This is the correlation of salvation and love .

Last night I was talking to some of my friends about our relationships with God. Some of our questions were things like:

What has changed in the last year between you and God?
What has God done for you?
What are some things you do that keep you in step with God?


At one point during our dialoging, the thought was offered that in order to be successfully experiencing God, we have to be ready to endure the things which end up revealing him to us, as well as revealing him to others through us. We have to be willing to invest in him, and alter ourselves to be more like him, so that he seeps out of our lives, into the lives of others.

Years ago, there was a time when I was uninterested in everything that God and the Bible stands for, and I was not easily persuaded to think or feel any differently. Don't think for a second that I never faced doubt, or that I never had a chance to choose the alternative to belief in my God. It's not that I haven't questioned it; I have questioned. I have fought it, and there was no chance that church, or Christianity itself would have ever caught my attention long enough to truly create a change of heart. I have not been fooled by any organization, by a system of rules and laws, or brain washed into wasting my time with a god who doesn't exist. Instead, this is what happened: As I was losing my interest and walking out on God, he re-introduced himself to me in a way that I couldn't deny. It wasn't that he suddenly proved himself to me, it wasn't that I suddenly understood, and I honestly can't fully explain the transformation in myself between then and now, but I do know without a doubt that he is very real, very alive, and very powerful. He appeals to my soul's every desire, he draws me to him, and having now recognized the power of his life within me, I cannot return to any other thing for that ultimate satiation. Despite myself, I have fallen in love with God. It's not because it always made sense to me, I am merely responding to the charm of the Almighty here and now in my life, and I will never, ever be able to turn back.

I have heard the expression many times: God is all about relationships.
The point of having God in our life is not for a set of rules or to ritually worship him. It's not about being good enough, or getting better, or being fixed: God longs for restoration of his relationship with us, and has provided a way to reconcile us to him, so long as we will desire him back. He only asks us to react to him, not to reach him on our own. All of it is merely for glorifying him.
I've always thought of this explanation as a kind of feel-good idea about God; It's far easier to consider him when it sounds so simple.
My friend Mandy shared last night that she has heard this expression before, but it had never connected to the perception she has of actual relationships with other people here on earth. Every relationship requires investment and sacrifice. A getting-to-know-you phase, then learning what it means to care for and respect someone, then committing yourself to that person. Sometimes not in that order, but regardless, there is definitely always a method of developing intimacy with other people. This applies to friendships, relatives, and significant others alike. You have to give part of yourself for the sake of the other, there has to be a two-way contribution to call it a relationship.

I too had never fully connected what that meant, and as I examined this new found ideation, I reflected on what my parts in other relationships look like, and I caught something I had never perceived before about my relationship with God:

Calling the bond between me and God a relationship is not just a way to make it appear more personal, or effortless. In fact, calling it a relationship implies more need for scrupulousness than defining it as commission of some religion. Viewing this restored bond as more than just salvation from some far off hell, or a duty to honor some far off God, suddenly engages more responsibility on my part than just saying, yeah, I believe in God. It's no longer about what I have to do, or what I shouldn't do. It's about choosing to participate in this relationship because I long for the results. I yearn for more of God, I want to know him, the same way I want to get to know my friends. That's what it's all about.

As I learn more about others, I learn more about myself. When I see the things in other people that I admire or dislike, I also discover things about myself worth keeping, the things I am willing to stand up for, and also the things I need to compromise for someone else's sake. I appreciate and value certain people enough to change, others I don't, or else it takes time. Likewise, as I get to know God more and more, I am constantly being shown exactly what about myself I can tolerate in his presence, and what things I need to seriously extricate from my life. He is the single most important thing about my life, and he is the only one who could ever cause me to genuinely apply the guidelines of living as his child to my life.

