“We often take for granted the very things that deserve most our gratitude.”
Cynthia Ozick
A recent Gift sparked my interest in the motivation behind all the time I-we-spend faithfully executing our obligation to serve others. It is human nature to conflate faith and works, particularly because “faith without works is dead.” After all, it is one of the more controversial topics among believers.
When we focus too hard on giving, we risk believing works qualify as faith, and we take the light off Him, shining it on ourselves. What do these terms in which we traffic mean, I.e., faith, grace, to be a believer.
I think the late, great Billy Graham captured it best in his last sermon. In that sermon, he spoke of the meaning of the cross, not the one on your wall or that hangs around your neck, but the real cross. That is the one that is scarred and blood stained.
Let’s have a day with perfect perspective that (the) old man whom NativeTex bumped into in the elevator on Easter Sunday displayed, “we are saved.”
The beguiling feature that is unique to those of you who are Christians is that (if) you are redeemed, sanctified, justified, reconciled, and saved, and then you cannot be unredeemed, unsanctified, unjustified unreconciled, or unsaved. John 10:28.
So… that then means our salvation is a function of Him, not us. And that must also mean that our salvation is based not on our faith in Him, but on His in us.
Bmk1989
Cynthia Ozick
A recent Gift sparked my interest in the motivation behind all the time I-we-spend faithfully executing our obligation to serve others. It is human nature to conflate faith and works, particularly because “faith without works is dead.” After all, it is one of the more controversial topics among believers.
When we focus too hard on giving, we risk believing works qualify as faith, and we take the light off Him, shining it on ourselves. What do these terms in which we traffic mean, I.e., faith, grace, to be a believer.
I think the late, great Billy Graham captured it best in his last sermon. In that sermon, he spoke of the meaning of the cross, not the one on your wall or that hangs around your neck, but the real cross. That is the one that is scarred and blood stained.
Let’s have a day with perfect perspective that (the) old man whom NativeTex bumped into in the elevator on Easter Sunday displayed, “we are saved.”
The beguiling feature that is unique to those of you who are Christians is that (if) you are redeemed, sanctified, justified, reconciled, and saved, and then you cannot be unredeemed, unsanctified, unjustified unreconciled, or unsaved. John 10:28.
So… that then means our salvation is a function of Him, not us. And that must also mean that our salvation is based not on our faith in Him, but on His in us.
Bmk1989
