the imperfect

Old preacher joke (many of which I've been guilty through the years):

"If you find the perfect church, don't join it! The moment you do, it will no longer be perfect!"

Sounds funny, somewhat insulting, but very truthful. Except that we'll never find that perfect church anyway, so the point is moot. But still many of us that have been Christians for many years have sought to find that "perfect church." You know, the one that has the best praise and worship. Not too loud, not too long, and definitely not too much talking during the music set. A pastor that is young, hip, mature, sensible, has a perfect family, drives a new car and has the best clothes...and doesn't take a salary! (another bad pastor joke!)

But finding a church that is perfect is like breaking a glass and trying to put all the pieces back together again and make it look as if it was never broken. It can't be done, because we all bring our brokenness to the table. But that is what it's supposed to look like. Never once do we see things be perfect in the New Testament church either. There were problems from the get-go!

Still, in spite of these obvious flaws, the church still turned the world upside-down. 2,000 years later, we're still involved in this incredible community we call "church."

One of my favorite verses in the Bible is Isaiah 42:3 -

"A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. In faithfulness he will bring forth justice;"

The Message Bible renders it this way:

"He won't brush aside the bruised and the hurt and he won't disregard the small and insignificant, but he'll steadily and firmly set things right."

Have you ever felt like the bruised reed or the burnt out wick? Know that today God promises he won't let you break or be "snuffed out," but that he will steadily and firmly set things right.

Church can have its share of heartache. And mostly, it because it's made up of us imperfect people. I hope that we can learn to own this fact, own our imperfection and begin to move beyond it.

If we can accept ourselves as we are, then maybe we can learn how to accept others as they are. Jesus said that we're to love one another as we love ourselves. Maybe the problem is that we haven't learned to love ourselves first. Maybe that's what is holding us back.

Love is what holds a community together, which is what a local expression of the Church is-a community of people who love one another and strive to live this journey of life for Christ together. And love though it accepts you where you are, it nudges you, pushes you, stretches you to become better than you are. It loves you enough to take you further than you ever believed you could go and dream and believe and live.

That's the kind of imperfect church I could live with. How about we make an imperfect church together?

the difference

There is a difference between trusting God and denying reality.

I know there have been times when I have denied reality about the situations in my life and they did not produce good results. In fact, they were very detrimental to me, sometimes emotionally and spiritually damaging. To deny reality is a trend in the church. People have taught and are being taught that to have faith in God you must ignore the “facts” around your situation and believe the “truth” which comes from God, supposedly that these things are not as they seem. That God’s word says the opposite about your situation, so you need to believe what God says over what your “facts” say.

And there is an element of truth in this, because God sees us at our greatest potential and calls us to see it as well, but to stick our head in the ground and refuse to see the truth of our situations, whether it is regarding our relationships, our finances, our churches, our families, whatever, is not faith, but denial. God never calls us to denial, but to faith. Faith, in the simplest form, is trust that God will do what he says he will do and believes in us even when we don’t feel worthy of that belief. Faith forces us to look at the situations, the problems in our lives, not ignore them. It gives us the ability to face the problems, because we know we’re not alone and that God will not punish us for failure, but like a loving Daddy, he will pick us up, brush us off and help us through the situation.

Sometimes, the only way out is through. I don’t like that statement, but it’s true. But we will be better on the other side. So, faith isn’t a magical potion to change our lives instantly, but to give us an anchor to hold us through the storm, or war. It is the soldier’s faith that what he left at home is worth fighting for that sustains him in the midst of the battle. It is the point at the other end of the field the farmer sets his eye on as he plows his field that gives him the straight line, not looking at the row he’s plowing. It’s faith that gives us the strength to endure the struggle, because the destination is worth the journey.

Hebrews says that because of the joy that Jesus knew he’d receive, having restored us to relationship with God, that he endured the pain of the cross. It was faith that kept him on the cross. His faith didn’t keep him from the cross, but brought him through it. I don’t like that statement either. Sounds too much like dying to me.

