ephesians 2:8-9

"For by grace you have been saved by faith. Nothing you did could ever earn this salvation, for it was the love gift from God that brought us to Christ! So no one will ever be able to boast, for salvation is never a reward for good works or human striving."

(Ephesians 2:8‭-‬9 TPT)

 

Key takeaways from this beautiful translation:
1. Our very faith, which allows us TO be saved, is itself a gift of grace! Yes, we have been saved, but how? Because we have faith in God's ability TO save. But how did we GET such faith? BY GRACE. Honestly that hits so hard; I can't emphasize it enough.
2. We can NEVER "earn" salvation. Putting that in a positive light: no matter how much good we do, it ALL pales in comparison to the immeasurable Good that is the gift of salvation through Christ's Death. It is SO Good that it cannot be cheapened enough TO be "bought" or "deserved". The sheer magnitude of it is ineffably gorgeous. Furthermore: our good works in and of themselves are enabled by grace! We don't "get more grace" BY doing good-- instead, we are GIVEN grace so we CAN do good in the first place. We don't get "spending power" here; if we don't act on grace, we "lose it." It cannot be used otherwise; the works we do BY it are a RESULT of the salvation that gives it TO us! So "earning" that very cause by means OF the cause is impossible.
3. The most moving part of this to me: that grace is a "LOVE-GIFT." It's not obligatory, it's not forced, it's not deserved, it's not owed, it's not even asked for. It is an incomprehensibly selfless and loving GIFT, lavished on us solely because God IS Love and He can't help BUT love us so extravagantly. Grace is priceless, so it's "freely  given" by its very nature, and as such it can only be given IN LOVE. Consider that! God loves us SO MUCH that He GAVE us the grace of faith to begin with, WHILE we were still degenerates lost in sin, completely "unworthy" of such a Divine present. And yet, there was Christ on the Cross, dying FOR US in order to show us exactly WHAT we were to have faith in: GOD'S LOVE, the very Love that enables faith through grace. THAT is what true faith IS, at its very core, the inevitable fruit of ALL grace... faith is believing in God because we love Him, and trusting in God because He loves us. THIS is childlike faith, with no doubt whatsoever: that innate, absolute assurance of and participation in mutual love. That grace-gift of loving faith will ALWAYS bring us to Christ, for He IS Love Incarnate, and our hearts WILL recognize that, and desire to enter into that sacredly requited relationship no matter what. His arms are always open to us.
4. We cannot boast because that is of pride, and pride virtually mandates a "blindness to one's flaws," making us feel "perfect" and therefore-- in this case ironically-- BARRING us FROM salvation, for we refuse to admit we NEED to be saved-- from ourselves!! To boast even that "yes I sinned, BUT I did SO much good after that God OWED salvation to me" is heinous. God DOES NOT owe us anything. We owe HIM; for ALL.we have is FROM Him, ESPECIALLY the ability TO do good. If we are boasting of our "holiness" and "charity," I would fearfully doubt the legitimacy of those virtues. Pride likes to wear splendid masks, to hide its own garish ugliness. And pride CANNOT LOVE!! If we "boast" of salvation, then we have missed the heart of it ENTIRELY. Sin is what costs us everything. Salvation is the total opposite.
5. On that note, to conclude... Salvation is NEVER a "REWARD." I honestly love that fact. THAT would cheapen it more than anything, AND it would exclude the souls who need it the most! Think about that. When we DO face our sins and grasp the terrible extent of our own corruption and depravity, it can be absolutely unbearable; it is existentially horrific. BUT consider this: that compunction... IS OF GRACE. And it is meant to lead us TO THE CROSS, where salvation is POURED OUT IN ABUNDANCE for the most unworthy of all, who come to Him IN that gracious faith and hope, trusting that, despite all odds, God STILL LOVES US. The Savior on the Cross is PROOF of that. And I repeat: ANY "striving" of ours TO "live better" and "make restitution" is a COOPERATION WITH THE CROSS. The Cross itself isn't a reward, it is the MEANS, and it is a GIFT. It is BEYOND us and yet it is BESTOWED on us. That is where its wonder comes from. It is of heaven! We could never gain or achieve or even imagine such a thing with earthly means! Yet God GIVES it. If He didn't, we would be lost forever. He refuses to lose us. THAT is how much He loves us: to BECOME one of us, and to live and die for love of us, so we could be healed and whole... and, in being so graciously restored, to love Him in return, forever. It's all a gift. It's priceless. And yet, it is ours.
Believe that God loves you, because your very faith is proof of it. Give thanks for that grace, and live your life in and for that love. Child of God! Salvation has been freely given to you! Rejoice! 

