Seeking God Knows What

Remember this post?

I sent an e-mail to the pastor at our church with saying basically the same thing. He had a chance to reply the other day and gave me permission to post his words here:

“Let’s start with the feeling that you left church with—accepting Christ into your life was not enough. Actually salvation is an unearned gift (Ephesians 2:8-9). Once you have acknowledged your need as a sinner, turned to Jesus and asked him to become your Savior, believing that his sacrifice on the cross was sufficient for you, and then surrendered your life over to him as your new love and leader—well, that’s the whole deal. God will never love or accept you more based on better performance, or love or accept you less based on poorer performance.

If you struggle with fear, depression, doubt, sin . . . . you are in good company with the likes of David, who was God’s friend and a man after God’s own heart. Just read the Psalms a bunch and you will discover that David experienced about every tough emotion there is to feel. In spite of what Sunday School teachers may have taught on their flannel graph boards about the wonderful believers in the O.T. and N.T., the real biblical story is that every “saint” was a flawed sinner. And the Bible seems to delight in letting us know that. I don’t understand God’s love for me . . . but I know it isn’t tied to my performance, or I’m a goner. The older I get, the more I love the truth that grace is at the heart of the gospel. Jesus didn’t get upset with sinners. Instead, he kept holding out hope that God still loved them. The bunch he got angry with were the individuals who thought they had their act together and were super religious.

So, Erin, feel free to celebrate God’s love for you in spite of your less than perfect condition. It’s amazing grace . . . not amazing conduct that keeps us dancing and singing.

Having said all that, there is no doubt that God wants to continue a lifelong process of maturing and healing us. I’ve just finished reading a book that I might recommend to you. EMOTIONALLY HEALTHY SPIRITUALLITY by Pete Scazerro challenges Christians to do the work of going back before they can go forward. He claims, and I think he’s right, that one cannot grow spiritually mature and remain emotionally immature. All of us have stuff in our past that needs to be exposed and defeated before we can move on in a healthy relationship with God. The book is brand new, and I am not sure it’s in bookstores yet.

If you are planning on seeing “#5″, I am sure that he can also be of some assistance in the messy process of coming to terms with our past, how it shaped us, how we can learn from it, escape some of it’s negative impact and mature in Christ.”

(I added the link to the book at Amazon).