Faith isn’t always fun. Sometimes it’s hard. Today my prayer was “God, I believe, but help my doubt.” I believe he hears me when I pray that. I believe he will help me, even though sometimes I doubt. Let’s get real. A lot of times I doubt. But he knows that too. But he still loves me. He still walks with me. Endures all my complaints and fears and worries. Why? I don’t know, but his word says he does and that it’s because he loves me. That is the most important thing I can believe.

Faith doesn’t deny reality, but faces it with trust in God to bring us through. That’s the difference.

worth

Worth.

The other day a friend of mine and I were discussing about how she used to not feel “worthy” enough to go to church or to serve God. It’s the age-old story of how the enemy and religion makes us feel worthless and not good enough to participate in the Kingdom of God, or to even get to know God.

The thing about worth is that nothing is worth anything until someone wants it.

Oil can sit in the ground or under the Gulf for centuries and unless someone wants it, has a purpose for it; it remains “worthless.” But it’s the desire for that oil that causes it to become worth something. (Have you filled up your car lately?)

Same can be applied to anything in your house. We’ve all heard the proverbial “if something were to happen to your house, what would you take with you?” scenario. It’s those things that mean so much to you that you would be willing to risk being harmed to get them back that are “priceless” to us. There is nothing we’d take in response for it.

An object, whether it be oil, diamonds, pictures, etc. cannot determine it’s own worth; only the one desiring it can determine it’s worth. The same goes for our worth. In ourselves, we have nothing to offer God in return for his love and his grace, but that is not why he desires us. He desires us because he has already set his love upon us. He has chosen us from before we were born to receive his favor. This is what determines our worth to him. We see the great extent that he went to in giving up his Son, enduring his own pain and risking his name and reputation to rescue the object of his affection: us. He desires us; he has a purpose for us. It is his attention and his intention for us that causes us to have worth.

Today, in spite of anything we may feel, see, hear about us, think about ourselves, our worth is not affected by these things, but only by the one who loves us and has chosen us to be by his side and live in his grace. His name is Father. And you are worthy by his choosing.

looking where i want to go...

Sorry for the lull in writing, it’s not that I’ve not had anything to say, just no time to write it!!

I went to a class this week at work and it was interesting, but one thing that was said, but had nothing to do with the presentation, stood out to me.

The speaker is a motivational speaker/coach and also he teaches high performance driving. He made the comment that when you are driving and you begin to skid, keep looking where you want to go. He said too many times people look at where the skid is taking them, as in “Oh, no, here comes those trees, I’m going to crash!!” He said we will drive toward where we look, so look at where you want to go.

I quit thinking about driving about then, and thought about how life causes us to skid sometimes. There are things that we can’t control that hit our lives and we feel like we’re in a “skid.” (And sometimes we leave some skid marks…on the road and in our pants!) Anyway, the point is when those skids happen, many times we look at the worst case scenario, we begin to believe we’re going to crash, and we may still get banged up, but the truth I caught yesterday from God was this: keep your eyes on him and where it is he’s calling you and you will survive the skid. Look where we want to go, and we’ll keep moving in that direction.

Sure, skids happen. (I think I’ve heard something like that before.) But we can and will survive, just keep driving and looking where you want to go.

“Let your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze directly before you.” (Proverbs 4:25 NIV)

time

Coming back to the thoughts about healing as a process, there is one more issue that is involved, but I wouldn’t necessarily classify it as a gate or an obstacle to the process. It is more of a factor of the environment of healing.

Time.

You know the old saying: “Time heals all wounds.” And yes, there is truth in that statement, but what of those many people who have allowed the many years come and go and they are still as wounded as the day they were hurt? Mostly, I believe, it is because they’ve sat down by the gate of unforgiveness and they’ve never release the person who wounded them. So, let us return to time.

Recently I had a minor medical procedure done, and it got me thinking about “recovery times.” (If you must know, let’s just say there are not going to be anymore “little pj’s” in my future. ‘Nuff said. J ) Anyway. Recovery times are different according to the degree of the wound, and the source or place of the injury. My procedure required rest for a weekend, but friends of mine are recuperating from procedures that require six weeks or more of simply “recovery time,” before they can even begin to return to their normal schedule.

