Can I help it if God gave me a tender heart?

I guess I can because I did pray for His heart to be transplanted in me. Mine was full of bitterness and shame but He gave me a new heart that could love.

My friend has read your blog and hasn’t wanted to post but maybe he will if you use his quotes. He is the pastor of a church that is trying to reclaim the neighorhood and rebuild the kind of relationships within that used to be common before people got too busy to care about each other. Not bad for a pointy headed red necked preacher man who could easily go the way of Grizzly Adams if he didn’t have the call from God and a wife and kids to support.

DragonLady–>Why do I always make you cry?? If I do, I have a sneaking suspicion making you cry might not be such a hard thing to do. Nothing like a dyke who’s a softie. And I love the excerpt you provided from the mission statement above. Several of the sentences struck me particularly and will be included in the post that I’m just preparing to write….as soon as I finish clearing out my mailboxes.

“The Gospel really is “not what you think.” It’s counter-intuitive. What do we mean, counter-intuitive? We naturally think that God loves us because we attempt to keep His laws, like a parent who approves of a child when he or she gets good grades. So we migrate between the poles of trying hard to keep His Law in order win his favor, or completely giving up thinking we can never meet the demands of His Law. It often never occurs to us that the purpose of God’s law is to reveal our total inability to keep it in order to get us to gaze in wonder and amazement upon the beauty of Christ who kept it for us. In other words, some people think they more or less succeed in their attempts so they become good pretenders and excellent judges. Others are too honest to beguile themselves with such nonsense and settle into some pattern of disregard for God’s law thinking they can never keep it anyway. But the good news is, there is another way. It is the Gospel way. The Gospel way says that God loves us not because of what we do or don’t do but because of what Christ has done. In other words, when the truth that Christ kept the law for you dawns in your soul it gives you a whole new motivation and ability to please God. The old way results in polarization between those who think God loves them because they’ve done a pretty good job at keeping his requirements and those who give up the struggle for holiness and throw in the towel and affirm God loves us anyway.”