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GracePoint Distinctives: Support for Understanding the Grace Perspective! (Excerpts/Quotes from Talks and Presentations)

This document is a work in process and may need additional editing but will help provide support for understanding the message of grace.

1. God (in Relationship to Us)
2. God (Us in Relationship to God/Our Response to God)
3. The Law (Summarized in the Ten Commandments)
4. The Word of God (the Life of Christ), The Rhema, and The Scripture
5. The Judgment of God, The Wrath of God
6. Punishment and Discipline
7. Suffering/Adversity
8. Testing and Trials
9. The Blessings/Favor of God
10. Health and Happiness
11. Soteriology (The Doctrine of Salvation/Redemption)
12. Codependent and Redemptive Relationships
13. Grace Ministry
14. Teaching/Preaching
15. Grace Leadership (in the Home and Church)
16. The Name of Jesus
17. The Fruits of the Spirit

God (His Relationship to Us):

  • Love 
    • God’s love for us is expressed by giving; our love for him is expressed by receiving.
    • God is in relationship to us, not for what we can do for him, but for what we will give him opportunity to do for us.
    • God did not create us in order to experience us, but to give us opportunity to experience him.
    • God’s love for us is unconditional, not based upon anything that is true about us, but upon something that is true about him: He is God.
    • God’s interest in every detail of our lives is passionate and intense.
    • God’s commitment to provide support for our health and happiness is unfailing.
    • Nothing we can do, good or bad, changes God’s love (value) for us.
    • We do not win God’s favor; rather, he wins ours.
    • God has no unmet emotional needs he calls us to meet.
    • God grieves because of our wrong choices but is never disappointed with us.
    • God is not offended. We do not need to apologize to him.
    • The voice we hear that makes us feel guilt, shame, or fear is not from God.
    • God’s commitment to our health and happiness is unfailing. 
  • Faithful/Unfailing 
God (Our Relationship to Him)

  • Love 
    • Our love for God is our love for his provisions.
    • Our love for God is expressed by receiving.
    • Our love for God is enabled by Christ’s love in us for him. 
  • Worship
  • Praise 
  • Serve
    • We do not serve God; he serves us and others through us.
    • We are not slaves to God attending to his needs (He has none!), but vessels/resources for the flow of his redemptive provisions into a hurting world - conduits for the shining of his Light into the darkness.
    • We do not serve our resources; rather they serve us to support our service to others. 
  • Wait on
  • Believe
  • Trust
  • Know
  • Glorify
  • Fear
  • Pursue
  • Honor
  • Submit to
  • Giving thanks to (Thanksgiving)
  • Pray to
    • God only provides that which is redemptive (essential for our salvation - justification and healing).
    • God has brought every redemptive provision needed to the door of every man's heart/life (Revelation 3:20).
    • This means, there are no redemptive provisions which God holds back, waiting on us to prove our worthiness to him.
    • Asking God for what he does not provide is not prayer.
    • No amount of behavior to win God's favor will change his mind to provide it anyhow.
    • God provides every redemptive need we ask for. The Bible says so.
    • Asking in prayer for God's provisions assumes receiving. It is the same as opening a door.
    • Asking in prayer is receiving. It is not begging or putting in a request for supplies. Rather, it is opening the door to receive God's provisions in the same way we open the door to receive Christ. Opening the door to Christ is the same as asking him to enter.
    • Asking/Receiving assumes we have faith a) to connect (open the door) and b) that God provisions are indeed available at the door.
    • Asking/Receiving assumes obedience to connect for the answer.
    • Obedience, however, is not rule keeping to prove our loyalty to God. Rather, it is obedience to connect to God's resources through which his provisions come into our lives. For example, asking God for water is the same as obedience to drink it.
    • The only sin that hinders receiving God's provisions is the sin of not connecting to God's resources through which they flow.
    • Sin, when defined as a behavior, is making a choice for meeting our needs with disregard to God's provisions for meeting them. James (1:6-7) and Jesus (Matthew 14:31; 21:21; Mark 11:23;) called this sin "doubt." Remember. sin is not behavior that makes us bad, or God mad, but that makes us sick.
    • Prayer is asking for self in behalf of others.
    • This means I do not pray for God to heal or provide a need across the world, across town, or across the room which does not involve me as a part of the answer. The only prayer I have confidence in is the prayer I pray for myself in behalf of others. That prayer would be, "Father, increase in me who you are so that I am enabled as a resource to serve as a vessel for the flow of your provisions into the lives of those you have called me to serve and who are connected to me." If I prayed for the lost to be saved, it would involve me going to where they are to present the message of salvation - or to support someone in some way for going in my stead. Also, if God used me to pray for the sick, I would seek his enablement to hold their hand (one expression of laying on of hands), look them in the eyes, assure them of my care for them, then investigate to know what provisions are missing in their lives so that I could support them for beginning to make the choices that would help lead to their recovery. That is exactly what the elders did in the early church who were called to the bedside of the sick (James 5:14-16).
    • Answered prayer is not usually an event but is experienced as a developing outcome as we continue to ask/receive.
    • We do not have from God what we ask for, but what we receive.
    • We do not receive God’s gift of salvation, but his provisions which make it possible.
    • We do not pray for others, really, but for ourselves in behalf of others.
    • We cannot persuade God to provide what he does not give or to give what he has already provided at the door of our hearts for us to receive. 
  • Giving to
    • We do not give to God; he gives to us and others through us.
    • We are not called first to go and give, but to come and receive so that we are enabled to go and give
    • We do not give to God in order to receive from him, but receive from him in order to give to others.
    • We give to God only ourselves (an open door to our hearts) in order to receive from him.
    • We do not give to God; he gives to us and others through us.
    • We do not give our way to health, but receive our way to health.
    • We give to others, not to superficially relieve their pain, but to invest in their healing.
    • We are not called first to go and give, but to come and receive so that we are enabled to go and give
    • We give to others, not to superficially relieve their pain, but to invest in their healing. 
  • Obey
    • Obedience is faithful response to God’s call to us by the Holy Spirit through the Scripture, first to open our hearts to receive (come and receive) his provisions for our recovery beginning with his Blood and Resurrected Life but including also his provisions in creation (the soil and atmosphere) to support our biological health and community (leadership in the home and church) to support our psychological health, and then second to give (go and give) in redemptive service to others.
    • “Working out our salvation”
    • We are powerless to fully obey God’s Law.
    • The new birth experience alone does not enable obedience, but only makes possible our sanctification which enables obedience.
    • Every instruction, command, and call he gives assumes our enablement (sanctification) to obey.
The Law (Summarized in the Ten Commandments)

