Your remarks resonated with me. Thank you for them.
I celebrated “Christmas” for years without faith. Only in my 50th year have I found my church. Only later this month —shortly after Christmas— am I to be baptized.
I believe within every human heart is the desire to know God, to love Him, and to know His love. Those who celebrate a faithless Christmas have the desire in them somewhere. It’s either grown cold, or it hasn’t yet had the chance to blossom, but it’s there — even in the most wicked CNN host. It’s in every one of us, no?
Pray for the lost.
“I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.”
Luke 15:7
We all come from a background of common human sin whether or not we know it.
Salvational grace is free in one sense, but it is costly in another sense. We have to be willing to exercise the faith that accepting the grace will find it carrying us to a heavenly future, even when it seems to be removing all the things that we had once taken comfort in — as in fact it must do in order to make room for heavenly, more satisfying things. And if it were not for divine promises that salvational grace is furnished sufficient for this purpose, we might give up, saying that we might as well hang it up and have fun sinning our way to hell. And when we do slip, we’ll find the sin less and less enjoyable the closer we get to heaven and the more we see things in their true light.
If God hadn’t already solved the problem, the good news would be reduced to a “good luck” wish.
Some people will never yield for the sake of heaven, no matter what God approaches them with. The desire for God is forever twisted into a desire to follow the rebel angel to the bitter end, and God gets no foothold in those souls.