jack and jean

Jack and Jean is  a real  life story. It can be read in the book titled The Mavericks Roundup.
Mavericks Round is the life story of Bruce Leane, Pastor.
​The book is available through Amazon/Kindle or KML Publishing.com

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There comes to mind one story I must share, Jean and Jack, not their real names, were a couple who asked me to come and visit them when I lived in Whyalla.
We were sitting over the usual cup of coffee around their kitchen table amidst the cigarettes, matches and cigarette fog.  Cutting my way through the smoke haze, when counselling, has always been a bit tough due to years of asthma.
‘Bruce, we can’t find the victory in Christ that you talk about and practise. We keep stumbling.  Why? Please help us.’ There were tears of frustration in their eyes.
‘You need to realise that Christ has you cover3d: you are trying to fight the fight that he fought and finished for you.’ I explained.
‘Sounds easy, mate, like you tell it – but not so easy in real life. Tell us more,’ Jack was dubious.
I silently pleaded for divine wisdom as I drained the last drops of my coffee and plunked the cup down on the table.
‘Jack, toss me your matches, please,’ I asked.
‘What you want a smoke now,’ Jack laughed, he wondered if I might be leading a double life.
‘No, I don’t,’ I was very blunt. ‘I want to demonstrate something to you.’
I took the matches and placed them under the coffee cup, saying, ‘the matches represent me: the coffee cup represents Christ covering me. The cigarette packet here represent God the Father looking on.  He says to Christ, ‘How is Bruce getting on?’
‘He’s absolutely fine,’ says Christ, ‘I’ve got him covered.’
The Father smiles at Jesus and me because he can only see the perfection of Christ between him and me. I am no longer accredited with being below par.
Christ is our absolute covering for our substandard lives.
The timeless words from the Bible declare, ‘we have an advocate with the Father (who is) Jesus Christ the righteous.’
 Christ’s giving of himself in death covers us so when the father looks at us he sees Christ the good one, not us the substandard one.
Those things we wish we hadn’t done, or shouldn’t have said, a past that has abused us, broken relationships that hurt us, are all covered by Christ and they are swept away  as far as the east is from the west and God doesn’t see them let alone remember them.
‘Jack and Jean, you have the right to say I am in Christ and he in me and we no longer live under condemnation,’ I said to the couple.
‘But what about when we fail to live as we should?’ Jean spoke up, she was very aware of how easy it was to sip-up.
‘It doesn’t mean to say we won’t slip-up but those slip-ups are under the covering of Christ.’ I explained, adding, it is so profound it seems too easy. But it is so liberating.’
Jack and Jean were lit by an inner light as this truth burst across their minds.
I remembered the words of a song, ‘I am covered over with the righteousness Jesus gives to me.’
My words to the couple were, ‘Stop trying to improve yourself which is religion. Accept the covering of goodness given to you by Jesus and by believing you are good, that’s Christianity.’
 

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