  • God gave the law as a minimal standard to govern/guide man's fallen nature. He gave his Son to make possible our holiness and to enable our choices for health. This means, we are enabled to serve in the new way of the Spirit (by the power of God's provisions which we receive into our lives, beginning with his Son), not in the old way of the written code (Romans 7:1-6). 
The Word of God (the Life of Christ), The Rhema, and The Scripture:

  • The Word of God/Logos is Christ, the Rhema is the expression or communication of the Logos by the Holy Spirit, first to the writers through whom God gave the Written Scripture, then to us who read it. 
The Judgment of God, The Wrath of God:

  • We were not born separated from God because of our sins, but because of the “trespass of the one man” Adam in the Garden of Eden.
  • The judgment of God (separation from him) came upon every member of the human race immediately after (and as a result of) Adam’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden.
  • The judgment of God was a one-time event which came upon the human race as a result of Adam’s disobedience and that it is imminent only in the sense of our "sowing and reaping" experience of it in time.
  • Our experience of the wrath of God is broken health, the result of our separation from his Life. 
Punishment and Discipline:

Suffering/Adversity:

  • Hard times do not make us stronger, but break us so that we confess our brokenness and need for God.
  • Our pain is not the problem, but the result of the problem.
  • The problem is not what’s present in our lives that hurts, but what’s missing in our lives that helps.
  • We do not feel rejection because of what we hear others say that hurts, but because of what we do not hear God say that heals. 
Testing and Trials:

The Blessings/Favor of God:

  • God’s provisions for our recovery to health and happiness began immediately with his judgment upon mankind because of Adam’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden and flow to every person without respect of behavior or character, but only to the door of our hearts. 
Health and Happiness:

