Amazing Grace

Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
and grace my fears relieved.
How precious did that grace appear,
the hour I first believed.

Preaching . . . . in New England

I've been thinking....
Hell or grace....

Which is harder to preach, honestly?
Which will get a good bible-preaching pastor in more trouble, from all sides?
Which one is more likely to be misunderstood, misapplied, and abused?
Which is more offensive to the self-righteous prig?
Which is harder to understand, or to accept?
Which one is more often refused?
Which one offers hope?
Which one sucks the hope right out of you?
Which one cannot exist without the other?

Hell is logical - we deserve it.

You can have hell without grace....
... but you can't have grace without hell.

GRACE is scandalous

I think we need to preach grace to the lost in this God-forsaken place called New England where fewer than 2 or 3 in 100 even know what I'm talking about. These New Englanders may not believe in hell, but they do already know about it - they live it, and they know it well, even if they don't know what it's called.

Grace on the other hand is something they haven't got a clue about. These are the work-hard, pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps folk. Traditionally they earn their keep. Sure they help their neighbor. But if their neighbor is a lazy good-for-nothing, well, they don't keep digging him out of the same pit over and over again.

Grace is getting what you don't deserve, and we New Englanders don't like that. We like to keep our accounts even. You know, tit for tat. I might help my neighbor, and I know someone (not necessarily my neighbor) will help me too. What goes around comes around - a complicated tit for tat if you follow my meaning.

Grace isn't like that. It's truly free. And we don't deserve it.

And we New Englanders think, usually rightly so, that if it looks to good to be true, it probably is. Better work harder. Try harder. Preach "better". Live "righter" Don't take chances. You know, reduce, reuse, recycle, be idealistic, change the world, strive, work, do more....

But grace isn't like that. It's really free.

Romans 6:1-2a What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means!

If our grace-abounding lives and our grace-filled preaching don't lead us to ask that question, then we probably haven't done a good job living or sharing grace. Of course the answer is "no" - grace is not license to sin.

But it is really that free - that it makes us ask that question. And it should.

Hell's obvious.
Grace is mind-boggling.
And it's just as real.
And it's free.
And it changes everything.
It gives hope.
It gives life.
It restores broken relationships, starting with the most important one - our relationship with God.
It explains everything.
It underestimates nothing - not even the reality of hell.
And it is worth everything.
And it costs nothing.

Because God gives it. 100%. Gratis.

Try preaching that in New England.

Grace in the belly of the whale

Those who cling to worthless idols
forfeit
the grace
that could be theirs.

I just discovered that verse in Jonah, chapter 2 (verse 8). Great chapter, great context. Find it below in full, but do meditate for a while on this verse. Pretty cool! It's seems to be saying that taking our eyes off of Christ can lead to disaster. We have all we need in him, and when we look away... Bamm! We hit the siderails.

BUT when we set aside our idols, his grace is ours!

See verse 9:

Salvation comes from the Lord!

Jonah Chapter Two (NIV) 1 From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the LORD his God. 2 He said: "In my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me. From the depths of the grave I called for help, and you listened to my cry. 3 You hurled me into the deep, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me. 4 I said, 'I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple.' 5 The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. 6 To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you brought my life up from the pit, O LORD my God. 7 "When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, LORD, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple. 8 "Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs. 9 But I, with a song of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good. Salvation comes from the LORD." 10 And the LORD commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.

Love is Patient

I have read a certain blog a few times hosted by Marcia Somerville entitled Tapestry of Grace. Everything I've read that she has written has blessed and encouraged me so far. (Disclaimer however - I haven't read THAT much of what she's written. I say that "just in case"....)

Somehow I ended up over there this morning and read a good part of her latest entry, Love Is Patient. It was particularly striking in light of what I posted yesterday and I think simply sharing the link here and recommending it highly is the best thing I could possibly post today!

Let me whet your appetite with this small excerpt copied below, and then off you go. Happy reading!

We all know people whose patience is on full display. We marvel at them, but inwardly, we can think: wow, I am just not that kind of person. I could never be patient like s/he is! But, here’s a piece of good (and convicting) news: if we have the Spirit of God within us, we can become patient. Patience is a fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22). There are really no naturally patient people. When you see God-honoring patience in people, they weren’t born that way. God has worked this fruit in their lives, whether or not they are aware of it. And the same Spirit is at work in you, and will prevail in the end (Philippians 1:6).

