Genuine Truth is Grounded in God's Reality

I've been thinking a lot lately about "feeling" close to God. Aida had a great discussion about it here: http://forgettingtheformerthings.blogspot.com/2008/10/seeking-god.html.

I thought that I had left my old religious baggage behind until this week, and I've realized that it is still hiding in the corners. I picked up one of McVey's books that I had in my car and read this:

"Having been born into a world system in which every religion known to man stresses his responsibility to stay in favor with his god through specifically defined behavior, it requires a radical paradigm shift for most Christians to move into a mind-set that embraces the idea that our behavior has absolutely nothing to do with gaining or STAYING IN God's favor. To suggest that there is nothing the believer can do that would put him out of favor with God sounds almost blasphemous to the religious mind. Most of us who grew up in church KNOW BETTER than that, do we? Therein lies the problem. Often as much must be UNLEARNED as is learned about walking in grace as a believer. Theologian Krister Stendahl astutely observed that 'it is not so much what we don't know, but what we think we know that obstructs our vision.'

One significant barrier that prevents many people in the modern church from enjoying a life in grace is what they THINK they know. They are firmly entrenched in a paradigm of spiritual reality that to them is self-evident, however imaginary it may actually be. Without divine intervention, the religionist will never experience grace to its fullest extent. Recipients of grace must have a heart and mind that are open toward God, and nothing so decidedly shuts down one's capacity to receive as empty religion."

Excerpt from Grace Land by Steve McVey