PTM WEEKLY UPDATE -- MARCH 31, 2008
In the April PTM Partner Letter -- carrying a load of guilt?
The gospel of Jesus Christ boils down to this: God motivates us by grace, religion motivates us by guilt. You may be on a guilt trip right now -- or plans are being made to send you on one! Are you motivated by guilt or by grace?
We all have a past. We all have things we wish we could erase -- things we did, things we said, a road we wish we had not taken. “If only” is a game that leads to self-pity, an endless, pain-ridden and angst-laden journey, wherein we continuously replay the excruciating and agonizing details of our past sins. But the past is, as the saying goes, water under the bridge. It is gone. It happened. It cannot be changed. When we forget the cleansing we receive through the blood of our Savior, and we indulge our nagging guilt by playing the "if only" game, we endlessly drag ourselves through the torture of self-recrimination.
While it may pay lip service to grace, the bottom line is that the legalism and authoritarianism of religion do not want us to escape our sinful past. If we escape its bondage, then oppressive religion is out of business. Religion-ism has its own self-interests at heart, and it attempts to capitalize on our guilt by doing all that it can to keep us endlessly wading through the spiritual swill and sewage of our past.
Read the rest of this message from Greg Albrecht in the April PTM Partner Letter by clicking here. If you live in the U.S. or Canada, call us at 800-309-4466 to have the PTM Partner Letter delivered to your home every month -- giving you hope, encouragement and biblical insight, as well as offering PTM's newest resources.
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