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Mercy is the permission to be human…Grace in it’s fullest form when revealed to me was the incomparable gift of the unspeakable joy of forgiveness, redemption, and salvation that I could NOT earn…growing up in the American Church of the late fifties, sixties, and seventies had some wonderful warm qualities of community about it.

There were traditions that I experienced that still make me feel warm inside…It was however extremely “insulated” and therefore at times overbearing and often one-sided yet at the same time it seemed bullet proof.

People did seem to come together though. Families in need had their needs met in many ways. Illness and tragedy were faced more as a family should but in that “insulation” there lay an all too clear error, a message that was spoken and unspoken and it was this…”behavior must be calculated so that one looked and spoke and acted a certain way (or at least hid it well if they weren’t). This became a guilt ridden comfort zone for me that God, in his infinite Goodness, has let me journey through to weed out the truth if you will of what His mercy and grace mean…these misunderstandings of Christ’s Redemptive work have led billions of people on a path that only God could intervene.

It is the path of flesh and blood human’s…to eradicate the lie that one must perform in such a way that eventually you can be good enough or at least be your own god… This is NOT how the story ends my friends…(to be continued)