Like we read in the article by Os Hillman that I posted earlier, we need to take the time to heal. But during that time there are different things that happen. Whenever you’re dealing with a wound, whether expected or unexpected, your attention comes to the hurt, the pain. In the physical, your body refuses to allow you to forget that something has changed in it. In the spiritual/emotional, the pain we feel may come out in different avenues, through anger or fear, depression, etc. We must be alert to these signs our soul is trying to communicate to us its pain. We must give attention to it. Stuffing our pain won’t make it go away. In fact, just like in the natural, if we ignore pain, it will cause us more trouble later. In pain, we also protect ourselves. We cover the wounds and keep others from touching or bumping into us. We pamper ourselves to make us feel a bit better about the situation. But health does come and we cannot stay in that position forever!

The good news is that as we recover, as we walk through the gates and the process of our healings, we find that our attention is no longer needed to those areas of pain. It slowly returns to the things that matter outside of us. There is a place for paying attention to our own needs when we’re going through pain and healing. It’s important. It’s okay to focus on what we need at that time. But we can’t live there. Our focus cannot be forever on ourselves and time helps us to do that. The question will be w when time finally passes us a good report of health, whether or not we will allow ourselves to let go of the habits of self-protection that we developed during the healing process. Will we acknowledge that it’s time to look away from our painful past and lift our focus to others and the future, no matter what the risk of future pain may be? If you are in the process, take the time, allow the healing to come, but know that there will come a “time” when it will be your turn to move forward into the future health of spirit and life!

pass the guards

Passing through admission is hard, but still harder can be the passing of the guards.

Guarding us from our healing are the obstacles of accusation and guilt.

Accusation and guilt will come at us with a fury, accusing us of causing the pain to ourselves. If we’re not careful, it will bring us into agreement with the enemy that we deserve the pain we now find ourselves experiencing. You know the voice, either in your mind or the one from the mouth of a messenger, usually someone you love and trust.

Accusation tells you it’s your fault, guilt makes you feel like it is. There are a couple of things that will help us bypass these two hurdles.

One, search our own hearts. Make sure that for any part of the situation that we may have been to blame we “own” and ask forgiveness, whether it be to a person we’ve offended or to the Lord. Sometimes, the enemy can do us a favor through accusation. If we are humble enough to look at ourselves through God’s eyes (not the enemy’s), we may find the part we played in our pain and can be forgiven for it and grace can be applied. (That obviously is not the plan of the enemy of our souls. He wants nothing more than us to give up.)

The second thing is to fall upon the grace of God and ask for His help, wisdom and healing. Whenever we find ourselves failing, hurting or in sin, what the enemy wants to do is to drive us further from God, but if we allow accusations and guilt to drive us to God, we will find soon enough the old guards running away, because we only become stronger in the grace of God. This is why Paul could say “I glory in my weaknesses…God’s strength is perfected in weakness.” It wasn’t that he was glad to be weak, but he knew that when he “owned” his weakness, God’s strength could be revealed through him.

Even when we’ve been a source of our own pain, God promises not to “stick our noses” in it, but to help us in spite of our struggles. James tells us, “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.” (Italics mine.) God is not going to beat us up, because we’re wounded, whether or not we’ve had a part to play in it.

Grace says that all our shortcomings and failures have been reconciled in the Cross, so guilt and accusation cannot keep us from experiencing the healing God wants for our lives. Let us push past the guards and refuse to allow accusation and guilt to control us into living in the pain.

gate of admission

Healing is a process…but what is that process?

First I believe we find healing as individual. Just as a doctor should look at each patient, realizing that they present to him unique backgrounds, environmental, and physical scenarios which affect the patient’s treatment, so it is with the process to healing the emotional/spiritual wounds of a person. We all come from different places in our lives and we have had input from many different arenas that make the process of healing a highly individualized one. Even people who go through the exact same event together will respond differently, due to the glasses through which they viewed that event.

That said, I do believe that there are some gates we all have to walk past, regardless of our “glasses.”

One is admission. The Bible calls this “confession.” Sometimes when we say confess, people think they have to confess to doing something wrong, even though they may have no guilt in the situation. But this is not necessarily the case. When I say admission, we must “own” the fact that we have been hurt. It is a rejection of denial. It is admitting, that yes, this situation or person damaged me and I am in pain.

