Covenant living means you stop treating God like you have Him on trial and start living as someone who is actually bound to Him, and Him to you. On November 2, Dr. Vorce opened a new teaching series on Covenant Living, and if you missed it, here is what he laid out.
Let’s begin with everyday life. Marriage is a covenant, and so is a car loan. If you stop paying your car loan, eventually, you’ll find the car gone, and have no one to blame but yourself. Likewise, if you neglect the marital covenant you will be in trouble as well. Dr. Vorce joked that he finally grasped the concept of a marriage covenant just a couple of hours after their wedding. His new bride, Donna, looked at him and said, "Now what's mine is mine and what's your's is mine."
His point was serious under the humor. A lot of people go into marriage, and into church, like it is a tryout. Covenant says the opposite. It says I am in, and the promise is enduring. Things don't always turn out the way we plan but God is a God of restoration, even in the area of marital covenant. For more on this important topic, read how Jonathan and Donna came back together after divorce.
Just like Jesus said, “Come to Me if you are tired and burdened, and I will give you rest.” That promise of rest is very real, and it’s something you can take for yourself. No one else can give it to you, not even your mother, father, grandparent, or even your pastor. The promise is for you, but you must be the one to receive it for yourself.
The teaching text was Hebrews 8:6-13, which calls the New Covenant better, built on better promises. A few things stood out:
Dr. Vorce gave his own working definition of grace. Here it is: "Grace is... God's ability to do in you and for you what you could not do in yourself or for yourself." That is a generous definition. He also warned about what he called hyper-grace, the idea that you can give your life to Christ and then live however you please. Grace gives us the power to live a changed life, not the permission to act like Calvary didn't happen. This is reminiscent of another recent message that lines up with the warning in hearing the Word and doing the Word are not the same thing.
One part of the message that really resonated with many of us is from Genesis 15. This passage describes what “cutting covenant” meant in the Old Testament. When two people “cut covenant,” they would walk “in the midst” of sacrificial animals that had been slain and divided, essentially saying that anyone who broke the agreement would become like those pieces. But God did something different with Abraham. When Abraham was about to walk among the pieces to meet God, he found God already standing in the middle, all alone. As Dr. Vorce explained, God was saying, “I’m willing to take the risk and the hits for this covenant for both of us.” And thousands of years later, at Calvary, Jesus did just that.
This is why this series matters. We are not trying to talk God into keeping covenant. He has already paid for His part and is waiting on us to come "into" covenant with Him..
If you want a place to start, get your free copy of Dr. Vorce's ebook, Presence Driven, at jonathanvorce.com.
Remember... "The Word Will Work, If You Work the Word."
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