To CHRIST be the glory

I know it's been about six months since I've posted, and goodness knows a lot has been happening in our lives during that time. I haven't been blogging because I have been going through a period of disillusionment with the faith I believed I had and where that faith had led me in relation to the gospel. This blog may run a bit long, but please bare with me.
I have spent the better part of the past ten years holding to a faith in Christ borne out of the Humanistic/Contemporary/Postmodern American church from whence it came. I believed that Christ died on the cross and rose again in order that I might have the option to make a conscious decision to receive a gift, freely given, though only activated by a personal action on my part. I write this to you now believing this to be fundamentally contrary to both scripture as a whole and the true, living gospel of Jesus Christ.
The natural question is obvious: Have I abandoned my faith in Jesus? The answer I give with absolute certainty: No, as by God's amazing grace alone, He has chosen to reveal His gospel to me. Christ's death and resurrection were never about giving us a choice, never about "our best life now," and never about making things better for us here on earth. Christ died to deal, ONCE AND FOR ALL, with sin in the lives of those He died for! Christ is the ultimate substitutionary atonement for the sins of His people, the only sacrifice standing between His people and eternal separation from God. We, as sinful, depraved, unholy creatures, are so mired and happy in our sin, that not one of us has the ability to, in our own "free" will, to declare to God that we are ready to accept His grace! Only through the love and grace of God reaching down and pulling us, kicking and screaming, out of the pit can we ever hope to be saved. I know because God showed me just how sinful I am, and just how little will power I have over my own baser instincts. I also know because, for the first time, this dummy with a "Summa Cum Laude" Biblical Studies degree is having the Word revealed to him as it truly is meant to be seen. What do I mean, you ask? Consider the following as it concerns God's call on His people in the Bible:
1. Adam has a perfect commune with God, yet chooses to disobey.
2. Moses is called to lead the people to exile, and after three separate excuses and God's subsequent answers, Moses still begs "O Lord, please send someone else to do it!"
3. The Israelites repeatedly forsook God, both in the desert and in the holy land, despite amazing and overt miracles to save and deliver them.
4. Gideon asked God for repeated miracles before he believed God was with him.
5. Job pleads with God, saying he wished he had never been born. God's response? "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you understand."
6. Isaiah, at the occasion of his calling, declares "Woe to me, I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty."
7. Jeremiah declares to God that he is too young and doesn't know how to speak adequately for God's task.
8. Jonah, upon receiving God's calling, books a spot on a ship sailing for Spain to get AS FAR AS POSSIBLE from where God is calling him, and ends up in the belly of a fish!
9. Paul, while still "breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples," is encountered by Jesus, temporarily blinded, and then immediately begins to be the Lord's instrument to bring the gospel to the nations.
These are just some of the examples of the fundamental typological picture that the Word of God gives us concerning His called. We are obstinate, we don't always want to follow God's calling, and in fact we sometimes spit in the face of that call. Yet, as we know, all of the above people fulfilled the destiny that God called us to. Given the "free will" we so desperately want to believe we have, many if not all of those men would not have fulfilled their roles of eternal significance.
Where does this leave me? It leaves me in a place of believing that we do not have so much free will as we believe, and that coming to a saving knowledge of Christ is an act of God's grace alone, and not a response on our part. Christ's death and resurrection are PERFECT, and nobody for whom that act was intended can resist God's grace through Jesus Christ. The harsh reality of that knowledge is that, contrary to what the humanistic church of today would have us believe, Christ death was not intended for all humanity, but just for those whom God chose in His Grace. It's not pleasant, but it is biblical. We are no more powerful to resist God's grace than we are to choose to accept it.
I pray for each one of you, in the hope that this has given you something to think about, and also that the true gospel might be preached to you, and that God might open your eyes and call you unto Himself. It is only through the hearing of the true and living gospel of Jesus Christ that his called are saved. For as Jesus said, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me!" To Christ be the glory!