Funny thing about this is that we don’t like to admit this. We get angry and rail, talk, scream or cry. We will get stoic and not talk about it. We will deny the pain. But until we do, until we “own” the pain, we can never get healed. One of the best things I ever learned about emotions is that anger is a secondary emotion. It masks one of three other emotions. It’s a protector of sorts. Anger hides fear, frustration, or pain (among many others). We experience these things and anger comes to cover it, keep them hidden. It’s a survival mechanism.

So to begin walking out of our wound, our emotional or spiritual pain, we must admit, or confess, that we’ve been offended or damaged. Look at it, be honest with ourselves and God, and others. Own the pain, but don’t stay there. Keep walking past the gates that keep us locked away.

process of healing

“…gifts of healing…working of miracles…”

These words come from 1 Corinthians 12, found in the list of spiritual gifts that can be released through our relationship with the Holy Spirit.

Miracles are those instantaneous happenings of health or supernatural occurrences we can ask for, but most of the time don’t see coming until they happen. Gifts of Healings come more through process.

Process is not a word any one of us like, but it is essential to understanding healing, especially in the emotional or spiritual realm of healing.

It takes us awhile to get into the situations that produce pain and wound in our lives, either because they are a product of choices that we have made the brought us to this place of pain, due to relationships that have gone sour which we expected to last longer than they did, or people who we trusted and believed in failed to follow through on who they promised to be in our lives…or a mix of these and more. It doesn’t really matter how the wound came, but the fact is that we’ve been wounded and it’s not going to be overnight getting healed.

It’s a process.

One of my favorite illustrations is the story of Peter’s deliverance from jail in the book of Acts. (You can read it in Acts 12.) Here he is, jailed for preaching the truth of Jesus’ resurrection, and the church is praying for him. As a result of their prayers, instead of going to trial the next morning, an angel comes in the night, slapped Peter awake (talk about faith…he was asleep!) and tells him he can leave. Note that Peter had to walk out of his cell, walk past the other cells and sleeping guards, out of the prison itself, clear out of the city.

My point is this, deliverance comes when we forgive, and ask God to heal us. It’s one of those instantaneous miracles. But the process of walking out of the wound that binds us takes some time. God doesn’t just transport us from one condition of woundedness and pain into one of wholeness, without us walking through a process. What takes us a while to get into, takes us a while to get out of, but we’re never alone on this journey. Notice in the story of Peter, the angel guided him all the way out! God’s grace will be our companion on the journey if we will only allow him to take us through the process.

More on this next time…

establish the kingdom, build the church

Some really good thoughts from “Permission Granted to Do Church Differently in the 21^st Century” by Graham Cooke:

“There will be hundreds of different types of churches, all finding their place together in the Body of Christ. The next dimension will be taken up with a very strong Kingdom ethos. No single Church will rise up with the whole revelation, anointing, or understanding of what God is doing.

No single church will be the prototype. In cities, towns, and rural areas we will find numerous types of church, each holding a piece of the jigsaw. It will only be when we bring the pieces together in a Kingdom setting that we will begin to demonstrate the Kingdom desire that sits closer to the heart of God.

Building church without a desire for the Kingdom puts a restraining order on it from heaven in terms of how far the work can go. If we do not build with Kingdom in mind, then we build something that reflects our own ego. What we are constructing has its foundation in empire—a personal domain of the anointed man of God whose own anointing is greater than the church he has built because the people are passive observers of all that God is doing with him. How tedious it is to be part of a church where the anointed one is sold out to his own ministry.

In his mercy, the Lord has allowed us time to grow up and work these things through. Transition is about the destruction of empire and the refocus on Kingdom. It is better for us to fall on this rock and be broken and humbled before God than for it to fall upon us and crush all that we have built in the name of Jesus...but with an eye out for ourselves.

We must humble ourselves and put everything into his hands so that he can decide whether we are trustworthy. If God did not own the getting of our ministry, He will not own the having of it—not without making Himself unrighteous. If we cheated others, broke our word, trod on people, used and discarded people, or promoted ourselves to get where we are, we need to repent right quick! Make restoration where God leads, because the shaking has already begun.