120222

(written on 120722; backposted for chronological accuracy)
(unfinished; will continue, refine, & edit later)

December 2nd, Friday.
3510 steps on the pedometer, and I know why.
This was the day our sister threatened suicide.
Yes, "sister." I saw them today and they are NOT our "brother" anymore. It's just as obvious as our own identity-shifts with multiplicity. They are presenting as female, and they are using a different name, and we cannot be hypocritical and reject that, ESPECIALLY when such disrespect is what triggered their suicidal break in the first place. So we humbly confess that in the past we have been disregarding their emotional needs here, and we will not do that anymore.
...On that note. We saw a quote someone posted to Tumblr. "The only clear line I draw these days is this: when my religion tries to come between me and my neighbor, I will choose my neighbor... Jesus never commanded me to love my religion. “ Barbara Brown Taylor.
...
I cannot remember how or when we found out. Our first memory is being in the car with our mother, and her showing us these text messages from Jade talking about how "no one in the world respects or understands me" and "life is all about dying" and "no one will ever love the real me" and "I know what truth lies beyond this world and I want to go there instead of living in this excuse for reality" and "I'm going to post crazy sh*t on the internet and then I'm going to swallow this entire pill bottle" etc. But WILD language. Absolutely unhinged. We recognize it; we type like that, too, when we're off the rails. So we knew it was serious.
I know we ended up at our mom's boyfriend's house? She was crying in the kitchen, and didn't know what to do. OH YEAH, on the way there we were on the phone with 911 asking how to 302 our sister, did we have to do that on paper in the ER, could we meet the paramedics somewhere, etc. Just trying to figure out details while in "crisis management mode" (Mulberry's old job; bless her, I wonder if she's still around) so we weren't "being useless" when our mother was in dire straits. It did help; when we told her the general potential plan of action, it did give her some "foundation" to stand on and she was able to pull herself together a little.
Ultimately she packed some food for our sister and decided to drive to her apartment alone, to "talk her down" and just try to manage everything as a mom, without getting police or hospitals involved, because our sister would ABSOLUTELY FLIP OUT if any "government authority" showed up; it would probably make things MUCH worse.
So off mom went, and we went back to our apartment, and our memory goes totally blank but I can guarantee you we probably binged and purged as a dissociative stress-dump self-abuse shutdown response. We had no other way of "calming down" on such short notice, and the only way to get our brain to stop obsessing and panicking over our sister was to just... obsess and panic over our own health instead. Asinine and selfish and absolutely stupid, but it's a sick and ancient habit. At least we're aware of the risks, I guess.
...
Phone download image roll shows we were on Tumblr for a bit? Possibly post-purge, to "reset" our brain-level (get it INSIDE instead of OUTSIDE, and therefore halt any urges to restart the abuse cycle). There's some sonic images, some fakemon, some biblical angel gifs (that are UTTERLY GORGEOUS and feel JUST LIKE INFI), some OFMD fanart? which we've never watched but there are some themes that really cut to our heart... Notably THIS and THIS (those are the ones we saved).
...


Checking the dietary log, breakfast was at noon, and this was the day with the "wrecked egg." I remember that because it was VERY triggering to some of the ED voices to the point of a near breakdown. Xenophon had to talk them down from it (her innate sweetness and gentleness works wonders, it's genuinely amazing) because otherwise we might have had a morning purge which is HELL (they are rare but you want to DIE when they happen).

"Lunch" was at 19:39. Super late again, which is understandable considering the day's events.
There's a note that we had a tiny piece of "vanilla fudge", which I forgot about-- mom bought us a piece yesterday at the mall (she bought a big box for herself & our siblings, but we don't like chocolate and ACTUALLY were brave enough to ASSERT that so she got us vanilla). There was also a single chicken nugget for protein??? I forgot we bought a bag of this gluten-free, non-filler brand to try, because animal proteins have vitamins we can't get from just eggs and milk (which we didn't eat for YEARS anyway and are only eating now so we don't get nutritional deficiencies again).

But... there's another addition, at 6pm? An apple and a single peppermint. I FORGOT about that-- we were on the road with mom for so long that our blood sugar started to bottom out, so we stopped at Wegmans (yes we were THAT FAR OUT on the road) and ate a tiny gala apple and a mint from our emergency bag to stay stable until we got home.
...With all that in mind, I have no idea if we binged/purged or not when we got home, due to stress and overwhelm. We probably did, to be honest. We still haven't found a way to properly cope with the social overwhelm without going into flat-out self-abusive loops.


Also.
This morning, at the breakfast log, there's a shoutout to Razor. This is the first time she's been mentioned.
...We have a bandage on our left arm.


(...)