The ugly truth about grace
Most people doubt where they stand with God. It's mostly because we don't separate the good news of what God is doing in Jesus from the Old Covenant. Jesus came to show us his father's heart, tell us something much bigger was coming - and made it happen. We often don't see the Old Covenant and the New Covenant as distinctly different, so we hang on to versions of ceremony, law keeping, and "better safe than sorry" and try to blend them with the gospel. The good news, is simple - the life that was lost because of sin has been restored through what God has done in Jesus. Sins are forgiven and not counted anymore, God's Spirit lives in us, if we'll believe it. If we "grew up in church", we likely heard that "mercy there was great and grace was free. Pardon there was multiplied to me. There my burdened soul found liberty, at Calvary." Some people's experience might have been (thankfully) different, but many of us learned that we...