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dcastlen50
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Great! I do not know how to do “PM.” Is it legal? Anyway, here is my email : dcastlen50@hotmail.comI looooove Kreeft. He is brilliant. I downloaded his talk on Priestesses from his website and I decided after that that I am in love with him. I have quoted him quite a few times here. He’s remake of the Screwtape Letters (The Snakebite Letters) is wonderful. It us updated for our times.
No I don’t have publications or a website. CAF is the extent of my musings put into words.
I have found that conversion stories (especially those by people who are highly erudite and steeped in scripture) is a treasure trove of “defence of the hope that we have in us”.
God has been wonderful in providing me with books. This is how He intervenes in my education.
Just to illustrate. Very often I would go to the Catholic Bookshop not intending to buy anything just to browse. Then a book would catch my eye (somethign I had not noticed before) and I would buy it. A few days later, something would come up where that book would prove invaluable. And that scenario has happened so often I now think when I buy a new one, okay, I wonder who would need to hear the content of this book.
The other month I went there to buy a magazine. Found out I needed to spend at least $20 to be able to pay by card so I was forced to buy a book. Picked up Francis Becwith’s Return to Rome and that has proven to be most valuable in my understanding of the reformed perspective on justification and sanctification.
But I highly recommend that book by Dom Bruno Webb. That really summed up for me the whole economy of salvation. It is like viewing all these little topics we discuss (Mary, Eucharist, the sacraments, purgatory, infallibility) and captures that in this concept of the economy of salvation and how everything makes for this one big beautiful tapestry.
And of course, one cannot go past Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict. I have cried in the train when I read that. I was just struck by the brilliance of our Pope and I so thank God that he is our Chief Shepherd here on earth.
Another thing that has given me a wider vision of salvation is Fr Barron’s Eucharist DVD and book. A must read for Catholics and non Catholics if they want to make sense of this wonderful Sarcrament.
But really they are innumerable.
If you like, pm me your email and I will send you some really good articles which I have collected. I download them from the web and re-format them for easy reading.
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shaky
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Hi quanophore
I am still trying to work out when we are given this grace. Because {Augustine says} We cannot choose first to do the will of God and then we are Given Grace because that makes us sovereign over God. {Augustine says} Even if God Knows before the foundation of the world The Ones that would choose his will That still makes us sovereign over God.
So When does God Give Us this Grace To have Faith,To Choose God and to do the will of God.
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shaky
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Hi bengoshiI think we would go to the particular application of the atonement (Limited Atonement in TULIP) for that.
As to the places, Sheol(Heb.) = Hades(Gk.), while Gehenna(Heb.) = Tartarus(Gk.)
We can see that there is another distinct place other than heaven or hell after we die. And neither are these “purgatory” I suppose because even according to Catholic theology, purgatory is not described in that way.
Taking that into consideration, I think the explanation given by GotQuestions is quite convincing.
The sleep thing may be a figure of speech in that our bodies will lie in wait after we die but before the second coming in which new bodies will be provoded for us.
So what does Jesus Died for the whole world mean?.
Only for the ones that are in paradise already:confused They are already saved in paradise
{Not the Ones in Tartarus lower hell}
So Jesus Jesus died only for limited Atonement people that have already been chosen in the first place. {because of there Sins}
Maybe paradise is purgatory a place where you are further matured.
What do you think it means by: See the Kingdom of God. Enter the Kingdom of God
Inherit the Kingdom. These all mean different things.
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shaky
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Hi benendictus.
Judging by allot of people who believe in a God they are wired for a God. They are all in different denominations and different religions. But are the following the true God. we know the devil can be the Angel of light behind religions and cults and denominations. The bible even warns about following another Jesus. where is the grace for them. They believe the are saved but in reality they are not.
You have to have the Grace to have the Right faith to follow the Right Jesus to know the right God to be in the right church.
I really hope for the Grace to have free will to follow everything Right.
The bible says you are either a slave to righteousness or a slave to unrighteousness
A prisoner of Satan or a prisoner of Christ. Maybe it is not a simple as you think this free will.
Then you have atheists who dont believe in any religion or God.
You maybe have the grace to be following the right Jesus the right God and the Right church. And be a slave to righteousness and a prisioner of christ.
Look at youself deeply and ask youself have you got the free will to turn away from it all
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shaky
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Hi benedictusSorry but no. The doctrine ( Three Persons in One God) is not there. Otherwise there would not have been such kerfuffle over so many Trinitarian heresies.