Other churches matter. Say it every day: “Other churches matter. The kingdom is more important.” Establish the kingdom and build the church, in that order. As you build the church, build kingdom into your people. Other churches matter. Pray for them; have a heart for their growth. Have a desire to participate in the development of the whole body of Christ across the whole area.”

(Italics and bold, mine.)

Thanks to Emerging Grace for turning me on to this book. It’s been exactly what I needed!

IDC - the witnesses

This week at IDC (our Bible Study group we’ve started with some friends), we began studying the Book of Acts. Officially the book is called “The Acts of the Apostles,” but as I told the group, I’ve heard it said so many times that it could have been called “The Acts of the Holy Spirit.” This is because the book outlines how the Holy Spirit used this motley crew of believers in Jesus to turn the whole world “upside down” in a very few short years. Starting with 120 believers in an upper room, waiting for a promise to come, in what form they didn’t know, to apostles and prophets, elders and teachers over the entire known world. Amazing feat, for such humble beginnings, especially considering the persecution that they endured to spread their message. I believe that is another “proof,” if you need one, of the transforming power of grace in their lives, because they allowed nothing to slow them down. When they got beat up, they prayed and went back at it. It had to be the sustaining power of grace through the Holy Spirit’s activity in their lives that motivated them.

It reminds me that we cannot try to do, even good things for God, without his help. Those zealous ones of us that try so hard to move out and “win the world” on our own, quickly find it to be a lonely place in life without the energizing power of God.

Jesus reminded the disciples as he was leaving them, that they were to wait for the Holy Spirit who would make them to become witnesses of him to the world, starting in Jerusalem, then Judea, Samaria, and then to the “outermost parts of the earth.” It wasn’t that the Holy Spirit would make them “witness” to others, but that he would give them the ability to “become the witness” of what God had done in them through Christ. We are to become a witness, an expert witness on the stand of life, testifying to what God has done in and through us because of Jesus. It’s not in ourselves that we can do these things, but only through him who loves us.

As we talked about this I asked the group, so where is your Jerusalem? Where is your Judea and Samaria? What does it mean to go to the uttermost parts of the earth? When I think of Jerusalem, I think of my home, my family, they are my primary responsibility and my first ministry. I think of Judea as my work, my ministry, my influence that increases around outside of my family. Then Samaria being those place that might be in my community that God is calling me to be an influencer, to “be a witness” of his grace, and then the uttermost parts are wherever the wind will blow us…that place that will call in the night like Paul’s Macedonian call, which says “come and bring the message to us.”

What are your Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria? Is it geography or relational? Is it a place in time or space? Where is your expert testimony being called to court?

titles of entitlement

A friend of mine was telling me not long ago that when a person is given a title they can begin to feel “entitled.” That stuck with me for a long time. There are a lot of people, unfortunately especially in Christianity, who strive so long and hard to have that title of “pastor” or whatever, and whenever they get it, everyone knows they’ve got it. It’s on their business cards, they introduce themselves as it, they become that title. They expect others to use that title and it also expect special treatment because of that title.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with titles themselves, because it helps people understand what their function is and their responsibilities. But titles themselves mean nothing without the influence or the character of the title in the person’s life. In my opinion.

From the time I was a teenager and growing up in church through my time in Bible College to the ministry I used to apart of, I’ve always been in a place where titles were important. Sometimes those titles have been appropriately used and other times, they were used to separate and differentiate who was “in” or “out.”

I now work for the 3^rd largest employer in the state I live in. It is in the medical field, a very corporate environment. But at the same time, as I work in and around the administration, I find everyone addresses each other by their first names. It doesn’t matter if you’re a vice-president, president, director or janitor, there is no separation by title. Oh, it’s clear who is who and what they do, their functions are well-defined, yet people are treated equally as human beings and their specific job categorization is respected.

Also I’m now in a church where while the pastor and leaders of the church are known and respected, the titles are not expressed or even used to much degree. Rarely is the name of the pastor preceded by his title, yet each one in the church would be quick to introduce him as “my pastor.”

