The Power of Right Believing: 7 Keys to Freedom from Fear, Guilt, and Addiction Read Online Free PDF

scourged, beaten, and crucified, but He did! This is the good news of the gospel of grace. God sent His only beloved and precious Son to redeem us from the penalty and punishment of sin.
    Now, can you imagine how far the east is from the west? You cannot think just in terms of the geographical boundaries of the earth. God is the Creator of the universe. So let me ask you again, how far is the east from the west? Are you getting this? The human mind cannot fathom the distance between the east and the west. There are frontiers in the cosmos and galaxies beyond our own that our most advanced telescopes cannot see. God thinks in infinite terms that our finite minds cannot wrap around. And this God of the infinite universe declares in the psalm that “as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us!”
    Let us reason together. How can God still be judging and punishing you for your transgressions if He Himself has removed them? I can hear the chains of your wrong beliefs about God falling to the ground as you read this! This is what I call the power of right believing. You start to believe right when you start to believe in Hislove for you. The truth is, we can’t go further if you don’t first begin to believe that God is for you and not against you. The first key to right believing is to be established in His grace, anchored in His love, and secure in His mercy toward you.
    You start to believe right when you start to believe in His love for you.
    From Self-Conscious to Savior-Conscious
    Let’s return to the story of the woman of Samaria, the one whom Jesus went deliberately to meet. This woman had a past that she was terribly ashamed of, which is why she came at noontime to draw water. She didn’t want to meet anybody. What she didn’t know was that Jesus was there and He wanted to meet
her
. He hadn’t come all that way to embarrass, judge, or mock her. Read the account in John chapter 4 for yourself. Jesus drew her in with His love, grace, and compassion. She never felt exposed or ill at ease in His presence.
    When she said that she had no husband, Jesus didn’t call her out and humiliate her. Instead, knowing that she was self-conscious and insecure about her background, He commended her twice by saying, “
You have well said
, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; in that
you spoke truly
” (John 4:17–18, emphasis mine). He sandwiched what He already knew about her between two compliments! Jesus must have spoken to her with so much compassion and lovein His eyes, and with no judgment or sarcasm in His voice, that it caused this woman to let down her defenses and open up to Him.
    By the time she left His presence, this self-conscious lady who once feared meeting people was so occupied with Jesus’ love and acceptance that she became an evangelist of Jesus and His grace. She went back to the village and testified about Jesus (to the very people she had been terrified of before), and the Bible records that “many of the Samaritans of that city believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, ‘He told me all that I ever did’ ” (John 4:39).
    In the same way, my friend, Jesus is not out to embarrass you today. He is here to meet you right where you are. He knows all that you have ever done and loves you with an everlasting love. Allow His love to change and transform you from within, just like it did for the woman at the well.
    Perhaps like the Samaritan woman, you know what it’s like to look for love in all the wrong places. Today Jesus offers you true intimacy that fully satisfies every aching need. He offers you a deep sense of rest that can only be found in His perfect and unconditional love. Perhaps you’ve had a past that has imprisoned you in shame and self-loathing. Perhaps you’ve allowed the things that you have done to convince you that you’ll never have God’s acceptance