by Steve Brown
But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
1 John 1:7–8

Maybe you should live your life so the Pharisees will doubt your salvation. And you should ask some brothers and sisters to hold you accountable—not to be a wonderful, nice, everything-put-together Christian faker but against being an uptight religious sourpuss. You need Christian friends to hold you accountable to bask in your freedom to the glory of God.
I was once speaking at a church in our city, and I told those folks that smoking my pipe is kind of like heaven for me. If I’m preaching a sermon that just seems to be awful and I feel like I’m doing a terrible job, I tell myself that if I can just get through it to the end, I can go home and smoke my pipe. It’s like heaven.
The next time I was at that church, I was standing at the door in the back, and guys were putting cigars in my pocket! I brought home, I bet you, fifty to sixty cigars that day. It was such a great comfort. I had told them smoking a pipe was like a reminder of the comfort of heaven, and they wanted to make sure I had as much comfort as I could get in the here and now. That’s what those in the church do for each other—provide the reminders of the comfort of heaven.
You know, the world is bad. I’ve buried more babies and cleaned up after more suicides and listened to more confessions than I can even remember. This is not a place for sissies. It’s really, really hard. And we’re not home yet. But we can remind each other of the freedom we have in Christ, providing one another with a comfort akin to heaven.

Thought to Remember for Today

The wonderful news about our true home, heaven, is that it will be a place where we’ll never have to pretend. We’ll never have to be properly perfect because we will already be made perfect by His work in us. The fellowship we have together as believers is not a fellowship of perfect religiosity, but rather a fellowship around the truth that we are forgiven.

Fitzpatrick, E. (2016). Grace untamed: a 60-day devotional. Colorado Springs, CO: David C Cook.