I got a book titled One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World for Christmas. Yes, I asked for it. I like books like this, but I'm not always successful at reading them all the way through. This one, I've had no problems getting close to finishing. It's a good take on how we are to live the Christian life, aka how we become sanctified. It's not by checking things off a to-do list, or by doing things that seem like they are Christian that eventually will exhaust us because we will never be perfect at any of it - it's about constantly going back to why we are justified, how we are made righteous, and realizing that our good works stems from His love. Good stuff.
Last weekend, I started listening to some sermons from the pastor that wrote this book. He did a series last year about the heroes of the faith. In it, he discusses that the heroes of the faith aren't really "heroes" - they are just like you and me, as sons of Adam. While there are certainly lessons to be gained from the Old Testament heroes, the point of their presence in the Bible is not for those lessons; it's to point to Jesus.
I have been reflecting on that this week. Why is it that Christianity appealed to me so much? I was raised an agnostic, pretty much. We were pretty self-sufficient, academically strong kids. I didn't "need" Jesus based on my performance in school. It was really the message of grace that drew me in, and the fact that everything I learned in school and my early adult life - that my performance was going to get me to where I needed to be - well, that was all a big fraud. My marriage was having issues, I didn't quite have the job I wanted, I was kind of an average mom, not one of those women who volunteered at the school all of the time. But the grace message - that Jesus was the saving grace, not me - that was a new one. I didn't have to look at other "heroes" to find an example of righteousness, because those heroes were flawed too. You do that, when you're a non-believer. You admire all kinds of people: successful, compassionate, cool, self-deprecating, smart, even maybe a little rebellious. The thing about it, that's what you have to do as a non-believer. You have to find someone to look up to, someone to emulate. If you're looking at religion, you might look at Gandhi, or a pope, or Joan of Arc. If you're looking at politics, you might look at a great president, or those in a specific party. What about if you were just looking at life? You'd think of Oprah, Jonas Salk, Marie Curie, maybe Angelina Jolie, or Audrey Hepburn, as sort of a wide variety of examples. But these people are all flawed, or too far-reaching. Eventually, you look at yourself and develop a high opinion of your own behavior.
In life, and even in other religions, no one ever told me that someone already did something so good, just for us, that you didn't have to do anything to get to heaven. No one ever said that it's not about you, but about Him. No one ever said that it was by grace that you could be saved. No one ever told me that nothing could separate us from the love of Jesus. That's why Christianity appeals to me. It's also not because Christians look at their behavior to make them righteous (even though that is the way it is presented and even lived, especially in the south). But when I started understanding grace as a new believer, it was mind-blowing.
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