the only thing I can't get over now, is the force of your will
-- Caedmon's Call
Pray. Go to church. Memorize Scripture. Give your ten percent. Save ten people a day. This is what makes a Christian right? No, this is what is called pitiful.
A pitiful attempt at man trying to reach God. Man's modern day version of the Tower of Babel. Remember that, the tower of brick and stone made by men trying to reach their way into heaven. We can't build our way to God. Once we try, we have given into the lie that we can.
Grace is receiving what YOU (or I) do not deserve, it is a gift. If it is a gift, then you have done nothing to deserve it, and once you think you have to do something to deserve it, you have changed the status of that gift into something lesser, something cheaper. Something no longer from God.
I know lately I have been feeling like I have been doing the work of Sisyphus. He is part of greek mythology. He somehow, as the story goes, tricked death and then death came back and forced him to roll a ball made out of stone up and down this hill, he can only get to a certain point on the hill and then it rolls down the hill. Do you feel like that? That in your Christian life, you are doing the very work of Sisyphus? I know I do. But, I know I am sorely mistaken if I do feel this way, because that means I am leaning on me and not on grace to do what it was created to do -- SET FREE!!!! We were not intended to work for grace, we work for the kingdom, not acceptance. And yet, I can't seem to get it through my thickhead on a regular basis that this is the truth. Pray for me. It is easy to discouraged by your own folly and fall back into the lie that we are not good enough, which is the biggest lie Satan will ever project into your life. Don't believe. Don't be afraid (of real Christiaity), just believe (Mark 5:36-38).
There is no such thing as 12-step christianity. no such thing. We have somehow created it for our own sense of strength, or own sense of control (which is just one big illusion, by the way). It is a PROCESS. let that soak in, PROCESS (it happens over time). Stop trying to reach heaven on your own efforts, you will never get there, because if you have a relationship with God, you are from there, you are a representative of heaven (Hebrews 11:13-14). And that's that.
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