Following Jesus Christ, the real Jesus Christ, and living by the light of the Holy Spirit always leads to sanity.
The Peace that Passes all Understanding is real. I have felt it.
The forgiveness of sins is also real, but it is not free. It costs repentance, and that costs seeing yourself for what you are. It requires giving up the self-righteous nonsense of being your own god and following the real God. And that means, for most adults, a breaking down inside themselves.
It is not easy or painless to see yourself as the sinful, lost person you truly are. But it is a requirement of repentance. It is the necessary first step to forgiveness and the gifts of love and freedom of living in Christ that follow.
Eternal life is real. It is our future. The question is, will you spend your eternal life in hell, or in heaven?
I fear that a lot of our clergy, and a lot of our most vocal laity are going to end up spending their eternity in hell because they deny Christ while proclaiming a false christ that is nothing more than a plastic doll, a stand-in, for their own greed, hate, bitterness.
Self-righteousness is not righteousness. There is no righteousness outside the Cross, and our place at the cross is on our knees in humility and gratitude.
There is only one person I can control, one person I have to answer for when I stand before God, and that person is me. I’ve done a lot of bad things in my life. I trip and fall into doing bad things every day I continue to live. Based on my own goodness, I would never see heaven.
I have one Savior, one Hope. One. And that is Jesus Christ. Thank God, I don’t have to be perfect. All I have to do is take the nailed-scarred Hand and be lifted up.
I choose Christ.
My former pastor used to say say that when we die, someone will be there, waiting for us and they will say “You belong to me.”
You and I decide now, in this life, who will say that to us.