New You – New Life

Encounter Grace Course – Part 14

To really enter into a New Life and escape from the baggage and hinderances of our past, we need something more than counselling.

Recently I was listening to a Guru explain that all we have to do is look inwardly and we will find all the answers we are looking for. But my experience was the opposite of this. I found that the more I looked inwardly during my meditation sessions, the more pronounced by fears and anxieties became. The mantra I was given for inner meditation exercises became an amplifier of my Negative Emotions. I could not shake off an anxiety problem that I had picked up one night experimenting with LSD where my nerves were shattered through a hellish experience.

The more I looked inwardly, the more I realised that I had become separated from the Source of Life, which at that stage I was unsure of what I was looking for. But I had an inward knowledge that I had missed it, I had made mistakes and Sinned, and had fallen short of the Light I was looking for. No amount of Meditation provided the remedy I was looking for, because I inherently knew the answer I was looking for was not within me.

Then I listened to another Spiritual guide who tried to convince me that my problem was that was not connecting to my Subconscious Mind, so I couldn’t activate the Law of Attraction.

At University my Marxist Professors claimed that my problem was societies fault, because we were all being oppressed by Systemic inequality created by Capitalist exploitation. I got caught up in this for a while, until it dawned on me that the Beatles song ‘Revolution’ wasn’t pro-violent uprising at all. The lyric, ‘If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you aren’t going to make it with anyone anyhow’ struck a chord with me when I realised that the politics of envy was not going to solve my inward problems.

Acknowledging that the answers are NOT within you is actually the first step to receiving Grace from our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Grace of Jesus Christ is freely given to us, and makes us Right with God. Sin opens the door to the Curse of Spiritual Death, but Grace redeems us with the Life of God. When you accept Jesus Christ as your Saviour there is an exchange of Natures. Your Sinful Nature is exchanged for His Righteous Nature by Grace freely, you don’t merit this by anything you have done.

Sin distorts our whole perception of reality, we end calling what is good as wicked, and what is wicked as good. This is because Sin has opened the Door to the dark cloud of Spiritual Death to come into our Spirit. This leads into all kinds of perversions, rebellious attitudes and behaviour, murder and insanity.

At our very worst the Grace of Jesus is unconditionally available to Redeem us.