A Depth of Life
Jesus exposed a spiritual value in His Sermon On The Mount, Matthew 5 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
In this life, we are not meant to escape the reality of loss, but to process our losses with God’s Grace. We live in a broken world with bodies that are “appointed once to die” and, therefore, endure losses every day. We are not to “waste” the experiences of life but grow by them. This process of mourning is a carving out of our souls. The deepening of our souls that results from the sorrow and pain will result in a “vessel for His honor” to be filled with His Spirit and poured out for many.
A life without true spiritual experience and spiritual truth results in a Christian faith that will collapse under the sheer weight of the spiritual mediocrity it is compelled to carry.
We must escape the shallow life of hedonism, the cheap pleasure seeking existence that is self-absorbed and empty. The theologian and martyr, Dietrich Bonhoffer, called this “cheap grace”.
Cheap Grace is defined as “the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church, discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”
The author Dallas Willard calls this a “Consumer Christianity.” He defines this as “One who utilizes the grace of God for forgiveness and the services of the church for special occasions, but does not give his life and innermost thoughts, feelings and intentions over to the Kingdom of the heavens. Such Christians are not inwardly transformed and not committed to it.”
Jesus said in John 16:33 “These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.”
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