GOT GRACE?
BY BRIAN JOHN SCHUETTLER
COPYRIGHT © 2004
EDITOR: JOHN R. B. SCHUETTLER
Dedicated to Our Lady of Grace, Mary Most Holy!
I appreciate the inspiration of my spiritual friend in Christ, Saint Augustine, Doctor of Grace.
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CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
I. WHAT IS GRACE…WHERE DOES GRACE COME FROM?
II. THE FUNDAMENTALS OF GRACE
III. HOW DO I RECOGNIZE GRACE?
IV. HOW DO I COMMUNICATE WITH GRACE?
V. DEFEATING EVIL IN YOUR PERSONAL LIFE – THE TRIUMPH OF GRACE
VI. APPENDIX
PRAYERS TO INSPIRE GRACE
GIFTS AND FRUITS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
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INTRODUCTION
Quite some time ago, when I was attending college, an inspiration came to me seemingly out of nowhere that I should write something about the theological assertion of Free Will. This seemed rather strange to me since I was a history major, not a theology or divinity major….and besides…..why??? Where did this inspiration come from, and why was it given to me? I was attending a small liberal arts college that required taking Bible courses from a minister who emphasized Calvinism and therefore a doctrine of Predestination. At the very core of my being I sensed intuitively that such a doctrine which stressed that certain individuals are chosen from birth to be “saved” and others are, of necessity, chosen obviously NOT to be “saved” would imply that God sent them to Hell Himself, from the beginning, just arbitrarily creating a soul and then throwing that soul into Hell. If the assertion of Saint John the Evangelist in his 1st Letter chapter 4 be accepted as truth that GOD IS LOVE, then it is essentially impossible to also accept this doctrine of Predestination! This would be in total contradiction to a sense of human dignity, and what I consider to be the God-given privilege to obtain Heaven through faith combined with the assent of my own free will. This is an important distinction, because I came to realize over time that the teaching of Predestination was an affront to my understanding of the Christian revelation of love and mercy. Why would God play games by creating lives that are nothing but robots for Him, creatures of an unloving Creator who wants to have nothing to do with us? If something is programmed to love without choice, the love is not complete and is not, in fact, love at all. How much more is it that something would CHOOSE TO LOVE! This doctrine implied that God is, at the very least, profoundly bored and, at the very worst, rather cruel to boot! This image of God may fit very well into the mythology of ancient Greece, but it certainly did not portray the Judeo-Christian God that so many of us were raised to believe in. As I thought about this I decided to follow the inspiration, an inspiration that surely must have come from God. So I went and sat down on a quiet afternoon in the college library with a blank notebook in front of me and proceeded to write….NOTHING! I expected that the inspiration would continue and do all the “work,” to perform some sort of miraculous automatic writing that I was reading so much about during those first days of the so-called “New Age.” After all, this wasn’t my idea, so certainly I deserved to be the inspired instrument! Well, to make a long story short, I never did write that assertion of Free Will and refutation of Predestination because I was too ignorant of my role in this effort and too ignorant of the subject matter and the role I must play in cooperation with the “work of creation.” I didn’t see the irony then, but I came to realize over time that, in a sense, the vast majority of humans, whether we admit it or not, have a firm belief in the doctrine of Predestination. Why do I say this? I say it because so many of us think that if God intends us to be anything other than what we are, then certainly He will make all the effort and do all the “work” to change our lives, sort of like winning the Eternal Lottery. The temptation so many of us feel is to act as if we are truly the robots of chance that are acted upon in an anxious and sometimes cruel world. This also allows a person the opportunity to blame God for all our personal problems and misfortunes, and then, by extension, we can even blame Him for all suffering in the entire world.
What I was asked to do is to cooperate with God’s Will by putting my effort into the work at hand and together. That is to say, by combining my free will with the Will of God, as a joint effort, to accomplish and finish the work that He was calling me to do. But my lack of desire for teamwork with God, referred to in the Bible as “yoking myself” with God and pulling together, virtually guaranteed that the work would never be done. This brings us to the main subject at hand: GRACE! After all these many years I was prompted not long ago once again to “yoke myself” and write. I was prompted by the Holy Spirit to write a book about the central role of grace in our lives, a book which would help other people to come to know, during these possible End Times, what I have been given the grace to know, so that they may joyfully live their lives and live them, as John 10:10 says, more abundantly. No matter who you are, rich or poor, no matter what race or religion, in the end there is only God, and everything else in this earthly existence is, by comparison, nothing. I am not a trained theologian, nor am I an authority on the subject of grace. I am a layman who was called by God to do something in his own very small way with the sincere hope that at least one person will read this little book and join with me on their own journey to Grace.
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