All this makes me think, is it as important as church and the world, for that matter, used to believe that people be addressed in their position all the time, or is it more important that their function and responsibility be what “titles” them? Maybe that’s the true entitlement, when we function in the area of responsibility we are called to or employed into? What do you think?

servant vs. child

Today at church, our pastor shared a message on how to relax in God's grace. And since the recent theme of this blog has been on grace, I wanted to share a list that he shared with us. He compared the difference between our understanding of our relationship with God, whether as merely a servant or as a child of His and what each description derives it's approval or acceptance from. Take a look at it and see if you are experiencing the grace of God that comes in being a child of God...

A servant is accepted and appreciated because of:
1. what he does
2. anxious/worried that his work will be pleasing to his master
3. his workmanship
4. productivity and performance
5. his worth is proven by his work
6. when he fails, his position is at stake
7. conditional performance

But a child is accepted and appreciated because of:
1. who he is
2. secure in the love of his family
3. his relationship
4. his position in the family
5. his worth is secure knowing that tomorrow won't change his status
6. when a child fails, he's not afraid of being thrown out of the family
7. unconditional love

Again, how much of the grace of God we can experience is based on how we understand and receive that grace. God is always willing to give us and is constantly showering us with his grace, but only when we act upon it through faith can we experience it. Today, believe that God sees you as His child.

calling defense

I was reading Earl Creps’ latest update on his blog today and on it he makes an announcement: he’s planting a church. If you read this blog back in January at the beginning, I reviewed Earl’s book, Off-Road Disciplines. I think it’s a great book and now I look forward to following his adventure into church planting, especially since I’m toying with the same idea.

He gave some of the “factors” that have led him to this decision. Check them out at his blog.

Some of the factors were eerily familiar, but one really stood out to me. He said that his wife told him, “We have no defense against this.” In other words, what defense would they give for not planting a church?

It makes me think as well, what defense do I have from the calling God has placed in my life? Do I have a choice? Sure, but will I be happy? Probably not. Our calling is so ingrained within us; I think it’s buried in a spiritual strain of our DNA. It is a blueprint of who we are and what we are to become. It beckons to us in the quiet times, in the times of discontent, the voice that speaks, not what we can’t do, but the possibility of what we could become…what we could do.

I am reminded of the famous passage from Psalm 37:4: “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” I believe it is not just saying, do what God wants and you’ll get what you like, though that may be part of it. But I think the real message of this passage is that it is God who places these desires in our hearts. And as we enjoy our relationship with God and grow in it, we will find that he can bring these desires to fruition. Makes me want to dream…

be faithful to the gospel

“She was just the nastiest person…”

This was a comment from a co-worker of mine today as we talked about religion. She was telling me about visiting a church this Sunday and how it was good, more contemporary than she was used to, but it was a good experience anyway. She and her husband were helping her son to find a church he felt comfortable to attend and it began a conversation about what styles of worship we connected with. She related how she could go pretty much anywhere, but she wouldn’t go to a Pentecostal church, because of a person she met at a former workplace.

This person was a gossip and “the nastiest person,” always telling the rest of her co-workers that they were “heathens and going to hell.” Then she would pray in tongues at work and scared this friend of mine. It turned her off from a whole section of the church.

As she talked, I thought of, and shared with her, the scripture, “if I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, it is as a gonging symbol.” But it got me thinking again about how bad a job the church does sometimes at fulfilling the most simple of Jesus’ commands: Love your neighbor.

How was gossiping and condemning, then trying to display a spiritual gift in front of others, showing the love of God to this group of people? It did the very opposite than I am sure that this woman believed it would. I am sure she probably felt very justified with herself, having “shared the Gospel,” without any regard for those who were being “shared with.” I am sure the next line of thought was to blame the co-workers, because they weren’t open to the “full-gospel” or whatever, and justified her condemnation of them even more.

