:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
Okay, speak life. Now, let’s talk about something else.

Jerry Parries:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
Isn’t Jesus really, isn’t he angry with me when I do bad things and

Jerry Parries:
No, no, no, no, no. Listen, number one, I’d say I was going to give you three things this week. So, yesterday I gave you that you have to speak over your life. Here’s the second thing. You have to know that God is a hundred percent pleased with you because of Jesus Christ. Let that sink in.

Steve Brown:
Oh man.

Jerry Parries:
God is a hundred percent, a hundred, not 99, not 80%. God is only 50 percent pleased with me. No, God is a hundred percent pleased with you because of Jesus Christ. II Corinthians 5:21 says.

God made Jesus who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God.

Let me explain to you what God did. God took all of your sins, every sin that you will ever commit, every sin that you have committed, your past, your present. He went, he reached from the beginning of time to the end of the age and took every sin that could ever be committed, placed it on Jesus, crucified Jesus on the cross, took our sins, put them on Jesus. Then he took Jesus righteousness who obeyed every law, who walked perfect in every area of his life, who had no sin in his life and he took Jesus’ righteousness and he put it on you, Dr. Brown. He put Dr. Steve Brown, he put all of Jesus righteousness on you. He credited your account with everything that Jesus did right. He credited your account. So, when God looks at you, he doesn’t see you, he sees the blood of Jesus over your life. So, when I make the statement that God is a hundred percent pleased with you, he’s a hundred percent pleased with you because of Jesus Christ. So, every time he sees you and you are in Christ, because of

If any man be In Christ, he’s a new creature.

He’s a hundred percent pleased with you. So, when you walk around today, knowing that God is a hundred percent pleased with you, do you imagine, can you imagine how your prayer life will change? You’re not praying to God, God, I’m sorry what I did. You’re not going that way. You’re saying, Father, thank you that you are a hundred percent pleased with me. I confess, here’s the sin that I confess. I confess that I have been forgiven. I confess that you have already taken care of that and now I can walk in the beauty of holiness knowing that God has taken care of it.

Steve Brown:
Oh, that’s so good. And that’s the heart of the Christian faith.

Jerry Parries:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
It really is. Why do people not like what you just said?

Jerry Parries:
Because we are people that believe that we have to pay for everything, nothing is free. And salvation cost, but it didn’t cost you, it cost Jesus. Your sins were paid for but you didn’t pay for them, Jesus paid for them. So, we like to think that I have to pay for them. If I’m going to take you out to dinner Steve and I’m going to pay the entire bill.

Jesus paid it all.

If that’s true, and I’m going to pay the bill, then why are you going to try to ask the waiter, let me pay the bill for my food? I’ve already paid it. And you’ve got to receive that. You’ve got to believe that. And when you believe that, your life changes. All of a sudden, you’re free to love others because God has loved you.

Steve Brown:
That’s so good. You know, one of the things that irritate me, and it shouldn’t. And this says bad things about me, not good things, but I’ll be in a restaurant, and somebody there, and I never know who they are, will be a listener of Key Life, or have watched our video talk show, or heard me preach in their church. And so, the waiter, or the waitress, when they come over to me to bring the bill, they would say, there is no bill. It’s been paid. And I said, well, who paid it? And they say, I don’t know, but he’s gone. And you, and I have no idea who it was. I’m irritated. I want to do something back, that’s human nature.

Jerry Parries:
It is human nature.

Steve Brown:
And it’s not a good thing.

Jerry Parries:
It is not what God intended. God did this for you. God loved you so much that God took Jesus who knew no sin. God did this for you and it pleased him to do it. This is one of my my favorite Scriptures in the Bible. It’s in Colossians 1:19 out of the New Living Translation. It says.

For God in all his fullness was pleased,

he was pleased,

to live in Christ, and through him God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and in earth by means of Christ’s blood on the cross.

Here it is.

This includes you

So, whoever you are that’s riding around, you say to yourself, he included me in this.

who was once far away from God.

This is verse 21.

You were his enemy, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions,

But verse 22 says.

yet now

Somebody ought to shout now in the car, I feel like preaching.

yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body.

And here’s what happened.

As a result of him doing that, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy, blameless, as you stand before him without a single fault.

Steve Brown:
Oh, that is so good. That really is.

Jerry Parries:
Listen, you’re driving right now. You can look at your neighbor that’s in the car next to you. If you’re in your house, you can look at the people, look at your pets and say, I’m holy. I’m blameless. I don’t have a single fault. When you believe that there’s a sunshine that comes into your life, negativity goes away. You start speaking over your life, positive things that will happen for you.

