Grace Abounds Ministries

By God’s grace, we’ll continue from where we left off last week. I’ve been sharing about the breastplate of righteousness, focusing on what it primarily protects—the heart. I’ve also explained what the heart is. Currently, we’re considering four things that can dominate our hearts and influence us and our relationship with God. In the previous article, I discussed two of these: condemnation and comparison. To catch up, please review that article . Today, we’ll examine the other two: legalism and self-effort. Before analysing them individually, let’s look at both and understand their similarities and differences. We often use them interchangeably, and yes, they can be, but fundamentally, they are distinct. Legalism is a root issue—it impacts your theology of acceptance before God. Self-effort is a fruit issue—it influences your daily Christian practice. Legalism involves believing you are accepted, righteous, or justified before God based on obeying laws, rules, or traditions, rather th...

Beloved, you are welcome to today’s article. I am sure you will be blessed by God’s Word through this write-up. Last week, we stopped at this point: When you forget that you are righteous in Christ, you become vulnerable to: 1. Condemnation 2. Comparison 3. Legalism 4. Self-effort I said we’d examine these four areas where we become vulnerable when we don’t anchor our faith in Christ’s righteousness. By God’s grace, we’ll look at the first two tonight and the last two next week.   When a believer doesn’t wear the breastplate of righteousness—that is, when their heart isn’t grounded in the righteousness of Christ—they see themselves falling prey to these four things. 1. Condemnation : This happens when the heart forgets it is justified by grace. Let’s look at Romans 8:1: “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” The Bible states that there is no condemnation for those who ...

I want to welcome my beloved readers to today’s article. It’s my prayer that the Lord will encounter you in His Word. By God’s grace, I’ll continue from where we stopped in the last article . We spoke about the spiritual function of the heart and looked at the contrast between the heart and the soul. The reason we explored this is that the breastplate of righteousness directly protects the heart, and we saw its significance. Before delving deeper into the breastplate of righteousness, I feel the need to continue what I shared last week about the heart. I want to focus on what it means to guard your heart with all diligence. “Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life” Proverbs 4:23 NKJV.  Here, when the Bible uses the word “keep,” it also means to guard or protect. It’s like a soldier watching over a fortress or territory. This makes sense because our anchor text in Ephesians 6 describes a soldier putting on complete armor to protect himself and fig...

“Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness,” ‭‭Ephesians 6:13-14 NKJV By God’s grace, for several weeks, we’ve been exploring one of these armors, the Belt of Truth. We’ve said a lot about this armor and how we can fasten it around our waist to keep winning. In the last article, I shared an overview of what righteousness is, defining it as: Righteousness is the divine standard of what is right before God, perfectly embodied in the character and actions of Christ, who is our Redeemer. It is not a product of human effort or morality but the very nature of Christ that qualifies Him to be our Savior and that now covers the believer as spiritual armor. in today's article, we’ll look at what a breastplate protects and the implications for the believer. The breastplate in a Roman soldier’s armor protects the ...