  • Health is the promised/assured outcome of the choices we make daily to include God’s provisions (grace) which flow into our lives through our connection to his resources in creation (the soil and atmosphere), community (leadership resources in the home and church), and especially Christ (his Blood and Resurrected Life).
  • Healing is the assured sowing and reaping, cause and effect outcome of including God’s provisions in our lives.
  • These provisions flow to us through resources in creation (soil and atmosphere), community (leadership support in the home and church), and especially Christ.
  • Healing is not an event, but a process, sometimes long and slow as we remain connected to the resources through which God's provisions flow (John 15:4-5; Galatians 6:9).
  • Measures of our broken health may be generational sowing and reaping – that is, inherited or rooted in the missed choices of our parents for diet, exercise, lifestyle, and supplementation.
  • There are conditions which are not reversible - for a simple example, a lost arm or leg. I suspect there are other conditions which no diet, exercise, lifestyle, or supplementation regimen would reverse.
  • Compliance to God's redemptive plan for healing might be so radical that some would not consider it practical or realistic.
  • Sickness and health must be understood in terms of cause and effect outcomes which have a scientific explanation, and not in terms of God pounding on (punishing) our misbehavior or blessing our performance to make him smile.
  • Happiness is our experience of grace enabled service to meet the redemptive needs of others.
  • Brokenness and unhappiness is the result of attempting service to others that is not grace enabled. 
Soteriology (The Doctrine of Salvation/Redemption):

  • Sin (the Behavior)
    • Sin is not behavior that makes us bad, God mad, or others sad, but that makes us sick. 
  • Judgment/Condemnation
    • We were born separated from God, not because of our sins, but because of Adam’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden. 
  • Mercy and Grace (Defined) 
  • Redemption past (a one-time event):
    • Propitiation
    • Conviction/Faith
      • Faith is a noun, not a verb; it is what we have, not what we do.
      • Our faith is the body of Truth we embrace.
      • We are not supported mostly by our understanding of information (knowledge) but by our conviction of Truth (faith).
    • Repentance
    • Confession
    • Conversion
    • We are not saved/delivered from God’s judgment against us (separation from him for eternity) because we turn from the sinful behavior we think will send us to Hell but because we turn away from the good behavior we think will get us into Heaven.
    • We are saved/delivered from God’s judgment against us (justified/reconciled/regenerated) by turning away from trusting in what we can do (to earn God’s favor) to trusting, instead, in what Christ has already done for us by his death on the cross.
    • We are saved/delivered from God’s judgment against us (sanctified/made holy [usefulness in redemptive service to others]) by turning away from trusting in our performance (striving to obey rules) to trusting, instead, in the resurrected Life of Christ birthed in us when we are justified/reconciled/regenerated and renewed in us daily by the Holy Spirit during our quiet-time worship.
    • Calling
    • Commitment (Believe/Trust/Receive)
    • We do not go to Heaven because we stop our bad behavior but because we receive God's provision of Christ's Blood as the only payment he will accept to satisfy his judgment against us because of Adam's disobedience in the Garden of Eden.
    • We do not receive God’s gift of salvation, but his provisions which make it possible.
    • Regeneration (The New Birth)
    • Justification
    • Forgiveness (of Judgment)
    • Forgiveness means "removal." It is God's removal of his judgment against the human race (separation from his Life/Light resulting in spiritual darkness) because of Adam's disobedience in the Garden of Eden, and also his removal of our brokenness because of the choices we have made in the darkness. This is the meaning of Romans 5:12-14. He forgives (removes) his judgment against us on the basis of our faith/trust to receive his provision of Christ's death/blood for us, and he forgives (removes) our brokenness (this is the meaning of "healing" - also "salvation") on the basis of our faith/trust to receive (include in our lives) his provisions for our health in creation (soil and atmosphere) and community (supportive relationships in the home and church), but especially through Christ's resurrected Life birthed in us, which enable us for making the wise choices (obedience) that establish us in health.
    • Our forgiveness of others “as Christ forgave us” is the enablement he gives us to withhold judgment/punishment from those who have offended us, and to minister to their support needs for the healing/removal of their brokenness.
    • Reconciliation
    • Adoption (Inheritance)
    • Election and Predestination
    • We can lose our salvation from brokenness (healing) but not for going to Heaven.
    • We can’t walk on the boat because we did not walk off it (we were put off), and we can’t walk off the boat because we did not walk onto it (we were placed on it).
    • The Baptism of the Holy Spirit (Us in Christ)
    • We are secured for Heaven (our eternal salvation is made certain) by virtue of our baptism (immersion) by the Holy Spirit into spiritual union with Christ.
    • The Filling of the Holy Spirit (Christ in us) 
  • Redemption present (an ongoing sowing and reaping/cause and effect process):
    • Sanctification Holiness/Sanctification:
      • We are not sanctified (made holy and useful in redemptive service to others) by the teachings of Christ, but by the Life of Christ.
      • We are not healed by the information written to us in the Scripture but by the Seed/Life sown/communicated to us through it by the Holy Spirit.
      • Being filled with the Holy Spirit is not an event but a process.
      • The Holy Spirit has residents in the spirit of every born again person, so is not asking for entrance from without us, but from within us for entrance into our hearts (souls). 
  • Redemption future (a one-time event):
    • Glorification 
Codependent and Redemptive Relationships:

