The God Connection: Fifty Years a Captive

By Suzan Cartagena

Grace was designed to deliver us from the evil things of this world. Yet, we are being held captive by a totally perverted version of grace! And it’s a treadmill—we find ourselves totally frustrated because we never get where we are going!

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483579634

Book preview

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INTRODUCTION

For by grace are we saved through faith! Grace: unmerited favor or you don’t deserve it, but God is good to you. For fifty years this common definition of grace held me captive because the undeserving part was always in the forefront.

Grace was designed to deliver us from the evil things of the world.

Grace be to you and peace from God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ, Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father.

Galatians 1:3-4 (emphasis mine)

Yet, we are being held captive by a totally perverted version of grace!

I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ.

Galatians 1:6-7 (emphasis mine)

I lived a yoyo Christian life—up one minute (God is good) and down the next (I don’t deserve it, and I never will). I was never able to walk in the peace that grace promised for any extended period of time! Without realizing it, I was following a manmade deviation of the Gospel that was a combination of two opposing forces— the work of my hands and the work of God’s hands.

For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.

Romans 8:6-7

This placed me in such a compromising position that living a victorious,

Christian life was absolutely impossible.

I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.

Revelation 3:15-16

This is the most deadly snare in which Christians can become entangled. Grace is our God connection, and if it becomes infused with things connected to the flesh, it will become totally ineffective in accomplishing what it was created to accomplish. If everything depended only upon the work of our hands, we would at least eventually come to the end of ourselves and realize that we need a savior. When we combine our own work with God’s work, we truly think we are walking the walk. But it’s a treadmill—we find ourselves totally frustrated because we never get where we are going!

Consequently, this distortion affects our interpretation of all of the vital principles of the Gospel. It affects how we hear God!

Take heed therefore how ye hear: for whosoever hath, to him shall be given; and whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have.

Luke 8:18

When our hearing is based on the work of our hands and our unworthiness, our spiritual identity becomes distorted. It renders us blind to the true things of the kingdom. We see without seeing, and we hear without hearing!

And he said, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand.

Luke 8:10

It’s much like a vision I once had. Someone had stolen a famous painting like the Mona Lisa. And to cover it up, they painted another picture over the top—a false picture. God began to say, The kingdom comes by revelation; it doesn’t come by reasoning things out. It comes as we get revelation, and the Spirit has to give us those revelations. Every little revelation that I got erased a piece of this false painting, and I could see what was underneath the false picture.

As I began to get more and more revelation, more of this fake picture was erased. Pretty soon the spots began to run together. It became the most amazing picture of what the Gospel is all about—the most amazing picture of who God is. The Holy Spirit began to reveal to me what the kingdom is about, and the way I see things today is totally different from the way I used to see things. We have a manmade version of the Gospel that is covering up a grand masterpiece underneath just waiting to be revealed.

I had become so frustrated in my Christian walk that I came to the conclusion that either the whole concept of God was a lie or there was something wrong with what I believed. I went back to the very roots of my belief system and began asking questions. Why do I believe what I believe—beginning with grace? I found out that it was more than just unmerited favor. What does it mean to be born again? How is grace connected to the Holy Spirit, and how does that play itself out in my life?

I began to get a revelation of those things and the relationship that they play with one another, and then I began to tackle other related questions that I had. How does one frustrate the grace of God? What does it mean to fall from grace? What does it mean to blaspheme the Holy Spirit, and how do you grieve the Spirit?

I began to get answers that tied everything together in a powerful way, and it began to set me free! This book was just a starting point. After the principles in this book became established in my heart, other revelations began to fall into place and become established. Praise God!

Grace is the powerful force that holds the Gospel together. Everything in the spiritual realm operates by grace. Grace exposes the hidden mysteries of the kingdom.

Grace is our God connection!

Chapter One

GRACE–OUR GOD CONNECTION

For by grace are you saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God. Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

Ephesians 2:8-10

What is the gift of God that saves us? What are we saved from, and what part does faith play in this?

The gift of God that saves us is grace. But just what is grace? Is it unmerited favor? Is it getting something that we don’t deserve just because God has mercy on us? That is certainly part of it, but that alone is misleading.

Let me tell you how it affected me. I was tied to the term unmerited—I am not what I ought to be, and I never will be what I ought to be. I don’t deserve what God has done for me. I was the reason that Jesus had to be crucified. It kept me thinking about myself in a negative way.

I was saved when I was 6 years old, and Jesus has always been the focus of my life. I was legalistic, but I didn’t realize it. I’m very sympathetic toward people that are legalistic because they’re holding on to the only way they know how to relate to God. They don’t want anything to get in the way of their relationship with Him. They’re willing to jump through hoops and do whatever they need to in order to maintain good standing with God.

That’s where I was. So I went to church every time the doors were open. I memorized scriptures. I knew the Word. I took every opportunity to learn all that I could—I became very frustrated! My life didn’t seem to be any different from people who didn’t know the Lord. It became so hard to be a Christian. When it came to the legalistic things, I was always concerned about not doing anything that would cause God to be disappointed in me or that would profane His name.

God wants us delivered from that kind of thinking! He wants us to see ourselves the way that He sees Jesus. The term unmerited no longer exists when we accept what Jesus has done for us. We did not cause Jesus to be beaten and crucified. He did it willingly because He loves us, and He wants to deliver us from the bondage of this world.

Grace is God supplying for us what we can’t supply for ourselves. The word grace, according to its Greek definition, means favor, especially the divine influence of God upon the heart and it’s reflection in the life thereof. In other words, grace is the power of influence that God uses to connect us to the true things of the kingdom.

The ministry of grace is carried out by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit changes the way we think about ourselves and about God, and that in turn affects how we react to the situations that we encounter in life. It is the Holy Spirit that draws us to God and causes us to will and to do His good pleasure.

For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.

Philippians 2:13

The motivational power of the Holy Spirit supplies us with the overcoming ability to do everything that we need to do in every circumstance and situation we encounter.

Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus Christ our Lord. His divine power has given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness through the knowledge of him that has called us to glory and virtue whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature having escaped the corruption that is in the world lust.

2 Peter 1:2-4

We are His workmanship. The new covenant is all about what God does for us, not what we do for God. The new covenant takes the focus off of the weakness of our flesh and puts it on the power of God.

The word salvation means liberty, freedom, deliverance. What is it that grace delivers us from? Grace delivers us from the weakness of our