Steve Brown:
You know, obviously there are great number of people who don’t buy into this. If you go to some churches, all you do is feel condemned, and you think when you’re getting up and you’re leaving. Oh man, I’ve got to work harder at this, I’m not doing anything to please God. In fact, I’m displeasing him. And pretty soon you’re speaking lies into your life in a way that’ll kill you.

Jerry Parries:
I can’t wait till your new book come out about this. It’s going to be amazing because that’s what we do. We don’t believe, in fact verse 23 said, in the same chapter, it says.

But you must continue to believe this truth and stand firmly in it.

It’s the truth, man, that you got to believe that you’re wholly blameless without a single fault that God is a hundred percent pleased with you. I want to go back to your story about the dinner and how we as humans feel. I remember this is true story and this is with you. Me and my wife went out to eat with you and your wife and when I got to the restaurant, I looked at the restaurant, I looked at the menu and I wanted the filet mignon and I wanted the lobster tail. I wanted to the turf. And of course I’m prepared to pay for it, and you said, get whatever you want. I’m going to pay for it. When you said that, all of a sudden said, I don’t know if I want to do that. I don’t want to, I don’t want to, you know, and that’s what exactly

Steve Brown:
That’s what we do.

Jerry Parries:
That’s exactly what we do. When God says I paid for it all, we say, I’ve got to give you something. When the disciples asked Jesus, what can we do? Jesus says, nothing, believe, believe on the one who God sent, which is Jesus. And when you do that, man, your life changes to something miraculous. And by the way, I did get the steak and lobster.

Steve Brown:
Well, I didn’t remember, but I’m glad you did. And that makes an incredible illustration about what we’re talking about here too, doesn’t it?

Jerry Parries:
Yes, yes.

Steve Brown:
In fact, it makes me hungry just thinking about it. We’ve got to go out to dinner again soon, and you have to pay, and I get to use the illustration. Listen, if you’ve been, by the way, how does this affect, you know, we’re called to be humble. This doesn’t make us prideful, it makes us more humble, doesn’t it?

Jerry Parries:
Absolutely, because we know that it’s not on us, when I went out there and bought, got the steak and lobster, I’m not prideful, look what I can buy. I didn’t buy it. I was humble and blessed that you bought enough of me to pay for it. It made me more endeared to you because you loved me enough to bless me. That’s what this does. This makes you say, man, God loves me so much. Look what he’s done for my life. Now, I’m going to give this same love to somebody.

Steve Brown:
And you can’t do it until you receive it.

Jerry Parries:
Until you receive it. You can’t give what you have not been given. You can’t even give forgiveness if you haven’t been forgiven.

Steve Brown:
Okay, that’s a principle.

Can’t love until you’ve been loved, and then only to the degree to which you have been loved. And you can’t forgive until you’ve been forgiven. And then to degree to which you have been forgiven.

So, try and remember that, okay? You are loved deeply. You are forgiven totally. You think about that. Amen.

Matthew Porter:
That was Steve Brown and our good friend Jerry Parries, continuing their week long discussion on the power of confession. Something I think we don’t talk about enough. We’ll wrap up this teaching series tomorrow. Do join us. And hey, if you’re digging Jerry Parries, why not swing by our website keylife.org on the left hand menu, click Authors, that will take you to a page where you can learn all about our Key Life voices, like Jerry, Matt Heard, Pete Alwinson, and Justin Holcomb. And one more feature, I don’t even know if I’ve mentioned this one before. Most of the articles we publish have a little play button underneath the headline. You click it, you’ll hear an automated voice read that article for you. It’s great if you have trouble reading text, or maybe you just want to give your eyes a break. It’s just one more way we’re working to enhance your experience there at keylife.org and as always, all of our website content and features are still free thanks to the generous support of listeners just like you. If you’d like to donate, just call us at 1-800-KEY-LIFE that’s 1-800-539-5433. If you’d like to send a donation by mail, go to keylife.org/contact to find our mailing addresses for the U.S. and Canada. Or e-mail [email protected] giving is easy, you can charge a gift on your credit card, you can include a gift in your envelope. And of course, now you can give safely and securely through text. Just pick up your phone. Just pause doing Wordle for a couple minutes. It’ll still be there when you get back. And text keylife to 28950 and then follow the instructions. Key Life is a member of ECFA in the States and CCCC in Canada. And Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.