If the Good News doesn’t include the impossibility

of obeying/believing, it’s not Good News for sanctification.  If it’s up to me to follow Jesus, make the right choices, believe rightly, strive to obey, be Gospel-centered in my ministry and in life, I’m still experiencing The Curse, still confident I know what’s best for me and those I love, which means my joy and peace depend on my performance, or things going my way, and the imputed worthiness of Jesus has no real value to me.  Unsatisfying.  Leaving me addicted to my own worthiness.  Forcing me to dumb down the law and sin in order to feel good about myself, feel like I’m a follower of Jesus.

Only when I acknowledge the impossibility of following Jesus, the impossibility of obeying His commands, do I temporarily experience the benefit of Jesus and His Good News.  Abundant LIFE.  Right now.  Don’t have to wait for Heaven.  Ahhh.

Only dependents experience LIFE right now.  Independents/shepherds only experience artificial-LIFE, pseudo-LIFE, through pseudo-obedience, and only when things go our way, which merely strengthens our independence.  And if sensitive, our misery.  The insensitive push onward and upward, always striving, always clueless.  Leaven of the Pharisees.  Worldliness.  Human power.  Boring to skeptics.

–DumbSheepDave, blissful only when the Shepherd’s Spirit has freshly convicted him of the sin of independence, hoping the pre-believers around him are noticing the difference over the past year

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