My Journey with GRACE, and why I now live a life of FREEDOM IN CHRIST!

My journey with Grace manifested itself in my life in the year 2009. I’d known for years that my Calling in life and what I was being taught in most churches wasn’t exactly lining up with what The Holy Spirit was telling me was, The Truth, His Truth!

For years I felt and knew that the guilt and condemnation I was feeling from not going to church every Sunday, desiring to go on a date with my husband to a club and judging people who weren’t as spiritual as I was, wasn’t exactly right. I knew in my heart that I wasn’t feeling guilty before God, but I was before man, and I didn’t know how to escape the turmoil in my spirit I knew wasn’t God-imposed.

It wasn’t until after I accepted the Call of God on my life to teach His Word that He showed me the True Way to His Heart, which was to teach His people about His GRACE, no guilt and no condemnation!

My Calling in life as a Christian and a Christian Minister is not to add any sorrow to His people, not to condemn or add any more guilt to their lives. People already feel guilty enough in life. Guilt and condemnation is the reason why unbelievers don’t accept Him as God and why Christians judge and condemn others. When you don’t feel accepted, you in turn make others feel unaccepted, and not only is this a recipe for disaster, it’s also a tactic of the devil, known as “misery loves company!”

Well I’m here to tell you that God loves you, just as you are! Romans 5:6 tells us, “For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. BUT GOD COMMENDENTH HIS LOVE TOWAR US IN THAT, WHILE WE WERE YET SINNERS, CHRIST DIED FOR US!" Christ died for the ungodly, and that was you and I; so why do we make sinners or unbelievers feel as if they have to get their lives right, before God will accept them as His own, and then we go on to make them feel they must keep themselves right after they are saved for God to continue to love and accept them. Did you become saved by any of your own doing besides confession and belief? Then what makes you think you can keep yourself saved by what you do? You can only please God by having faith in Him and in Him alone! “For without Christ I am nothing!”  

As Christians we need to stop condemning, and judging unbelievers, because the tactics we are using is losing them and not gaining them. The Bible tells us in Romans 2:4, “Or despises thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance.” That’s right it is the GOODNESS OF GOD THAT LEADS PEOPLE TO REPENTANCE. Not the chastisement or judgment!

So my plea and prayer for you today is that as Christians we would stop bible beating, condemning, and placing guilt on God’s people. Yes, I said God’s people, because whether we want to admit it or not He made us all, good, bad or indifferent. Granted we have freedom of choice to choose Him or not, but it is only THE LOVE OF GOD THAT WILL BRING UNBELIEVERS TO A PLACE OF REPENTANCE, a place to where they will even want to look at your life and say, WOW, “WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED?”

Embrace His Love, Grace and Mercy in your life today and truly begin to live the life He desires for all His Children, “An Abundant Life!”

Forever In His Grace

Toinette Neube 

The strength of sin is The Law!

Sin-missing the mark, or in laymen’s terms, doing anything against God’s will or laws. Sin has become such an obsession today that unfortunately it has taken center-stage in our walk as Christians. It has actually taken the place of the very thing that should be our focus, which is showing THE LOVE OF GOD!

Since we have such a fixation on sin or the thought of it, and we try so hard not to engage in it, why is it that we still do it? I mean don’t we love the Lord enough not to do something He has told us not to do? Of course we do! The reason why Christians such as you and I still sin against God despite the very fact that we love Him with every bit of our being is because we are so focused on not doing it.

The Bible tells us in 1 Corinthians 15:56, “…the strength of sin is the law.” What does this mean? It means the more you try to obey the laws of God the more strength you are giving to sin itself! That’s right! The more you focus on sin and not doing it (or obeying the Laws of Moses, which is not all-inclusive of just The Ten Commandments; more on that in a later blog), the more strength you give to it!

So what is the key to not sinning in life? The key is to stop focusing on not sinning. Stop thinking about it and focus on Christ. I once heard a preacher say it this way, if I tell you to not think about a juicy cheeseburger right now; what is the one thing you are going to do? You are going to think about it, right? You may not want to think about it because I have told you not to do it, but human nature desires to do the very thing we are told not to do!

The same goes with God and sinning. He tells us not to do it, but our human nature will desire and in most cases do just what we aren’t supposed to be doing. OH BUT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! What did He do because He loves us so much? He gave us an intercessor to take the place of the punishment for our sins. God knew we couldn’t keep the laws which He gave to Moses in the beginning, so according to 1 Corinthians 15: 57, He gave us, “Victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!” He gave us a way of escape; that all we have to do is confess with our mouths and believe in our hearts that Jesus Christ is Lord and we longer are seen as sinners, but as sons and daughters! Yes, we still sin, but God no longer looks at us or our sin. He only sees our intercessor Jesus Christ! THANK YOU JESUS!

So the key to not sinning is not really to stop, because as long as you have breath in your body you will sin. But the key to not sinning in your heart and mind is to stop focusing on it, stop giving life to it, FOCUS ON CHRIST and not on sin! If you fall or if you sin, which you more than likely have already done since you woke up this morning; don’t place your focus on the sin, place it on THE CHRIST WHO HAS FORGIVEN YOU AND PAID THE PRICE for that sin!