Actually it is there. The reason you do not believe it is in scripture is because Protestants have a mangled version of scripture. You should visit the threads on purgatory, there are quite a few here.
Praying for the dead is in Mac2 (which of course Luther conveniently exised from the Bible) and Revelation says that nothing unclean will enter heaven. And there are others but this is not the topic of this thread.
Sorry but you are pulling at straws here. That is a legal principle and legislative in nature. Has no bearing on the matter under discussion whatsoever.
Now if you mentioned philosophical principles, that is another matter.
Sorry to say this but a totally irrelevant side note.
Reprobation is only a necessary implication of election if you apply the statutory construction that you mentioned above. But, sorry to say this, it just does not apply, because all it is a legal principle.
But on another point. You said : . “Just like the Trinity, reprobation is a necessary implication of election”
That is a very interesting statement, that the Trinity is a necessary implication of election.
So how (in Calvinistic Theology) is the Trinity (and I mean here the doctrine that states 3 persons in One God) a necessary implication of election?
I can explain it from the Catholic point of view but the Reformed theology will be stretch to the max to correlate the two.
Another interesting choice of words. Unto death. Precisely. People who with their very last will deny God. But what is being questioned here is the Calvinistic proposition that God even before He proceeds to create human beings WILLS that they will not be given the opportunity to believe. Remember, you said that one only believes because God has given the grace to believe.
You are establishing a causality here.Code:Now that has got to be the height of irrationality. ‘He desires ALL men to be saved so He WILLFULLY chooses to send them to Hell???!! :eek:How does that compute?:confused:
Let me rephrase that so you can see how mind-bogglingly absurd that is.
“This deity wishes ALL men to live in love and happiness, enjoy eternity with him, and in order to do that, he MADE SURE that some men wlll never ever be in his presence by casting them to hell.”
Sorry friend, but the greater purpose He has already revealed. That is what our religion is all about, it is a revealed religion. And the purpose is the salvation of man.
Here again have re-hashed your arguments from a few posts before when we have already debunked it.
In a debate, what you are supposed to do is to refute / debunk our debunking not just re-state what you have stated before.
I have already shown before that based on your line of argument the god of your theology is unjust. To do a proper rebuttal you need to show how I am wrong and that God is just after all in creating men with the express purpose of damning them.
Explain how this is just: "god says that in order to be saved you must eat choc chip cookies. But only he can provide choc chip cookies. He wilfully decides to not give some people these choc chip cookies. Then he stomps in and yells in anger: “you have not obeyed what I commanded that you should eat choc chip cookies so from now on I will roast you in an open flame while little red evil creatures poke you with their forks.”
I Agree with you here. It does seem very unfair God giving people no chance of salvation
Its not very nice for the person to realise this that is on the wrong side of the fence.
That person might as-well go off and Sin as much as possible and properly.
What is this that you are saying about the Trinity. Do catholics believe this 3 persons in one God and Jesus is God??
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paul_c
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Shaky,Hi benendictus.
Judging by allot of people who believe in a God they are wired for a God. They are all in different denominations and different religions. But are the following the true God. we know the devil can be the Angel of light behind religions and cults and denominations. The bible even warns about following another Jesus. where is the grace for them. They believe the are saved but in reality they are not.
You have to have the Grace to have the Right faith to follow the Right Jesus to know the right God to be in the right church.
I really hope for the Grace to have free will to follow everything Right.
The bible says you are either a slave to righteousness or a slave to unrighteousness
A prisoner of Satan or a prisoner of Christ. Maybe it is not a simple as you think this free will.
Then you have atheists who dont believe in any religion or God.
You maybe have the grace to be following the right Jesus the right God and the Right church. And be a slave to righteousness and a prisioner of christ.
Look at youself deeply and ask youself have you got the free will to turn away from it all
Grace is god’s life within us and we all have that to varying degrees. God calls to all men. Some listen and follow, others don’t. Those that get baptized, have sufficient grace to go to heaven if that don’t lose that Grace through sin. If you stay in the state of Grace until death, you will go to heaven. You do that by loving God and Neighbor and avoiding sin. If you do fall from Grace through sin, God, in his infinite mercy, will accept you back into the state of grace through the sacrament of reconciliation. Because sin is a willfull act, as is love, we choose heaven or hell though our actions. But we also know that our salvation is only possible because God called to us first. and continues to lead us through our consciences . And we also know that grace builds within through the sacraments, most especially the eucharist, to enable us to persevere in the faith. And the great paradox, is that you can’t earn your way to heaven, you must give your way to heaven, because love is giving without expecting or wanting anything in return…
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paul_c
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God gives everyone a chance at salvation. Jesus came to call sinners after all.
