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So What Makes The Holy Message On the Superhighway so Attractive?

Albert Bogle May 17, 2016 0 1
So What Makes The Holy Message On the Superhighway so Attractive?

Following on from my last post. I've been thinking what is it that makes this message separate and so different? For me it is summed up in the message of the Cycle of Grace versus the Cycle of Works. If you look at the Cycle of Works you will see how it reflects the thinking of so many of us, whether in business, academia, sport or any other aspect of life. Within this cycle, If you want to be accepted you have to be a high achiever. Once you’ve achieved you discover your significance. In turn this feeling of being significant  allows you to walk into a room of your peers with confidence, or publish your book, or speak your mind, because you know and feel, you have been accepted because of your achievements. Now many of us not only live our material lives within this cycle of works, but we also live our spiritual lives this way. 

We  believe we must achieve, or keep to certain rules in order to receive God’s acceptance. It is our ability to keep the rules that makes us significant in the eyes of others and God.  This belief sustains and strengthens us because  we feel we deserve what we have achieved.  And  we believe we have in fact earned the acceptance of others and of God. The thing is, I believe huge numbers of people think this way. It is this philosophy that drives our work and family relationships. And it also becomes the philosophy of our own spiritual well being. In the end this philosophy leads to burnt - out broken people striving to be accepted. we have a name for this we call it the 'rat race'.

But here is the question. What happens when you feel you have not achieved, or kept to the rules?  It is hear that the word holy begins to take on a whole new meaning odf significance. You see what makes the holy message on the superhighway so attractive is that it turns everything  about the above philosophy on its head. It starts with an amazing life changing message that God has made us and loves us and accepts us. When someone begins to look up from the gutter into the otherness of God they are overwhelmed and sustained and strengthened. We realise that we are not alone. We begin to understand that it is this relationship with God that gives us the significance to live a purposeful life. This understanding in itself is a fantastic achievement but it is God’s gift to us. We are saved by grace and not works. This is the amazingly different message if embraced would change everything about our world. It is because we have encountered such generosity of spirit from God that we in turn respond to that acceptance with gratitude and thanksgiving.

 I am so glad that the  newspaper article described the sheer quality and magnificence of God’s message as holy. This is the holy one who is totally above creation and the created creatures, including we humans, yet who chooses to reach out to us, to seek after us in order that we can encounter the eternal quality of  his love demonstrated in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.