SallysMom,

I've enjoyed your two Woodward article, part of article 2 is above.

The articles remind me of how another author compares the Christian life to various forks in the road. The first fork is the Salvation Fork, where unbelievers refuse to accept God's gift of salvation and others accept His gift and go on down the Salvation Road. Then, the next fork is the Assurance Fork where those who have been saved come to KNOW the assurance of their salvation, while others continue to struggle in salvation uncertainty and performance based salvation like this article (1) talked about. Then there is another fork. Lot's of people are convinced and assured that they are saved, but then take the Law Road of living the Christian life. They think that living life by trying harder is the way to go. This performance based living is really just another form of law whether we set up our own standards that we try to achieve or whether we use standards of others or even if we try to obey God's rules by determination. Any are still law living. So, at this next fork, is another road. It is a Grace Road where instead of trying, we are trusting. That is we are trusting moment by moment to allow Christ to live His life through us. We don't have to concentrate on rules but instead on a relationship and as we do that we will find the power of grace and will see that our "have to's" change to "want to's." If we understand out identity in Christ combined with a proper understanding of Grace, then we find the fruits of Christ living His life through us.

In summary, fork #1 is salvation. Fork #2 is assurance and fork #3 is Grace (not law).

Make any sense?

David