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Steve Brown is old enough to not care anymore and if you read five pages of his book Three Free Sins you’ll find out what I mean. He was a paid holy person (what I call people in full-time ministry) for most of his life and today serves as a professor at the Reformed Theological Seminary, speaks, writes and is the main personality for Key Life Network which you can find out about at KeyLife.org
At the core of this book is a very simple message. Grace. Grace is undeserved forgiveness and the idea of Three Free Sins is that our lives would change radically if we accepted three free sins in our lives. The true message is this…we don’t get three free sins, we get unlimited free sins because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on a cross around 2,000 years ago. He was perfect so when He died on the cross all of our sins, not just three, were paid for. His perfection was exchanged for our imperfection.
“The only people who get any better the people who know that if they don’t get any better God’s going to love them anyway.”
Steve Brown has a unique way of leading you into a conversation about sin and grace. He takes us down the road into agreeing that grace covers all sins and then asks us why we don’t live like it does. Why do we live like we can earn God’s forgiveness at the same time teaching others that they don’t have to earn God’s forgiveness.
Steve’s journey took a turn when he grew tired of “trying to teach people not to sin”.
He asks the very difficult question, “What if the Christian faith isn’t about getting better?” That started him on a journey to start telling the truth. He started sharing his sin and struggles and how the cross brought him healing.
Steve thinks pretending is stupid and he’s right. “Trying harder doesn’t work. You should know that by now.”
“I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self. That is the way JESUS came to reveal God’s love.”
People who have experienced sin and grace are equipped to extend that same grace. (page 82)
If you want to attract new people who are outside of the church into it, people from outside the family of God into His family then holiness and goodness will not have the effect. Authenticity draws people in. Humility and authenticity is a magnet for other messed up people…and we’re ALL messed up.
In front of a audience of missionaries Steve opened up about his failures and it caused one member of the audience to get angry because he felt Steve wasn’t worried enough about right and wrong. Another missionary in the audience stood up to defend Steve and said, “Just because someone is honest about not meeting the standard doesn’t mean that he ignores or lowers the standard.”
The lesson of forgiveness, grace and hope always begins with helplessness.
Hey there are some awesome things going on with the Take Permission Media Network. We’re launched a new show called Twitter Conference Conversations and we’re launching the Take Permission Community which you can learn more about at http://www.TakePermissionCommunity.com
It’s the best place to find kindred spirits, get your tech and podcasting questions answered and have great conversations around faith, family and business. I hope you’ll check it out at TakePermissionCommunity.com
[alert]To be eligible for a copy of Three Free Sins head over to http://BooksForABetterYou.com and leave a comment on this episode and then share the episode via Facebook or Twitter. I’ll announce the winner of the two copies on the next episode of the show when I review Brandon Hatmaker’s book – Barefoot Church [/alert]
