January 23, 2010 a Turning Point in my Life.

January 23, 2010 a Major Turning Point in my Life

Being raised as a Catholic had its pluses and minuses. On the plus side I heard about Jesus early and attended church 6 days a week. I went to Catholic schools for 16 years. On the minus side my religious training was about the need to never sin and obey all the rules set forth by the church. We learned very little about God’s love , forgiveness and mercy. We were taught to confess our sins to a priest or if we died before confessing we would probably go to a fiery hell full of demons, or if we were lucky we might only have to spend 15,000 years in a fiery place called purgatory.
Once it was ingrained into my head that my salvation depended upon me behaving perfectly it was hard to see it any other way.
I first heard that we are saved by faith and grace when I was about 30 and heard many preachers throughout the next ten years saying there is nothing we can do to gain or lose our salvation, it has all been done by Jesus. Somehow I thought they were off the mark and never could believe it. I then spent the next ten years among Mennonites who also worried that we might lose our salvation by bad behavior.
Here I am 66 years old and today January 23rd after about a 12 day illness during which I poured over the scriptures the page opened wide and there was the thing I had unknowingly hungered and searched for since I first started to seriously follow Jesus in 1977. I’m sure I had read over it many times but today there was Romans 4:8 illuminated before my eyes.
“Romans 4:8 Happy, How blessed is the person whose sins the Lord will never charge against him.”
I wept when the full import of it hit me. God made a promise and swore an oath that he would greet me and my memory of my sins without wrath or rebuking, but with mercy and deliberated forgetfulness of my evil deeds. Praise God almighty, free at last. My unrighteousness or righteousness played no role in this, it was because of God’s love mercy and grace and Yahshuah’s faithfulness that this exists; it is for everyone and those who believe it are the most blessed for they can live in joy and not fear. Thank you father for healing this blind man’s eyes. I once was blind but now I see.