Good morning everyone and welcome back to another mornings with the masters where we devote ourselves to the

Lord daily with you. Today it is just me again and we are reading out of our tried and true

new morning mercies Paul David trip so let's see what he has for us today

it says this grace not only forgives you but enables you to live for something hugely bigger than yourself.

Why go back to your little kingdom of one?

Your spiritual life is all about inerta.

It's all about inner motives. It's all about

kingdoms. It's all about warfare. It's way bigger than the surface Christianity

to which it is often reduced. You could read your Bible every day

and the entire Bible each year and still live for yourself. You could be faithful

in your attendance to all your church's scheduled gatherings and still live for your little kingdom.

You could regularly place your hard-earned money in the plate and still not live with God's

kingdom and view. You could be expert in theology of the word of God

and still shrink your life down to what you want and what you tell yourself that you need.

You could participate in ministries to the poor and needy and still not live for the big kingdom.

You could do all of these things and the trajectory of your life could still be more toward the kingdom of self than the kingdom of God.

The only exhibit that is needed to demonstrate that true spirituality is about something more

than public and formal acts of religion is the Pharisees.

Jesus said something striking about the religion of the Pharisees in Matthew 520,

for I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and

Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

There was something deeply defective, something tragically missing in the religion of the Pharisees that caused Jesus to speak so strongly.

...