GRACE

From Leonard Lee, an important Lenten reminder



Grace is scandalous.  Plain and simple, if we understood where grace trafficked we would gossip about it.  We would tell stories of the places grace went, who grace hung out with the way grace entered into the darkest and seediest places of the human soul.  If we understood grace we might get lost in its wake and end up upside down in our living.  Grace defeats more than we know and triumphs where will power and self discipline cannot stand.  Grace.  Wow, what a friend.

I grew up in the church by the way but this is not the grace I discovered.  The grace I grew up with was more like a gritty soap, getting stains off of mostly clean people.  We didn’t celebrate it as much more than a stringent cleaner, getting out the tough spot.

We used phrases like “easy believism” to describe the teaching of those who brought us scandalous grace.  We said that too much grace would be like giving people “a license to sin.”  We even said we had to be careful about teaching grace or “people will abuse it.”  Sadly, many of us never got grace, at least the scandalous kind.  Our brand of grace produced two kinds of people.

One kind is the person who slid from guilty to self righteous – which by the way is never what scandalous grace produces.  This is the person whose journey from death to life was never seen as that long a trip.  In reality it was more like a journey from a severe head cold to good health.   The other kind is the person who lived in the reality of spiritual poverty without ever finding freedom.  Interestingly enough, both of these persons spend a lot of time trying to do to their sin what only grace can.

When we get grace, truly get grace, it becomes like an unending onion and after we peel a layer off there is another layer and then another and another.  Each layer points us to a new level of love, humility and hope and holiness.  Wanna know a secret?  There has never been a person alive who did not abuse grace and if it cannot be abused, it is probably not grace.

Paul writes these words, “Therefore having been justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have gained access into this grace in which we now stand.”  Romans 5 Justified, Peace, Access, Grace, Stand.  WOW!  Take those words and understand them.  Dig into their richness and you will discover that if it cannot be abused, it probably is not grace.

If we dare fall into these words and splash around in them like a giant spring rain puddle, we will soon discover that each of us already had a license to sin and what grace offers is actually a license to live free from sin.  WOW, WOW, WOW!

Grace is not about God being good to sinners; it is about God raising the dead.  Grace is not about God cleaning us up; it is about God applying His own righteousness to our lives in such a way as to declare us once and for all NOT GUILTY!

For what it’s worth, I don’t have to feel like this is true in order for it to be true nor do I have to feel it to live it.  What I do have to do is get out of the way of myself and live as one whom God loves.  I do need to tell myself daily that I am saved by grace, kept by grace and taught by grace.

Here is how I know when I am getting the scandal of grace deep within my soul.  I love God enough to let him change me.  I live better not because it is how I measure myself but because I can.  Grace teaches me to grow.  Grace makes me generous.  Grace shifts the focus off of me and on to the generous and amazing Father.  It is good to be back, Off… we go now.

ARE YOU A FRIEND OF GRACE?

Lynn Byers is a member of my congregation and our missionary in Haiti. Lynn is serving as a charge nurse in Adventiste Hospital in Port-au-Prince. She is living indeed as an authentic disciple on mission for Jesus. We pray regularly for this daughter of the church.

Many people admire Lynn, as well they should. We live in a constantly changing, difficult world. It is hard and harsh and unforgiving. It is no friend of grace. Yet we who live by grace know that we need to be the friends of grace to hurting people all around us.

Have you spent time this Lenten season reflecting on your calling from God? Last week at BURN (our student ministry) we challenged the students to be salt and light. Salt is no good if it stays in the salt shaker. You have to engage. Light is at its best not in a room blazing with light but in a room where darkness predominates. Even a small light will pierce the darkness.

Haddon Robinson once wrote an excellent book on the Sermon on the Mount called The Christian Salt and Light Company. From his reflections we see that being salt and light is a lifestyle that is intentional, strategic, and committed. Lynn has chosen just such a lifestyle. Intentional she had worked to from a heart filled with compassion. Strategically she has followed God’s prompting into a place of great darkness. Her commitment has led her to set aside a solid, well-paying job at a hospital stateside, living in the tenuous and sometimes frustrating world of a third world hospital out post. She speaks of it matter-of-factly and with passion. And you can see the joy in her eyes.

So again, my challenge to each of us. Understanding that your call to take up your cross and follow Jesus may not take you out of the country. It may not place you in a place of poverty-compelled simplicity. But if you are committed to intentionally following God’s leading, your work for Him will be strategic. It will be the place where someone’s deep need and God’s powerful transformation intersect and you will be the agent of eternal life change.

Don’t you deep down desire to be that friend of grace that you have experienced God’s grace to be?

THE STOOL

THE VBS VALEDICTORIAN

Out of the mouths of babes ....

