There is a strong theme of restoration and forgiveness that runs through the Bible. In the book of Job we read about the way in which God miraculously restored Job’s life, after he experienced one calamity after another. We also read of the numerous healings performed by Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. We read of the way in which the woman caught in the act of adultery in John 8; we read of how the Pharisees wanted to stone the woman to death and how Jesus forgave her and told to her, “Go and sin no more”.
Christians are to derive strength from the belief that God loves us, He has forgiven us for all our wrong-doing; He knows what’s best for us and He can restore us – no matter what we have been through in the past. But this does not mean that we can just demand what we want, when we want. Christianity has been focused on attachment much more than non-attachment.
There has been the continued, relentless pursuit of doing things for God and believing God for things. It is as if on one side we have had the horror stories of what will happen to you if you don’t do “X-Y and Z”. Then, on the other side, there are the tall stories, the tales of miraculous things that have happened in people’s lives because they prayed a certain way and “stood” on particular Bible verses and so forth. We need to get to a place whereby we realise that God accepts us just as we are, regardless of our performance. The best way to live a blessed way of life, I find, is to find peace of mind, free from the stress of wrong beliefs.
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