Resting in the Refuge of God's Love
All people struggle with fear. Perhaps a child has a life-threatening illness. Your spouse loses a job, and you don't know how bills will get paid. We wonder whether tough times indicate that God is not pleased with us. To regain assurance and peace, we try harder to please God and attain blessings. We can too easily fall into a karmic-like cycle of good works, relying on our own power to break the cycle of fear.
In
Karmic Christianity
, E. D. Burns explains why the antidote to fear is not power but rather peace-- God's peace. The peace of Christ sets us free from anxiety arising from hardships and our inability to control our situations. Lasting peace is not grounded in subjective experience. Instead, Christ secures it for us by his death and resurrection.
If we're honest, we know that our best is never good enough. We are frequently powerlessness to change our circumstances. Burns shows why the solution is not working harder, being better, or just giving up. Readers learn why we don't need to be exhausted. Instead, we can rest in God's refuge, trusting that his love for us is perfect in Christ.