When you get to point 3:30 on the video she really takes off with gusto



IT'LL PREACH, SISTER !!!!!!!!

IS A CHRISTIAN SAVED BY WORKS?

A great video from The One Minute Apologist via The Poached Egg blog

I CAN BE A FAILURE

I Can Be a Failure: Thoughts on Christian Identity

January 28, 2011, 5:51 pm » Holly Ordway

I struggle with what I call the shadow: my name for that sudden darkening of my inner vision, the acedia or spiritual apathy, the gray and muffling pall of depression. Sometimes it is mercifully absent from my inner horizon for days or weeks; other times it is hovers, vaguely threatening, in my peripheral vision. 

I’ve tried fighting back: asserting, in the face of crippling self-doubt, that I have so much evidence of my own accomplishments that the shadow is absurd. Unfortunately, the positive-thinking route does not work. It has been more effective to accept the reality of the feeling while intellectually recognizing that it is based on a lie, a distortion of reality. Better yet has been to also offer up my sadness to the Lord in prayer, and turn my thoughts deliberately toward gratitude for all the good things in my life, which are many – to be grateful, even if I don’t feel happy. 

Today, I was ambushed by the shadow. As I came home from work, it fell without warning across my inner vision, and all went gray. What if my writing is not as good as I think it is? What if my colleagues don’t really respect me? What if my self-image as a good teacher is just that, an image, and the reality is that I don’t help my students as much as I think I do? 

Interwoven with this self-doubt was anger at my own self-pity. What have I got to be depressed about? Even just a few days ago, I had been reflecting with cheerful gratitude on all the good things in my life. I hated my own weakness, yet I knew that I could not argue myself out of this mood. Whether or not the feelings were justified, I felt like I was a failure. And the feeling impeded my work – just as the Enemy intended, I imagine. 

I felt ill and tired. I wanted to work, but knew from experience that I would not be productive. I decided to take a nap instead. I took a couple of Advil and crawled into bed. My mind wanted to fret over these self-doubts, pull them to pieces, but I resisted, and instead prayed: Lord, have mercy; Christ, have mercy; Lord have mercy... Lord, have mercy; Christ, have mercy; Lord have mercy... 

I drifted off into an odd half-sleeping, half-waking state. Not for long, really. But then I woke all the way up – totally awake – with an insight as clear in my mind as if it were a physical object placed in my hands.

It is not necessary for me to be a success – in anything. 

I can be a failure. 

 

Failure does not – cannot! – alter the fundamental reality of my life, which is that I am a child of God. I am an adopted sister of the Son, a beloved daughter of the Father, a temple of the Holy Spirit. 

I want to do good work, and it is right that I do my best, honoring God in the use of His gifts – but after that, the results are not in my hands, and are not my concern. The good that I do, might be so hidden from me that I never see it. 

Or, in truth, I might never accomplish anything of great worth. I might never have someone to particularly love me. I might never fulfill my hopes of building up my ministry and my work – it might go nowhere, and be forgotten or ignored. 

I knew in theory that Christ’s love is unconditional, but I had not fully grasped what that meant. I could think about God loving me in spite of my failures... when those failures were in things I didn’t care all that much about, or if I failed in some areas but could offset them with successes elsewhere.

But what about failure in the things that matter deeply to me? What about failure in all that I desire, all that I hope? 

I know, I know – it’s unlikely that I would fail so utterly. I mean, look at all the good things in my life already, right? But the Enemy knows how to play on the “what-ifs,” so let me look it right in the eye: I might turn out to be a failure in all that I do. What then? 

Accepting that I might fail doesn’t mean that I don’t care – not at all. But it means that I am free. 

If it is all right for me to fail, what can the Enemy hold over me? I can be forgotten, despised, and rejected, but so was Our Lord. Nothing that I feel is unknown to him; and none of my failures can separate me from him. 

If I can fail today when I am strong and working in the world, then I need have no fear of the day when I am weak – when I cannot teach, or write, or serve others, but can only be served by others. I will still be who I am, a beloved child of God. 

If the world’s judgment of my work does not enter into my relationship with the living God, then I am free to do the work that I am called to do, unselfconsciously. 

If I can truly rest in my identity as a child of God, then I do not need to define myself by anything else. I can give thanks for the good things that come to me, and I can rejoice when the Lord allows me to see, at least partly, the fruits of my labor. I am free to be grateful, without fear and without the need to cling to these good things in case the darkness comes again. 

For now, this moment, the shadow is gone as if it were never there. Thanks be to God! It might come back – it always has, before – but with God’s help I can look straight at it and not turn away. I think I fear it a little less today than before. May God help me to remember who I am.