In this Lenten season, let us pray that we, as the Church, represent Jesus well, without our own prejudices and judgments bleeding through our messages to the world around us. Let us live the Gospel. It reminds me of what the layman said in the Ash Wednesday service as he placed the ashes on my forehead:

“Turn away from sin…be faithful to the Gospel.” Amen.

scandal of grace 6

It has been quoted that Michelangelo used to say that inside every piece of marble was a masterpiece, it only needed someone to remove the stone and rubble to reveal it.

This is how God sees us. He sees the masterpiece inside, in spite of what we see on the outside. Paul said it like this: “He who has began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of his return…” (PJ’s paraphrase.)

In the Message version of the Bible, Paul writing to the Romans makes a good summary of this truth about grace:

“So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

I'm speaking to you out of deep gratitude for all that God has given me, and especially as I have responsibilities in relation to you. Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it's important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.”
Romans 12:1-3 MSG (Italics and Bold, mine.)

If we are to truly learn how to live into this grace, we must first believe the truth that God loves us and accepts us just the way we are. No, we will not stay there. No, this doesn’t give us license to sin, but it does give us liberty to run after God will passion and trust, without fear of loss of love and without the fear of judgment, if we stumble along the way. It is my belief that the reason why so many of us never truly pursue God like we want is because we have a tarnished view of this loving Father and we are afraid that if we mess it up, we’ll lose everything. So if we risk nothing, we lose nothing.

But Jesus’ response to us is this: If we seek to keep our lives, we’ll lose them, but if we give them, we’ll keep them. As we enter this season of Lent, of focusing on the sacrifice made on our behalf, let us embrace what God has done for us and give ourselves, body…soul…spirit, to God with passion and without fear. He loves us and invites us to live into His grace.

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The truth is that Jesus came to set us free from religious standard keeping. What do I mean by that? Aren’t there rules and laws of God that we should obey? Of course, but where the church misses it is in the idea that our worth comes from keeping those rules, keeping “our noses clean” is not what guarantees acceptance by God. The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ. Plain and simple, you didn’t do anything to deserve or earn salvation, it was bought for you. Most Christians would agree with that statement and thank God for it. But from that point on they are continually striving to keep God’s love, or to ensure that they don’t “fall” out of grace. It becomes work to stay in with God, now that they’ve got there.

I watched a video not long ago that outlined a philosophy taught by a conductor, Benjamin Zander. He and his wife, Rosalind, have written a book called, “The Art of Possibility.” And in this book, Benjamin shares about when he teaches a group of musicians he starts out his class by announcing that everyone in his class receives an “A” and that the only thing they have to do to qualify for that “A” is to write him a post-dated letter (for the end of the semester) and tell him why they will have deserved the grade. He says that so many people focus on trying to attain the right grade, in class and in life, that they are more cautious and afraid to take the risks involved in becoming better musicians, or students, or people in general.

He says that giving the “A” is a possibility for them to live into and not a standard to live up to.

As I chewed on this concept, I thought, “This is what God does with us.” Grace gives us an “A.”

Think about it. When you come into a class, for example, the grade book is empty. Everyone is striving to get good grades to fill up the book and equal out to a passing grade. We all start as zeros in the book. But starting everyone as an “A” student takes away that pressure to perform and they can focus on really learning the subject. (Of course, you have the opportunity to be a slacker too, but that would be up to you, the benefit is not the “A” but what you have gained from the class.)

But this is what grace has done for us. We have all come to God as “zeros in the book.” But because of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, He took our failures and sins, and replaced it with an “A.” Now when we come to God in faith and believe the sacrifice of Christ is for us, we are brought into relationship with God and given a status that would be unreachable for us on our own. We get an “A.” God sees us in the image of His Son.

If, from this vantage point, we can begin to see ourselves as accepted by God the way we are, we can begin to explore our relationship with Him without fear of not measuring up, without the fear of failing Him, of being cast aside. It gives us freedom to grow and learn from the Teacher without the pressure of having to measure up to the standards of the others around us. We can return home with assurance that God’s love hasn’t changed toward us and even if we’ve never left the house, we can experience Dad’s goodness, instead of working blindly with resentment and fear. We can become free…

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“What are you doing??? How dare you forgive him and throw a party for him? I’ve worked so hard for you and never have you done this for me!”