And yes, there are three persons in one God: The father, the son and the holy spirit. and Jesus is most absolutely God. He clearly said he was in the Father and the Father was in him, did he not?
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Pete_Holter
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Good day, my sister!
When God saves a person, His love and mercy are exhibited. When God does not save a person, His justice, power, and wrath are exhibited. The justice of God manifested in the reprobate instills both a vigilant vigor and a humble gratitude in those “who are called according to His purpose,” for whom God makes “all things work together for good” (Romans 8:28). The unrepentant sins of the reprobate highlight God’s forbearance and “the riches of His glory for vessels of mercy” (Romans 9:23).
The Augustinian understanding of unconditional predestination to salvation and of conditional reprobation to hell seems to make puppets out of men only when you’ve first made God into a mere man. The person who first makes a man out of God is forced to place man himself at a lower position. Placing man, therefore, at the level of a puppet makes sense to such a person, but only when we cannot conceive of something higher than man when we think about God.
But we let God be God and man be man. And we say that, “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; He turns it wherever He will” (Proverbs 21:1). And if this is too difficult for us, we again exclaim, “Oh the depth!”
Benedictus. My sister in Christ. When we are handling this question for those outside the Church, we are talking about their eternal salvation hanging in the balance. You want to persuade Calvinists to become Molinists in order to become Catholic. If your heart burns with God’s love, as you so rightly amplify throughout your posts, then please try your best to “become all things to all people, that by all means [you] might save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22). You are rejecting the teaching of the two greatest doctors of the Western Church, one of them even being donned the Doctor of Grace, to the hurt of our Calvinist brothers and sisters. In your current endeavor, the content of your posts makes it appear as though you are more interested in persuading men to your own way of thinking than in winning them for Christ. Please understand, I do not impute a bad motive to you.
I have one more post prepared, beyond which I will not have the time to post on this thread anymore. I just don’t have the time. :crying: May the LORD be with you!
Our ability to choose to cooperate with God’s grace is “itself an effect of grace” (Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification). You said that Augustine’s teaching “seems to be saying one… is coerced into salvation.” But Augustine never taught this. You don’t like Augustine’s teaching on grace and free will, but, as I quoted earlier, Pope Leo XIII lauded him for “How subtly he reasoned on… the will and free choice” (Aeterni Patris).
It is not that we cannot assign any reason to why one person is saved and another is not. It is just that we place the mystery, not in man, but in God, Whose purposes are beyond our ability to comprehend, and Who explains them to us only as far as faith requires. God “has mercy on whomever He wills, and He hardens whomever He wills” (Romans 9:18). And if we ask why He had mercy on the person He had mercy on, God Himself answers by saying, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion” (Romans 9:15). And if we ask why He didn’t have mercy on the one whom He hardened, He answers us again by saying, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion” (Romans 9:15). And if we again ask, But why this one and not that one, you want the answer to be “free will”; but God’s Word has already answered us by saying that free will is not the answer, clearly stating that “it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, Who has mercy” (Romans 9:16). His answer comes to us within the context of an argument that seeks to explain why one person is saved and another is not.
When God saves a person, His love and mercy are exhibited. When God does not save a person, His justice, power, and wrath are exhibited. The justice of God manifested in the reprobate instills both a vigilant vigor and a humble gratitude in those “who are called according to His purpose,” for whom God makes “all things work together for good” (Romans 8:28). The unrepentant sins of the reprobate highlight God’s forbearance and “the riches of His glory for vessels of mercy” (Romans 9:23).
Total depravity is usually taken to mean that all of man (this is the “total” part) is to some extent deleteriously affected by original sin. Reason, the will, the appetites, are all in some way disordered. It does not mean that all of man is to the fullest extent affected by original sin. The mind is beclouded, but not black; the will is bent and weakened, but not destroyed; our desires are lustful, but in some ways restrained; our love is tainted by selfishness, and yet we can perform selfless acts, etc. Neither Augustine nor Aquinas said that there is no goodness in even the worst of sinners.