  • A codependent relationship is two people using each other for superficial pain relief.
  • To some measure, every relationship is either redemptive (investing for health) or codependent (using for superficial pain relief).
  • Every connection we make to others is for the purpose of being support by a resource or to be a resource for support. 
Grace Ministry:

  • Grace ministry is investment in the redemptive needs of others to set them free for enabled service to those God calls them to serve.
  • Grace ministry is investment without expectation of return. 
Teaching/Preaching:

  • The Holy Spirit gives Truth and must also teach it.
  • We do not teach Truth, but give testimony to the Truth the Holy Spirit is teaching us.
  • We do not teach Truth, but facilitate learning it.
  • We have not taught unless our students have learned. 
Grace Leadership (in the Home and Church):

  • It is the role of the husband to invest in the health and happiness needs of his wife: This is to the degree that if she is unhappy and broken in health, he should consider in what ways he has complicity.
  • God is not in a power position over you, but in a support position beneath you. Whatever a husband perceives about God's relationship to him, either that he is authoritative or supportive, he will relate to his wife in the same way.
  • Christ's relationship to his bride, the Church, as revealed in Ephesians 5:22-33, is the model for the husband's relationship to his wife. "Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her" (v. 25).
  • Also, since Christ is the Vine and we are the branches (John 15:1-8), we can conclude that the husband is the vine in the home to serve in a support relationship to his wife.
  • The home is a living organism, not an organization. (The Church is also an organism.) The dynamics of leadership and relationships in an organism are different than in an organization.
  • The New Testament word "head" means "fountainhead" when referring to the husband in the organic home, and does not mean "ruler" as when referring to the head over an organization or institution (in the way Moses was the head over the nation Israel).
  • The word "authority" in the context of the organic home means "freedom to act." Christ's authority in our lives is not imposed but invited when we open the door of our hearts to him. This means, the husband's freedom to influence his wife is not imposed, but must be an opportunity he earns.
  • It is not the responsibility of the wife to serve in a support role to her husband, especially for his moral and spiritual recovery needs. The only appropriate support from the wife to her husband is that which flows back to him out of her strength from the support he has invested in her life.
  • The word "submit," in the context of an organic relationship, does not call a wife to surrender her freedom to her husband's rule or control, but rather means to "give him opportunity for influence" as illustrated by opening a door (Revelation 3:20).
  • Our goal for marriage counseling is: 1) To provide the husband guidance and support leading to his own recovery, beginning with his relationship to Christ; and 2) To serve the wife as an advocate for her renewed health and happiness, to explain the Scriptural role of the husband in the home, to encourage her concerning God's care and favor for women and children, and to teach communication skills from the grace perspective in order to help reduce tension in the relationship.
  • When the husband does not embrace his servant role in the marriage in the way Christ models it, we will in some cases provide counseling support for a wife who has nonetheless chosen to remain in the home, but only when no abuse of any nature is suspected.
  • The husband may not be the problem in the marriage, but he is the beginning of the solution.
  • Grace leadership does not pound on the behavior to punish it, but ministers to the brokenness that causes it.
  • We do not trust others or even ourselves, but only the God who lives in us.
  • God places children in the home, not to support their parents, but to be supported – the same as he places members in the church, not to support its programs and pastors, but to be supported.
  • The husband may not be the problem in the marriage, but he is the beginning of the solution.
  • Grace leadership does not pound on the behavior to punish it, but ministers to the brokenness that causes it. 
The Name of Jesus:

The Fruits of the Spirit:


  • Love is first a quality before it is a choice; it is a grace (provision from God) that enables the choice.
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