{"id":4562,"date":"2022-01-25T03:37:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-25T03:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=4562"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:34:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:34:12","slug":"reduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=4562","title":{"rendered":"REDUCTION"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In a way, my adult life has been a struggle against the temptation to reduce faith. To make it something less than God intended. Less than the Scriptures describe.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\n<li>Accepting Christ instead of KNOWING Christ.<\/li>\n\n\n<li>Living a comfortable life rather than an ABUNDANT life.<\/li>\n\n\n<li>Substituting being nice for being LIKE Christ.<\/li>\n\n\n<li>Settling for the hope of a distant heaven when I should be building the KINGDOM of heaven here and now.\u00a0<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Whenever I consciously expand my definition of Christian faith, rather than reduce it, I find life more enjoyable.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">More exciting.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">More fulfilling.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">C.S. Lewis wrote, &#8220;It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a way, my adult life has been a struggle against the temptation to reduce faith. To make it something less than God intended. Less than the Scriptures describe.\u00a0 Whenever I consciously expand my definition of Christian faith, rather than reduce it, I find life more enjoyable.\u00a0 More exciting.\u00a0\u00a0 More fulfilling.\u00a0 C.S. Lewis wrote, &#8220;It [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4562"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4563,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4562\/revisions\/4563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}