The Augustinian understanding of unconditional predestination to salvation and of conditional reprobation to hell seems to make puppets out of men only when you’ve first made God into a mere man. The person who first makes a man out of God is forced to place man himself at a lower position. Placing man, therefore, at the level of a puppet makes sense to such a person, but only when we cannot conceive of something higher than man when we think about God.
But we let God be God and man be man. And we say that, “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; He turns it wherever He will” (Proverbs 21:1). And if this is too difficult for us, we again exclaim, “Oh the depth!”
Benedictus. My sister in Christ. When we are handling this question for those outside the Church, we are talking about their eternal salvation hanging in the balance. You want to persuade Calvinists to become Molinists in order to become Catholic. If your heart burns with God’s love, as you so rightly amplify throughout your posts, then please try your best to “become all things to all people, that by all means [you] might save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22). You are rejecting the teaching of the two greatest doctors of the Western Church, one of them even being donned the Doctor of Grace, to the hurt of our Calvinist brothers and sisters. In your current endeavor, the content of your posts makes it appear as though you are more interested in persuading men to your own way of thinking than in winning them for Christ. Please understand, I do not impute a bad motive to you.
I have one more post prepared, beyond which I will not have the time to post on this thread anymore. I just don’t have the time. :crying: May the LORD be with you!
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Pete_Holter
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In his homilies on Paul’s Letter to the Romans, Doctor of the Church John Chrysostom says that, in man’s being deserted by God, “it was ungodliness which was the cause, but He “gave them up” (Romans 1:24), here is, let them alone. For as he that has the command in an army, if upon the battle lying heavy upon him he retreat and go away, gives up his soldiers to the enemies not by thrusting them himself, but by stripping them of his own assistance; thus too did God leave those that were not minded to receive what comes from Him, but were the first to bound off from Him, though Himself having wholly fulfilled His own part” (Homily 3 on Romans). And in commenting on the Sermon on the Mount, he writes, “Howbeit, from those miracles no gain accrued to them; rather they are the more punished. Wherefore unto them did He utter even that fearful saying, ‘I never knew you’ (Matthew 7:23): there being many for whom His hatred begins already even here; whom He turns away from, even before the judgment. Let us fear therefore, beloved; and let us take great heed to our life” (Homily 24 on Matthew).
John Paul II quotes from Augustine to make the point that “God gives help so that the command becomes possible, since ‘He does not abandon us unless we abandon Him first’ (, Ch. 25On Nature and Grace)” (Augustinum Hipponsensem). The implication being that there can come a time in our lives when God abandons us.
And Scripture shows this to be true. Romans 1:24, 26, & 28 and Hebrews 12:17. Also, the sons of Eli “would not listen to the voice of their father” ─ that is, they would not refrain from sinning “against the LORD” ─ “for it was the will of the LORD to put them to death” (1 Samuel 2:25). The Scriptures provide a number of examples that Augustine goes through in his work , Chapters 41 through 45On Grace and Free Will. Here he tells us that,
“if this divine record be looked into carefully, it shows us that not only men’s good wills, which God Himself converts from bad ones, and, when converted by Him, directs to good actions and to eternal life, but also those which follow the world are so entirely at the disposal of God, that He turns them whithersoever He wills, and whensoever He wills, ─ to bestow kindness on some, and to heap punishment on others, as He Himself judges right by a counsel most secret to Himself, indeed, but beyond all doubt most righteous” (Ch. 41).
In his , Chapters 23 and 24Treatise on the Gift of Perseverance, Augustine illustrates his point that the mystery lies in God and not in man by discussing the saying of Jesus where He tells us that “if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes” (Matthew 11:21). Had God done the miracles for them, they would have repented. And yet, God withheld the miracles and they did not repent. “Oh the depth!”
Following along with this, Augustinian scholar Phillip Cary, in seeking to break open what Augustine taught, likens the saving grace of God to something akin to “falling in love.” We are freely and actively in love with the person; and yet, we didn’t choose to be in love with the person. I think this captures it for me.
I encourage you to read Augustine’s Treatise On the Predestination of the Saints and his Treatise On the Gift of Perseverance. As I quoted in part earlier, Pope Pius XI relayed to us that Pope “Hormisdas wrote in answer to Bishop Possessor’s request for direction these weighty words: ‘What the Roman, that is, the Catholic Church follows and maintains touching free will and the grace of God, can be learned from the different works of blessed Augustine, those especially which he addressed to Hilary and Prosper’ ” (Ad Salutem Humani); and these two treatises are the ones addressed to Hilary and Prosper.