Some people find their significance in what their lifetime on this earth will bring them--whether it be looks, talents, relationships, careers, intelligence, money, or politics, and the like--which I once could have done as well. But I can no longer consider these things the most opulent options for bringing my life significance. With only 22 years worth of experiencing people, and I have only experienced a small number of various relationships and friendships in my short lifetime, I am already unsatisfied by the temporal situation that consists of trying to please and be pleased. There is a constant feeling that we're owed something, and while I know my journey with this part of life is not complete, not hardly, it is so unfulfilling at times. Recently though, I have been feeling a dire appreciation for the process of knowing others. Even more importantly, the process of knowing God. I have discovered His magnificence, and I have discovered who I am allowed to be because of his grace in me. This is why I seek to be different. It's what gives me a reason to try, and gives me the ability to succeed in genuinely loving others.

I am so very blessed, and so very happy with my life. Not because my life is anything exceptional (because it's definitely not), but because I am at peace in my Father's love. I am not seeking some form of comfort because in him I have comfort that is almost burdensome to attempt feeling, because it is so overwhelmingly complete.

It is a sure mark of grace to desire more. ~Robert Murray M’Cheyne

Humans are creatures of comfort. What's more, we have even been given the potential to gain as much earthly comfort as we will ever want to seek on our own. It's a phenomenon in my mind that with all of our intelligence, technology, relational ability, our media, education and so on, that we should ever feel and suffer from mental and emotional handicaps such as depression and vanity. If your species is truly the greatest in all of those things, how is it possible that you should stop and expect anything greater? But still, greed sinks its teeth into our minds, and we begin to consider ourselves as entitled to more, rather than grateful for all that we are and all that we have. I am completely baffled that we should ever find it within ourselves to actually expect something better than what we have. Our species is the species of entitlement over appreciation, hate over protection, and excess over survival. It is in our greatest, and God-given, abilities of reason and emotion that we reach our greatest, man-accomplished, failures. It's astonishing that we could have taken something so perfect and then so easily and carelessly morphed it into a literally wicked existence, by choice.

I take it that the highest proof of Christ’s power is not that He offers salvation, not that He bids you take it if you will, but that when you reject it, when you hate it, when you despise it, He has a power whereby he can change your mind, make you think differently from your former thoughts, and turn you from the error of your ways.

C.H. Spurgeon

I'm wrapping my head around some recent thoughts on changing to become a better person.
I've come across some differing ideas on whether certain things about ourselves can even be changed, or if we are just permanently stuck with certain seemingly negative traits.
First we have to ask, "What are my negative traits? What makes them so?"
Then comes the question, "What would I need to do to change these things?"
And finally, "Can I do what is necessary?"

If a choice is what made my existence worse, than the opposite choice should be what can make it better, right?



I'm realizing through various discussions and hours of pondering on my own that the only possible way I can conclude that it's impossible to change ANYTHING about myself is through a filter in my mind which seeks comfort of self over truth. It's far easier to decide upon an answer which provides me with an eternal excuse of not attempting change--i.e., there are certain things unchangable--rather than conclude that the only thing between my current state and the possible change is that very excuse of an answer. It's my human nature to desire the "easy out" in this conclusion, but there is something within me that won't accept it.

I can't help but wonder what it is inside of me that provides me with the bravado to even hope that it's possible for me to change, and in doing so, curse myself with an eternal journey of always seeking the better choice in every situation, just to prove this conclusion of possibility as true. But does it take perfection to prove that change is possible? I don't believe so. I believe the place of proof is in each individual choice, rather than a whole perfection. It's not instant, it's not permanent. Our ability fades in and out just as our attention fades, and it's in our humility that we find it easiest to give attention to the things that really matter. The real proof exists in even finding this answer to start with, the hope of change that exists in one's heart is the very essence of the change; the betterment of oneself lies in feeling the hope for it. So where does my arrogance of hope come from? And is it really enough to cause me to seek out the change I find myself in need of?
In my personal prayer and research, I've come to the conclusion that the thing inside of me which is causing me to find myself worth the possibility of becoming something better, is Grace.

Grace is but glory begun, and glory is but grace perfected.

