{"id":6186,"date":"2023-01-31T03:03:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-31T03:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=6186"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:33:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:33:12","slug":"like-oil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=6186","title":{"rendered":"LIKE OIL"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I don&#8217;t know a lot about cars, but I know this much:<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Oil needs to permeate every nook of the engine. If the oil is low, the engine might keep functioning for a time, but the friction will generate a lot more heat. As that heat builds, the oil will burn up faster. Once the oil runs dry, the whole engine locks up, breaks down, and becomes useless.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As I am reading through the Apostle Paul&#8217;s letters to the various newborn churches, it is clear that Church life has been fraught with difficulty and conflict from the beginning.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">MAYBE there was a short honeymoon era just after the flames of Pentecost, but soon enough there was plenty of greed, false teaching, and quarreling to go around.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It seems to me that Paul had high standards for the Church, but that he was also a realist. He knew there would be weeds sown among the wheat, spiritual infants needing milk, and gullible people unable to discern heresy from sound doctrine.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Maybe this is why he began most of his letters with some variation of &#8220;Grace to you!&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Grace is to the Church what oil is to an engine.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t know a lot about cars, but I know this much: Oil needs to permeate every nook of the engine. If the oil is low, the engine might keep functioning for a time, but the friction will generate a lot more heat. As that heat builds, the oil will burn up faster. Once the [&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-6186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6186","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=6186"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6187,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6186\/revisions\/6187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}