Place your focus on God’s LOVE, GRACE AND MERCY for you, and watch any and all thoughts of sin begin to dissipate in your life!

Forever In His Grace,

Toinette Neube 

Are you A Great Pretender or Do you rely on The Great Defender?

What is the difference between being positive about a situation and showing faith within the mist of the situation?

I consider myself a pretty positive person, but one day a few years ago, I received the revelation that my positivity and my faith in God weren’t one in the same! As a Counselor I’ve had to teach myself how to be careful when it comes to this type of thinking, because one can lead you into trying to psych yourself up about a situation and one can lead to the actual dissipation of the situation!

As a Counselor I learn strategies and techniques to use to teach my clients how to think positively about life and how to change their thinking, via modalities such as Cognitive Behavioral therapy and it’s like; well being a Christian counselor I’ve found myself faced with the question of when one thinks in a positive manner are they psyching themselves into believing the event or circumstance didn’t or isn’t happening or are they placing their faith in the fact that it may have happened, but I have a God who will not let it over take me! Basically where is their faith being placed, in their own thinking or in their God?

Via my own walk through trials and tribulations, I have learned that the only true way to help someone overcome their fears, anxieties, obsessive compulsive disorders, phobias, etc. is to not necessary get them to change how they see a situation but it is to get them to change who they see in control of the situation! It’s one thing to pretend something isn’t happening when in reality it is, and it’s another thing to know that it is happening but there is someone bigger than you who is taking care of it!

Jesus is not asking for us to pretend that life doesn’t happen or that the devil isn’t real, but He is asking us to believe in the fact that He is our defender, Psalms 3:3, tells us, “…Lord you are a shield around me…!” He is our fortress, He is our refuge and according to Isaiah 59:19, …”when the enemy comes in like a flood, The Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against them!” It doesn’t say to pretend the flood didn’t come, but it says, THE LORD WILL LIFT UP A STANDARD AGAINST THEM!

So consider this, “Are you A Great Pretender, or do you rely on The Great Defender?” Are you trying to psych your life into a positive light, or are you believing that in spite of everything that is going on around you, God is in control, and that His Love, Grace and Mercy is provided to you every day, and all you have to do is have faith in Him to handle every situation that comes your way! The Bible tells us to ask and we shall receive, to pray and not to worry and to KNOW AND TO BELIEVE THAT CHRIST LOVES US in spite of our sins!

Allow the Grace of God to change your way of thinking, allow Him to be just what He desires to be in your life, YOUR GREAT FORTRESS, YOUR GREAT COUNSELOR and YOUR GREAT DEFENDER!

Forever In His Grace,

Toinette Neube 

The Secret to Great Faith!

Well it has been almost 3 months exactly since my last Post, and now that Fall is almost upon us what better time to refresh yourself for the rest of the year than in Autumn!

Autumn is a time where leaves fall off trees, grass begins to wither and weather begins to gain a crispness to it's bite. Autumn is my favorite season and I personally believe it’s God’s way of cleaning out the old and preparing the world for the new; and the newness comes in the form of spring and summer!

As much as we probably don’t think about it in this manner, somehow unconsciously we "have faith" in the fact that next spring and summer will come and so we go with the flow of life by fall cleaning, hibernating, and awaiting the newness and freshness of next year!

"Having faith" in something or anything seems to be an automatic process in life! We seem to "have faith" in so many things in life, our jobs, our friends, ourselves, and even our money; I mean doesn’t the Bible tell us that without faith it is impossible to please God? Well yes it does, but what we forget is that that faith is not in things, but in God Himself!

Hebrews 11:6 says, “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.” It is a lack of faith that makes it impossible to please God! And we all know that according to Romans 1:16, “The righteous shall live by faith!” The Greek grammatical structure for this scripture is, “The righteous, by faith shall live” This tells me that I can only live or have life in abundance when I have faith in God!

As many godly men and women as there were in the Bible, noted Pastor, author and Bible scholar Joseph Prince reminds us that there were only two people (besides Abraham) in the entire Bible who Jesus said had “great faith,” the Roman centurion who came and said his servant was at home paralyzed and suffering, and asked Jesus to just speak the word and he would go and believe that his servant would be healed, and the Syro-Phoenician women who had a demon-possessed daughter and asked Jesus to cast the devil out of her. These two people who weren’t your average disciple or follower of Jesus and they didn’t appear to be overtly religious or extreme followers, they weren’t even Jewish; but Jesus Himself noted that they had what He called “Great Faith,” in Him and His sovereignty! So what’s the secret to having “great faith?”  

The secret to great faith is as simple as this…neither one of the those people knew the laws of Moses, neither one of them knew to feel condemned or guilty or that they weren’t even supposed to come to Jesus because they weren’t Jews, they didn’t disqualify themselves because of their sins, all they knew was He was known as being God, being a healer, and being The Messiah! They didn’t take into account anything they did or said, they just stayed Christ-conscious not self-conscious! The secret to GREAT FAITH is to stay Christ-conscious and not self-conscious!

Take your mind off of yourself and your sins and place it on Jesus and His LOVE, GRACE AND MERCY for you, and you too can be known as having GREAT FAITH IN THE EYES OF GOD!

Always In His Grace!

Toinette Neube

Prince, J. (2007). Destined to Reign. Harrison House: Tulsa, Oklahoma.