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 IT'S NEVER EASY

C. S. Lewis said that if we were going to make up a religion, Christianity wouldn't be it. We'd make up something that we could manipulate, would be easy to pull off, wouldn't require any change of us in any way, and would be all about our own pleasure and convenience. THAT is not what following Jesus is. Following Jesus Christ is not like having an personal advisor to tweet your life. Following Jesus Christ is singularly following Him as LORD.

That means that He is in charge, not you or me. We'll never become our best selves through any kind of self-effort. What God designed us for, our destiny and purpose, will never be discovered buried somewhere deep within us. It doesn't exist there.

What God does in rescuing us from sin and self is beyond us. We are unable to make ourselves anything other than the broken us. The fact is, what is broken cannot ever fix itself. It's beyond human help, even if it were the cumulative help of all humanity pulling for us to change.

The glory of the Good News, the Gospel, is that God has already done what I could...you could...ever do. What IS impossible for humanity has been accomplished by God for us. Truth is, that is also why the Gospel is so offensive to many, if not most. The Gospel states unequivocally that we are incapable of restoring our lives to the wholeness God means for us to know and live in. It is not a friend to hard-hearted pride.

We can enter into Life because God has made THE way...the only way...of return to Him. He's not made it's discovery like looking for a needle in a haystack. God has revealed what was hidden. Salvation is of and by the Lord and no one else.

Jesus Christ has already taken on the sum-total of the sin and rebellion, the pride and decay of the human race, paid the price owed by all, destroyed the powers that held us in slavery (that is still called "freedom" by those still held in the thrall of sin), and calls all humanity to be reconciled to God.

Humility, honesty and a 180 pivot from self to God...acknowledging that we need rescuing, need restoring, need forgiveness, need a new heart and a new way of living, is the door we walk through as we surrender all that we are to all that He is. He gives us new and eternal life and a gift. We are set free from striving to make ourselves better. He comes to live in us to transform us from the inside out.

Christianity is never easy because we find it hard to surrender what we have been deceived into thinking is our "right" to our own lives. It is only in complete surrender to His love, what He has done, that our lives are made new, renewed daily by His power working in us.


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