I'm a sinner. I've lived more than half of my life in helpless foolishness, trying to make sense of my bewildered life. Many people talk about the life of sin as if it's living in a state of deliberate offense towards God. It's not necessarily true. A sinner can be simply... well, lost. Just lost and trying to cope with life in the best way he knows how. And maybe waiting for the grace of God to turn up and grip him.

I don't even remember how I came to embrace a faith in Jesus Christ. It was as if things happened so naturally in my life that as I was going through the grind of existence, I was found by a Being that transcends all the meaning I was searching for in life. But being gripped by the grace of God doesn't mean becoming perfect overnight. It's a tedious journey of falling and rising and falling and rising, but with each step, moving closer towards the vision of the Kingdom.

As it stands today, I probably have more of a firsthand understanding of the human dilemma than the average man on the street. Maybe that's why it's a little easier for me to dispense grace to others in a world devoid of grace. Well, I don't do it perfectly, like I said. But I learn.

My constant resolve in life is to live with a clear conscience before my God. The wonderful thing is that it's not so much about living in rigid perfection. Rather, it's about wanting to walk in friendship with God. But walking in friendship with God necessitates that I live in some ways that seem very strange to the world. It often requires me to even walk into trouble, almost deliberately. Because when we walk in the Spirit of Christ, our values become alien to the values of the world. This walk often offends the sensibilities of other people; even those of fellow Christians, perhaps.

When you dance in a different step from the dance of the world, people don't quite know what to make out of you. Very often, you become a provocative source that draws out the insecurity from within them. What then do they do with you? They try to put you down in the most creatives ways possible. They research your history, they find the slightest faults with you, and take delight in pinning you down with a case to be held against you. Even the Christians who preach so much about grace don't truly seem to know what grace is supposed to look like when it's time for grace to be embodied. So they resort to punishing anyway.

This is, I suppose, what trying to live a life of practical holiness looks like in the real world. Being a friend of God is more than just about the pleasantness of the experience. It's about being challenged to walk in a certain direction even if it means running the risk of losing your life, your reputation, and your dignity for the sake of your friendship with God. It means deliberately walking into trouble when you have to.

He knows. He walked that path before.