Amazing Grace Changes Everything

The Gospel is the best news ever. The good news is that a great life can begin now and continue forever if people choose God because of God’s grace through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Everyone should care about the truth of this matter. All people will all die, and it is only a matter of time before everyone is faced with the personal reality of the death of someone known and loved. Discovering what happens to loved ones who die, which is everyone’s future too, is in fact one of the most important things anyone can do. History and the future involve far more time than any one person’s brief years, decades, or century on earth. If life is to have meaning, everyone should want to know how to make their time in this world useful, beneficial, and/or blessed. If people do not care about this, they are daydreaming through life, walking in a daze, and fruitlessly being knocked from one event or crisis to the next, which can lead to despair. Submission to or placating a mysterious, powerful being, or making a conscious effort toward extinguishment, as if life is fundamentally a mistake, may help them to pass the time. But when people accept this idea out of mere fear or resignation, is it any better than nihilism? Another alternative, namely, a healthy dose of denial and/or self-delusion, is no better. Unfortunately, it may seem as if only philosophically dedicated people such as priests, nuns, monks, and philosophers make the time to truly explore their ultimate destiny. Everyone has a right to take seriously the question of their final fate or not. But if this question is left unaddressed, a person will endure the grave consequence, which is to drift through life. People despair, resort to extremism, lash out, or fade away in hopelessness as the inevitability of their death intrudes on their thinking. They end up wishing they had better used their time earlier in their lives to ponder this question in the light of a religious faith, philosophy, or ideology. Christians are supposed to be those who have the good news, have answers from God, and have fruit in their lives, reflecting the confidence that comes from knowing God. Unfortunately, too many are like most others in the world and are baffled about the God with whom they say they have formed a personal relationship. Instead of God being their Daddy who is raising them to be the friends Jesus says they are to be, Christians too often merely submit to a dictator who remains an unknowable mystery to them. Living like this, their prayers remain pleas into the ether instead of conversations in partnership with God to come to know better in love. The purpose of Amazing Grace Changes Everything is to present the Gospel anew. I know that I have offered many declarative sentences here in the beginning without much explanation or justification. Through Amazing Grace Changes Everything, I will flesh out my argument, using Scripture, logic, and Christian tradition to analyze what a new understanding of the Gospel could mean. From this, I hope to discuss my ideas about being restored to the original created purpose of stewardship in partnership with God. My hope is that non-Christians will see that Christianity is more than just another religion presenting a God as the same as any other religion with only traditions, rules, and immutable faith demands that people parrot because they are told to by their religious leaders. But the Gospel is far beyond what such people think they know. Christianity can be understood as rationally as anyone might expect of something they build their lives upon. Therefore, knowing this, they can choose this God for their eternal peace and solace. But even more than this, in presenting the Gospel anew, I want Christians to grasp the profundity of what it is they claim to believe. In seeing again with new eyes what Christians say they believe with their statements of faith. Christians can grasp how amazing their lives can be. Rather than reducing their religion to a community of faith that is a faction at war against all others to convert them into obedience, Christians should live as if they know that an all-loving and all-powerful God loves them and every single creature in existence. As Christians state that they believe in an all-loving and all-powerful God who can save everyone all through grace, not works, truly believing this essential truth of the Gospel can potentially transform their identity. Their faith and their relationships with everyone in the world can be changed. Stop underappreciating amazing grace and come to recognize it as a real gift from God. God is the divine parent who wants to raise everyone to spiritual maturity and become stewards of creation. Just ask, seek, and knock and God will bless. If any parent knows to give good gifts to their children, then how much more does the divine parent know how to do so? All that God has is to be shared with everyone, no matter how prodigal anyone has ever been. Is this too good to be true? Or is this the least anyone should expect from the all-loving, all-powerful God who is most glorified through the demonstration of divine generosity? God wants everyone to freely make the choice to follow. God endured the Incarnation and Calvary to give everyone that chance. Just say yes. Living out divine purposes is all it takes to turn this potential eternal blessing into a reality. If everyone believes this as the Bible teaches everyone to do, people can experience lives as an adventure, filled with anticipation for a wonderful eternity. Life is not just a countdown to mere rest or doom, as people either suppress the burdens of the unknown or are overwhelmed by them. God made humanity for so much more than that. People can and should know this truth and live it. Because amazing grace changes everything.