 The annual Hills of Peace Men’s Retreat was the 3rd weekend in September. Rick James was the guest minister for the weekend and at our request, he has written the following article. Our thanks to Rick! Written by Rick James I was asked if I would be the guest minister at the men’s retreat at Hills of Peace, on Sept. 16th. to 18th. At first, I was reluctant as I did not know what I could talk on. I remembered a book that I had read sometime back by Philip Yancy, called “What’s So Amazing about Grace.” There was a paragraph in it that changed my way at looking at God. I had the CD for it and after much consultation with Pat, I said yes. I have to tell you, as I was driving east from Red Deer where I left Pat, I thought I was going to end up in Ontario, one long hill after another. But make it I did. It has been many years since I was last there, and I don’t think it has changed much. It is a beautiful place to see. I had 11 men in the class, and we learned about the Grace that is always with us from God. As I was going over the material, I relearned how close Forgiveness is to Grace. And sometimes I think, we as a people seemed to have forgotten this. The people that Yancy had in his CD, where varied from a story about a woman of the street and a church conflict, to a friend of his that came out of the “closet”, to what happened in Alabama in the early 60’s. And a lot of things in between. The sentence that got my attention was, “There is nothing you can do to make God love you more and nothing you can do to make God love you less.” God loves us as much as an Infinite God can love. Yancy goes on to make an explanation of this in his book, but this sentence helped bring me back to the church. I was privileged to be asked to be here as a guest and to worship with these men, my prayer for us, is that we will learn to allow themselves to feel the Grace of all loving God, that is always available to us. 
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