When we consider our own end, it will not bring us into a final wrestling match with the messenger of God, but into the embrace of the Messiah of God.
What do such callings look like? They are ordinary and everyday.
This is the third in a series meant to let the Christian tradition speak for itself, the way it has carried Christians through long winters, confusion, and joy for centuries.

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The salvation of wretched sinners by an omni-holy and forever-righteous God is, by all accounts, a categorical impossibility.
Thank God for heroes: they inspire us to be better, to help others, to live and work for the good of our race. And thank God for villains, too: they incarnate our shadow side, our nocturnal soul, the dragon within us that must incessantly have its throat slit on the altar of repentance.
Since Adam, we are all illegal and undocumented aliens in God’s country.
Rather than calling me to pick burrs off my coat, God’s love strips me of my delusions and cuts to the heart of my disease.
Perhaps the answer to creating a healthier church and a more invested people is found in preaching more clearly the full freeing Gospel.
But these good works aren’t done under compulsion. They’re done freely. They aren’t done so that God will love us. They’re done because He loves us.
I have been very busy lately, trying to understand things.
What we notice less often is that this same fear wonders about both the efficacy of the Gospel and the Law.
Love is the sum of the law. Love God with all your heart, spirit, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. That means that if love can't be done when it needs to be done then get rid of the law, because it's not lawful.
Perhaps if we indulged our Christian freedom around them, they would come to see that “the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
We are saved by grace, and strictly speaking, not by an offer.
Have you ever received a gift for which you were less than thrilled, but you had to pretend you really liked it so as not to offend the giver?