Taking the initiative

So it turns out that while women feel like God is distant, they don't feel like he's angry with them. Many people have been brought up to perform good deeds, not to assage a guilty conscience and a fear of God's judgment, but rather as the means to receiving his blessing. They do good not to avoid something, but to get something.

Problem with this is:

• it stops people realising how horribly shot through everything is with sin, such that even good deeds, even religious deeds, aren't as good and pleasing to God as they might like to think;
• because of this people end up thinking they are better than they actually are and more in control of their life than they actually are;
• and they think that God is sitting back, uninvolved until such time as they chose to take the initiative.

This is not the good news I know, which starts with our sin and ends with a God who sacrifices and wins all for his utterly lost, beloved children.