That worked for me for a while.
Who wouldn't be very grateful that they are not getting the hell that they really deserve? And I was very gratefully looking forward to the heaven that I did not deserve.
In response, I began to devote myself to studying out how exactly this mercy and grace comes about. I studied who does and who does not receive this mercy and grace and why. I studied how GOD and GOD alone determines who receives His mercy and grace not taking into account anything I have done. I learned how everything in the bible leads us to the point of Jesus giving His life on the cross and this is where God's perfect demand for justice and His desire for grace and mercy met, and this is proof of His divine love. All of this kept me very busy and I filled many notebooks up with the notes I was accumulating on my studies...until I began seeing, and I mean really seeing passages like this:
In response, I began to devote myself to studying out how exactly this mercy and grace comes about. I studied who does and who does not receive this mercy and grace and why. I studied how GOD and GOD alone determines who receives His mercy and grace not taking into account anything I have done. I learned how everything in the bible leads us to the point of Jesus giving His life on the cross and this is where God's perfect demand for justice and His desire for grace and mercy met, and this is proof of His divine love. All of this kept me very busy and I filled many notebooks up with the notes I was accumulating on my studies...until I began seeing, and I mean really seeing passages like this:
- You are the light of the world...let your light shine so brightly before men that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in the heavens. (Matt. 5)
- Love your enemies...do good to those who hate you... (Matt. 5)
- ...a good tree bears good fruit... (Matt. 7)
- A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things...(Matt. 12)
- ...the hour is coming when those who have died and are in the grave will hear His voice and they will come out of their graves; those who have done good to the resurrection of life, those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment. (Jn. 5)
- This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. (Jn. 15)
- ...Come...inherit the kingdom prepared for you...for when I was hungry, you fed me; when I was thirsty, you gave me something to drink, when I was a stranger, you took me in; when I was naked, you gave me clothes; when I was sick, you cared for me; when I was imprisoned, you visited me. (Matt. 25)
- Therefore, make disciples...teaching them to do all that I have commanded you to do... (Matt. 28)
Do you ever have those times when a light bulb clicks on and you become aware of something you've never been aware of before, and suddenly you begin to see that idea everywhere? This was one of those times for me. This is when another thought began to form in my thinking...maybe, just maybe, Jesus had something more for us than not getting the hell I do deserve and getting the heaven that I do not deserve...
Now, the very next thing my mind did was begin to fight this new thought. This flew in the face of everything that I had been raised to believe through all my years of christian schooling, family devotionals, Sunday school, bible studies, and so on. I had been raised to believe that grace is a free gift, there is absolutely nothing that can be done to earn it, therefore trying to earn it by doing good nullifies it.
...but I couldn't stop seeing Jesus and then the rest of the New Testament, and then the Old Testament too, talking about what we do with the lives that we have been granted...
If I'm honest, it was a bit of a scary time in my faith. I knew things were changing in my thinking, I couldn't help it.
I remember one time in particular when I was reading a book by an author that I was supposed to reject (I was reading the book to have appropriate ammunition to combat his thinking were anyone in our church to approach me about it), and I got up from my living room chair, stormed into the bedroom where Jess was making our bed, threw the book down and exclaimed, "I can't keep reading this!" She calmly asked me why, and shaken to my core I replied, "Because I can't find what's wrong with it..."
I knew at that moment that my faith was heading in a new direction, and if I were to halt that shift, I would have to outright reject these new thoughts and dismiss the words of Jesus in order to settle back into my old and comfortable and safe way of thinking again.
This is exactly what Jesus was and continues to be about though, right? He is about taking us in entirely new directions from the safe paths that we have been plodding along on. He is about challenging our thinking by opening our eyes and whispers of new ideas into our ears. He was and is never ok with allowing us to continue down well beaten trails of comfortable and safe movements. He never offers us "the kool-aid". If there is a better way to think about He and the Father and the Spirit and their desire for us to live their eternal kind of life, then He will relentlessly pursue us until we have to deal with that new kind of thought.
This is exactly where I found myself, do I hang on to the comfortable way of looking at grace as a gift that is given to me to avoid hell and my ticket into heaven, or is there something, and possibly much to be done right here and right now?
This is when another new thought began to form, what if it's both?
What if it really is about escaping hell, what if it really is about life with Them in heaven...only what if that begins right now, and this...this is exactly what grace is for?
...but I couldn't stop seeing Jesus and then the rest of the New Testament, and then the Old Testament too, talking about what we do with the lives that we have been granted...
If I'm honest, it was a bit of a scary time in my faith. I knew things were changing in my thinking, I couldn't help it.
I remember one time in particular when I was reading a book by an author that I was supposed to reject (I was reading the book to have appropriate ammunition to combat his thinking were anyone in our church to approach me about it), and I got up from my living room chair, stormed into the bedroom where Jess was making our bed, threw the book down and exclaimed, "I can't keep reading this!" She calmly asked me why, and shaken to my core I replied, "Because I can't find what's wrong with it..."
I knew at that moment that my faith was heading in a new direction, and if I were to halt that shift, I would have to outright reject these new thoughts and dismiss the words of Jesus in order to settle back into my old and comfortable and safe way of thinking again.
This is exactly what Jesus was and continues to be about though, right? He is about taking us in entirely new directions from the safe paths that we have been plodding along on. He is about challenging our thinking by opening our eyes and whispers of new ideas into our ears. He was and is never ok with allowing us to continue down well beaten trails of comfortable and safe movements. He never offers us "the kool-aid". If there is a better way to think about He and the Father and the Spirit and their desire for us to live their eternal kind of life, then He will relentlessly pursue us until we have to deal with that new kind of thought.
This is exactly where I found myself, do I hang on to the comfortable way of looking at grace as a gift that is given to me to avoid hell and my ticket into heaven, or is there something, and possibly much to be done right here and right now?
This is when another new thought began to form, what if it's both?
What if it really is about escaping hell, what if it really is about life with Them in heaven...only what if that begins right now, and this...this is exactly what grace is for?
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