This. Just This.

"God loves us. 

 

This is not a general rule to which you, personally, may be an exception. 

 

It is not a conditional rule that applies only when you are good, pure, and lovable. 

 

God's passionate and personal love for each and every human being expresses who God is.  Unfailing love is the divine nature and the divine choice in relation to us. 

 

God loves us with an overwhelming love that none of our sins can erase.  While we can grieve and disappoint this love, nothing we do or fail to do can alter its depth or reality. 

 

It is a gift, a given. 

 

We cannot control whether God loves us by efforts to gain this love or even to lose it. 

 

Since we neither deserve nor earn such love, God's fondest dream is that we will receive and respond to it."

 

from Soul Feast: An Invitation to the Christian Spiritual Life, by Marjorie J. Thompson

The "Get-To" Life



Source

Dallas Willard writes, “The path of spiritual growth in the riches of Christ is not a passive one.  Grace is not opposed to effort.  It is opposed to earning.” 

He goes on to say that these efforts, in the form of spiritual disciplines (things like prayer, worship, confession, service) “are not law, they are wisdom.”

We don’t have to pray; we get to pray.

We don’t have to go to church; we get to go to church.

We don’t have to read the Bible; we get to read the Bible.

We have a “get to” life!  We have a lifetime opportunity to step into the Promised Land and know God, and thus know ourselves.

[from Ned Erickson’s talks at the Harvey Cedars Bible Conference, February 13-15, 2015]