With love in Christ,
Pete
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Pete_Holter
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paul_c
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Pete,
when Paul said he was being all things to all people, he didn’t mean that he would adjust Catholic doctrine to be satisfying to heretics.
Frankly, You are taking Augustine beyond what he says into Calvinism.
Augustine always maintained the joint Catholic declaration that men have free will and that God is also sovereign. His genius was in describing how the two could coincide. However, I will maintain that the theological concepts are important only to scholastics and those that enjoy the intellectual stimulation.
The practical aspects, what all people need to know for salvation is this:
While it is good to point out where they agree with us - They afterall believe in grace and good works. throughh Jesus Crhist. -, it does them no good, and in fact harm to ignore where they fall short of the truth.
when Paul said he was being all things to all people, he didn’t mean that he would adjust Catholic doctrine to be satisfying to heretics.
Frankly, You are taking Augustine beyond what he says into Calvinism.
Augustine always maintained the joint Catholic declaration that men have free will and that God is also sovereign. His genius was in describing how the two could coincide. However, I will maintain that the theological concepts are important only to scholastics and those that enjoy the intellectual stimulation.
The practical aspects, what all people need to know for salvation is this:
- you need to ACT with love toward God and neighbor to get to heaven. This is a demonstration of your free will.
- You need God’s grace to get to heaven, starting with the Grace that is freely given at baptism and including the graces from the other sacraments. This is a demonstration of God’s sovereignty.
While it is good to point out where they agree with us - They afterall believe in grace and good works. throughh Jesus Crhist. -, it does them no good, and in fact harm to ignore where they fall short of the truth.
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shaky
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Hi paul
I have been studying Augustine: Yes Grace and free will work together. Free will to do the will of God. without Grace you only have free will to do the will of Satan. Even our righteousness is filthy rags in the site of God. {remember}. Satan can be the angel of light
What about all the Good deeds of the Muslims that they do is that The grace of God.
So you state you get the Grace of God when you are baptised. So you get baptised then God gives you the Grace. That is putting works before Grace. In other word you do something first then God will give. Augustine is speaking dead against this. That is giving merit to man first. Augustine is speaking dead against this.
You have to be given Grace first!! That gives you faith to have the free will to get baptised.
Then everything that you do after this is by your free will being strengthened by God and his Grace.
By grace you are saved through faith not of works lest any man can boast {Remember} Eph 2:8
Your works then proves your faith and Grace that you have been Given. {Remenber James}
This gives all the glory to God. This is what Augustine is saying!!
Do you believe Satan has free will??
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Philthy
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paul_c
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God gives us Grace, it is true. And with that grace, we make the choice to be baptized. This gives us more grace, enough to enter heaven if we don’t lose grace through sin. If we continue to partake of the sacraments, we increase further in grace that allows us to live lives of love, and to avoid sin. The more you have, the more you will be given, ultimately leading to eternal life. But at every step, we have to make the choice to go further. To take the sacraments. To do good works, etc…
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Bengoshi
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Then I am done with you. You don’t even want to give it a chance. Your poking holes in my arguments were illogical and out of context. They are full of straw man arguments which argue from points that I didn’t even mean. Furthermore, the space provided here is not enough for me to present a complete discussion of Election/Reprobation.Let me ride along with your premise that the address is limited to whowever Paul is writing to.
Once you go down that track, I can also say, sorry but he is not reffering to you eitherl. You were not even a thought in your great, great, great to the nth degree grand father’s head when Paul was writing.
Once you go down that track, you limit the cover of his writings to precisely just the Romans, Ephesians, etc. and even more narrowly, only to those who were Roman, Ephesians etc, **during **his time because the letters were addressed to them.
Poor us in the 20th century, western, eastern, African culture. Who will write an epistle to us to tell us we are saved?
You on the other hand do eisegesis. You read into scripture your preconceived notions and force scripture to say what you want it to say even if you have to chop this and that verse out. This is just not you though. This is the whole manner of protestant eisegesis although some are more faithful to the real intent of scripture and tradition more than others.Code:No I’m not and you know it. The Catholic position takes scripture allows it to speak for itself. That is what is exegesis is all about.
And why would I read an author who teaches heresy? I have not even read all fo the works of the Fathers of the Church. My humble aim at the moment is to be able to read all of Pope Benedicts work. Now that, is one super brilliant man. Thanks be to God.Code:Well that is not what scripture says. Scripture say God so loved the World not the elect who are all over the world.