 Jonathan Edwards

In the English New Testament the word "grace" is always a translation of χαρις (charis), a word that occurs in the Greek text something over 170 times (the reading is uncertain in places). In secular Greek of all periods it is also a very common word, and in both Biblical and secular Greek it is used with far more meanings than can be represented by any one term in English.*

Here are some definitions I found in a few different dictionaries (While there are many worldly definitions of the word grace from the following sources, for the sake of time, I am only referencing the definitions which are based on a Christian viewpoint):

Webster's New World Dictionary defines grace as "the love and favor of God toward human beings."
Merriam-Webster:1: Unmerited help given to people by God (as in overcoming temptation),
2: Freedom from sin through divine grace
3:A virtue coming from God

American Heritage Dictionary:7a: Divine love and perfection bestowed on people,
b: The state of being protected by God

Oxford American Dictionary describes grace as "The free and unearned favor of God."

If you'll notice above, the underlined words point out something about to whom grace is offered. It isn't every creature in creation which God has chosen to be a vessel of his grace; it's human beings. I don't feel arrogance because I'm in the only species God has blessed with the miracle of grace, I feel gratitude and awe that He would have considered this sort of salvation for us from our otherwise fleeting and disgusting lives here on earth, and even more so, from an eternity of punishment in hell.

Grace is God’s free and unmerited favor shown to guilty sinners who deserve only judgment.  It is the love of God shown to the unlovely.  It is God reaching downward to people who are in rebellion against Him.

 Jerry Bridges

I feel undeserving, as I should, that the Father would even blink once more in my direction after all that I've done against his name. Yet here I am with hope in my heart and unlimited power against the rulers of this world, including my own sin, simply because God loved me enough to pardon it all without any chance of repayment. He knows me better than I know myself, he knows all of my future mistakes that haven't even crossed my mind yet, and still he pardons me and blesses me with grace as if I am worth so much more.

[Grace is] the free and benevolent influence of a Holy God operating sovereignly in the lives of undeserved sinners.

 Phil Johnson

As I think on the reality of all of this, I am completely astonished about the presence of God, through grace in the form of his Spirit, in my life. But also, while not scared or nervous, I am more aware than ever of how much work needs to be done in my life, and because of this new realization, I have absolutely no excuse of why I cannot do any of it.

Grace is not simply leniency when we have sinned. Grace is the enabling gift of God not to sin. Grace is power, not just pardon.

 John Piper

One great paradox of the Christian life is that we are fully responsible for our Christian growth and at the same time fully dependent upon the Holy Spirit to give us both the desire to grow and the ability to do it.  God’s grace does not negate the need for responsible action on our part, but rather makes it possible.

Jerry Bridges

I believe, that the work of regeneration, conversion, sanctification and faith, is not an act of man’s free will and power, but of the mighty, efficacious ad irresistible grace of God.

C.H. Spurgeon

Taking it for what it is, I know that [grace] is not present in my life because of something I've done in order to gain it. So, I go into the next part of what it means to receive grace in my life (using it to change my life) knowing that it's not about what I can do. It's about what God the Father will do with me, because of His Grace, through the work of the Holy Spirit. And I'm so thankful it's not up to me, otherwise I would be literally, hopelessly, stuck in a very wicked existence.

Grace is the good pleasure of God that inclines Him to bestow benefits upon the undeserving. It is a self-existent principle inherent in the divine nature and appears to us as a self-caused propensity to pity the wretched, spare the guilty, welcome the outcast, and bring into favor those who were before under just disapprobation. Its use to us sinful men is to save us and make us sit together in heavenly places to demonstrate to the ages the exceeding riches of God’s kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

A.W. Tozer

This is the glory and miracle of grace, that God, through the Holy Spirit, is able to transform a stubborn, rebellious, and unbelieving will into a passionate, obedient, believing will without violating the integrity of the individual or diminishing the voluntary nature of one’s decision to trust Christ for salvation.

Sam Storms

It's because of God's love, and despite my undeserving of any chance of change, that I have been given a chance at complete transformation.
And it's because of this chance that I must not ignore the things that need change in my life, regardless of how difficult a task it may be.
It's not an excuse to remain in my previously desperate state of wickedness.

Grace does not grant permission to live in the flesh; it supplies power to live in the Spirit.

John MacArthur


But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
2 Corinthians 12:9-10

Next book up on Julie's reading list is going to be:
Transforming Grace, NavPress, 1991
Jerry Bridges

*The Meaning of Grace in the Bible.