Guilt and Grace

Grace is a tough concept for me. I think knowing I'm a sinner - painfully so - occasionally has me wallowing in guilt (my husband would say 'fairly often' is more accurate) . . . . thing is, it's self-induced guilt and not always godly repentance. That's a whole 'nother story and blog entry, but it's a pattern I'm increasingly aware of and working to address. It's kind of like I try to use the 'guilt' of knowing I've 'failed' to motivate me. It doesn't work, and I end up very discouraged. In light of this, I really liked what I read a few weeks ago.

This experience--from guilt to gratitude--has been teaching me something about God. I used to think that guilt prompted us to repent and turn towards God. This may be true at times, but I don't think guilt can sustain a relationship with God, and I don't think it is meant to. Guilt implies that I could have done things differently, that the offense is entirely my fault and I could have controlled the situation in such a way to produce a more effective result. But gratitude... gratitude recognizes my limitations. Recognizes my lack of control. Recognizes that, whether or not I deserve it, I have been given something good.

I don't mean to say that I'm not responsible for the bad choices I've made or the sins I've committed. All I'm trying to say is that if guilt brings me to God, it's gratitude that keeps me there. Gratitude is a response that takes the attention off of me and puts it onto the giver. Guilt reflects the depth of my own depravity, but gratitude reflects the goodness of God. (To read the entire entry, click here.)

Gratitude to put it simply flows from knowing and experiencing God's grace.

What makes us different

I was reading today, and came across this quote in one of the blogs I attempt to follow when I have time. "What separates [those who follow God] from the ones who don't know God is not their circumstances. It is their relationship to the Lord" (Click here if you want to read the whole post). Her point is that we have hope. I am so thankful for this hope that we have, as it is truly what makes all the difference. And that hope is completely, 100% based in my relationship with my heavenly Father - a relationship that is often one way and that by design it would seem. God initiated and he provided and he forgave and he sustains and he frankly does all the work and I do my share of getting in the way to be fair.

Frankly, I'm a basket case often enough. My daughter's chronic disability shows me so many ways in which I'm needy and still floundering to try to do things myself. But this relationship isn't about me; it's about HIM. It's about His grace, His abundance, His love, His sacrifice, His provision, all while I'm NOT interested, distracted, forsaken by men, and overwhelmed by my circumstances.

It all goes back again and again to the ideas in Romans 5. In a nutshell they are this: while I was God's enemy, he chose me and died in my place to restore my broken relationship with him. And he puts us in our current circumstances and will bring us through them to show us it's not about us but about him, and we can count on him. Our hope is not based on our circumstances but in who he is.

Wow. Like I've said so many times before, his grace amazes me - just blows me away. And like my blogger friend said in so many words, HE is the one who makes the difference in our lives. That relationship, and that hope which will not disappoint, is what draws folks to him.

Pursuit

I have kept for some time the bulletin/flyer from a conference at our church last fall at which D.A. Carson was the main speaker. Inside this bulletin are several quotes (excerpts) from his book Worship by the Book. I will share them below, but I wish first to liken them and their content to that of grace, and faith. These are things which one cannot pursue per se, for in the very pursuing of them, that is directly, they are very elusive - they are things which one desires, but they are the fruit of something else; the correlation is indirect. Of course this doesn't mean you don't try to a certain degree; and certainly we pray for grace, faith, etc. But you can't really "make" these things happen by pursuing them the way you can many other things. For example, if you want to have good friends, you first learn to be a good friend. The having comes from the being. Grace comes through faith and is not earned but given. Faith is received often through trials and depending on God more than it is by any direct action on our part. So without any further ado . . . . here are Carson's words on worship.

Worship is the proper response of all moral, sentient beings to God, ascribing all honor and worth to their CreatorGod precisely because He is worthy, delightfully so.

What ought to make worship delightful to us is not, in the first instance, its novelty or its aesthetic beauty, but its object: God himself is delightfully wonderful, and we learn to delight in him.

Although there are things that can be done to enhance corporate worship, there is a profound sense in which excellent worship cannot be attained merely by pursuing excellent worship. In the same way that, according to Jesus, you cannot find yourself until you lose yourself, so also you cannot find excellent corporate worship until you stop trying to find excellent corporate worship and pursue God himself.

If you wish to deepen the worship of the people of God, above all deepen their grasp of his ineffable majesty in his person and in all his works.