I suggest you pick up Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict. If there is only 1 book that a Christian should read apart from the Bible, I think that is it.Code:You claim to be a lawyer. With that kind of education you would have been able to explain whatever it is you grasped from Sproul’s book. Whatever you have explained here is so weak. If that is coming from Sproul’s work then sorry but it ireally is not worth reading.
Speaking of brilliance, pick up Chesterton. I think anyone who engages Chesterton will come out thinking clearer.
Based on what you have shared here of his work, there is nothing to chew on.
I’ve already poked so many holes on your argument which I presume you got from him.
If he is so brilliant, rebutting my points should be a walk in the park. You can quote him verbatim if you like.
By the way, I do plan to read Chesterton. I also appreciate the brilliance of Pope Benedict. I really do plan to buy their books, although Chesterton’s are quite difficult to find here in our country.
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Bengoshi
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I agree with you here!
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shaky
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Hi paul
I am in total Agreement with you hear. We have to ask God for everything. Ask for a new heart, A new will. A new mind A new spirit. Ask To overcome each and evey sin. Ask God
To help us not to fall into temptation. with the grace in us. use that grace to ask for more grace more faith more strenth more of his spirit. I am asking God every day to show me the truth in his word and Lead me to the Right Church.
sometimes i am in tears asking God for things and i Know he will help me.
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paul_c
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I have found that many people’s prayers for guidance leads them here to this website. I know it has helped me tremendously in understanding the Catholic faith and how to live it. Just keep asking and following the guidance of your conscience and be open to where it leads you. God Bless you…Hi paul
I am in total Agreement with you hear. We have to ask God for everything. Ask for a new heart, A new will. A new mind A new spirit. Ask To overcome each and evey sin. Ask God
To help us not to fall into temptation. with the grace in us. use that grace to ask for more grace more faith more strenth more of his spirit. I am asking God every day to show me the truth in his word and Lead me to the Right Church.
sometimes i am in tears asking God for things and i Know he will help me.
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benedictus2
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Yes that is true. But our wiring is for God although the devil does try hard to mislead us by appearing as the angel of light. That is why discernment is important.
Code:
Okay there are several underlying assumptions in these two statements that we need to clarify.
First wrong assumption. That grace is only given to those who follow “the right Christ”.
Grace is given to all because grace is needed in the first place to even begin following the “right” of Christ. Otherwise there will be no such things as conversions by people who have been following the wrong Christ.
Say for example you belong to one of these New Age sects that preach the wrong kind of Jesus. There is always grace sufficient to come to knowledge of the true Christ and it may come in something so very simple as hearing a word or a song, something someone did, etc. But, Grace is always given to lead us to truth. The problem is, most people are so immersed in their own self-deification that abandoning their own lifestyle is unthinkable even when they are faced with truth.
Second wrong assumption. That we are saved by believing in the right Jesus. This is what is known as forensic justification which is an erroneous, unscriptural doctrine.
Salvation is not about “getiting saved”. Rather it is being conformed to the image of Christ. When we have been conformed into the image of Christ, then we can say we are saved.
3rd Wrong assumption. That people in these sects are somehow not “saved”. Well we do not know that. Only God knows their hearts and how much they responded to the grace being given God to turn to Him.Yes, yes, yes. I have never questioned that. What I do however question is that God purposely denies other people the grace to find Christ.
Code:
There is a very big responsibility on us Christians to help others find the “right Christ”.
Have you ever thought that the reason God gave you the grace is because you are supposed to lead others to Him? God is passionate about these people who do not truly know Him. And if God truly matters to us, then what matters to Him will also matter to us.
I think this is where the doctrine of election plays a major role in our theology. Before He ascended to heaven, He gave His disciples a grand commission – to make disciples of ALL NATIONS, baptizing them in the name of the Trinity.Pray constantly for it. Do not get complacent and think “I am saved” and that is that.
I always pray to God to help me so that what matters to Him will also matter to me. I tell Him I am yours, change me and mould me into the woman that you want me to be. And I surrender everything to Him and I ask for the grace to never ever choose anything that is contrary to His will.
Code:
A good prayer for this is the **Suscipe **of St Ignatius which goes:
T***ake, Lord, and receive all my liberty,and my entire will,
All I have and call my own.
You have given all to me.
To you, Lord, I return it.
Everything is yours; do with it what you will.
Give me only your love and your grace.
That is enough for me.
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