Near and Far Faith

I'm still going through Daniel and I'm in chapter 9 where Dan is praying and he says this (in The Message): [God] Act out of who You are, not out of what we are.

That thought just blows me away. First off, what if God in all his power did act on who we are? Some of us that have been in church for a long time may immediately wander to "the Sinner" (ie. the murderer or adulteress), completely passing over our potentially gossip filled and lieing hearts. Yeah, see, what we deserve, you and I, is the same that"they" deserve. We deserve eternal separation.

One of the students at Ignite asked this question Tuesday during Open Mic: Why is hell so bad? First we established and agreed that South Park and the Simpson's were a little OFF with it. It's sad, but they're really just expressing what the culture truly believes - Hell's fun. Then I told them this (and it was good to put into words what I've thought - not often we have to do that as Christians): what's so bad about hell is simply that we are alone - no friends, but most importantly, no God. See we'll have been judged and have seen our true and exhaustive need for Him by then and be destined for eternity apart from Him.

That's what we deserve. But the second thing that gets me about Daniel's prayer is this: How often do we act like we'll get what we deserve - good or bad? I believe that we lack a true understanding of Grace in it's purest Godly form.

Way back The Newsboys wrote a song about it. Check it out here.

Let's find out what it means to live in grace.