Grace and faith relieve the efficiency minded, compulsively driven, works oriented individual from a sense of worthlessness and inadequacy. One becomes adequate and acceptable in the loving eyes of God and begins to measure up in all spheres of life. The parameters of measurement are changed and lifted. An effective pastor preaches the Word and is able to integrate Biblical precepts with the secular world. Finite life is focused.
Reality is thus firmly tested for the anxious individual or the person with blurred ego boundaries.
I am not alluding here to idyllic idealization but rather to reality based forgiven sinners who are accompanying congregational members on their brief earthly journey. The inconsolable yearning of the earthly sojourner is described by C. S. Lewis is satisfied elegantly by being in Christ. The interminable philosophical search for meaning as well as existential anxiety can be partially mollified by putting on Christ in personal and public worship. We sense that we were not made for earth but for something greater, again borrowing from Lewis. The relentless search for an identity which incorporates power, control, greed and that old spiritual demon, pride, can be let go.