America has become spiritually fat, lazy in our relationship with God – Ali Winters

'God makes no mistakes. Everything looks like a confused piece of embroidery work, meaningless and ugly. But that is the underside. Someday we shall see the right side and shall be amazed and thankful'. A Prisoner and Yet...Corrie tenBoom

We in America are unfamiliar with hardship. Our freedoms intact we rest on our laurels, grasping at yet one more straw man, another promise, another lie. On the corner of Easy Street and Pleasant Parkway we learn very little of value. We become spiritually fat, lazy in our relationship with God and listless in our witness. We become comfortable, demanding, selfish and expectant. We rise like a snarling dog when opposed, we defend freedom of choice, yet deny the unborn that same freedom. We point a finger at the sinner, we condemn, we judge; we screech against those whose lives do not measure up to our ‘standard of excellence.’ Forgetting what we were before God through the Holy Spirit graciously reached down into the cesspool of our depravity, stretched out His hand and drug us to safety we are smug, arrogant and filled with pride. We have forgotten the filth that once defined our lives.

'Cheap grace is a deadly enemy of the church. Grace without a price; grace without a cost. We suppose the account has been paid in advance and, because it has, everything can be had for nothing. The "Christian" today lives like the rest of the world, modeling himself on the world' standards, rebelling against the free and boundless grace of God, enjoying the consolations of grace without repenting of sin, departing from sin and allowing sin to depart from him.

Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, grace without His Word. Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has, it is the pearl of great price, the kingly rule of Christ in our lives. The call of Jesus Christ to come at which the disciple leaves all and follows Him.

Costly grace cost God the life of His Son, it will cost a man his life as well, yet it is grace that will return true life to that same man; condemning sin, justifying the sinner. Costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Him. It comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and contrite heart, compelling a man to submit to the yoke and come'. The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Original article can be found here