The older brother believed that Dad had been holding out on him. The scriptures say that “out of the heart, the mouth speaks,” so he exposed his inner feelings about Dad here. He had been very devoted. He worked hard. He loved his dad. None of this is in dispute. But really knowing his dad, he didn’t. He had believed a lie, that his dad had been keeping something back, holding a standard over his head. He had feared not working hard for Dad, because he feared the loss of relationship. Now that his brother had blown it, he expected his suspicions (that he had set his lifestyle on) to prove out and he figured Dad would kick little bro out.

But this was not the character of his dad, and it is not the character of our God either. The amount of experience of God is related to the amount of knowing Him. The older brother had bought the lie of religion, that we have to perform for our God to receive His love. This had colored his relationship with his dad and kept him from truly experiencing all that dad was willing to share with him.

“You’re always with me. Whatever I have is yours.”

How many times have we let performance and legalism keep us from truly experiencing and knowing the grace of God? How many times have we believed the lie that God will not love us should we fail to perform better? How often have we believed the lie that God is holding out on us? But isn’t it dangerous to believe that God loves us just the way we are right now? Isn’t that taking Him for granted?

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In biblical times, if a son would leave home with an early inheritance and embarrass his family by blowing it all, the elders of the city would watch for them to return and meet him at the gates of the city. There they would break a clay pot at his feet and refuse to allow him to return home. He’d be turned away, banished.

For this reason, the prodigal’s dad sat on the porch every day, with his binoculars, checking out the horizon to make sure that he saw his son first. He knew his son would blow it, he knew the kid’s character, he was no dummy. But all the same, he loved his son and waiting patiently to see the silhouette of his boy on the horizon. And when he did, he took off running to meet him, embrace him and return him home before the elders could stop him from returning home!

This is a picture of the scandal of grace. Where anyone else would have turned him away, would have rejected this kid who had so blatantly disrespected his father and was disloyal to him, the dad of this boy refused to let the sin stay in the way of his love. It is the same with us. Nothing can separate us from that powerful, overwhelming love of God. He doesn’t care what we’ve done, where we’ve been and who we’ve been with, he just wants us to come home! It was a scandal to the elders, to village, but even more so to the older brother who had never left his dad’s side. Why was the brother so upset? The voice of religion had spoken to his heart and made him deaf to love…

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Remember with me now the story of a young man, old enough to leave home, becoming disillusioned with life at home, working for dad on the farm. He demands his inheritance and leaves to find himself. But all he finds is himself homeless and broke.

Coming to his senses, sitting in a pig’s pen (which was the lowest place a Jewish man could ever be, because they considered swine one of the most unclean animals), he realizes that in dad’s house the servant get better treatment than this. Surely even servanthood is better than eating pig slop. So he humbly starts the long road home.

How many of us have found ourselves in the pig’s pen before we came to Christ? We know what the slop tastes like and what it smells like. So we turned to God…and what did we find?

Here is the beginning of the scandal. If we were reading a tabloid or a gossip column from that period, there would be pictures of this influential man’s son in with the pigs and a whole article about who he’d been partying, sleeping with, and so on. What would happen when he returned home?

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Imagine being raised in a world where your importance, your status in life is measured by how well you play by the rules. These rules, so stringent that even the most pious among your people struggle to live up to them.

Imagine watching those who delighted to make even more rules snubbed those who couldn’t live up to the standards they imposed, even refusing them an audience or access to the holy places of the culture. Labels like sinner, demon-possessed, heathen are thrown around with disregard for the person’s feelings.

Imagine all your life thinking that even if you wanted to know God that he is far from you and will remain so until you change who you are and become something you feel like you never will be. God is impersonal and distant to say the least. In the worst case scenario, he is following you around with a notebook, taking note of every infraction and every failure to live up to someone’s idea of who he is. Imagine.

Maybe it isn’t hard to imagine, because maybe that’s exactly how you feel, maybe that’s exactly where you are. Do you believe that Christianity is full of rules and regulations written by men who have no concern about who you are and what you deal with? Do you feel God is further from you than you could ever reach? And if you ever caught up with him, what do you think he would say to you? How would he respond? Would he turn away in disgust or would he be impressed with your spiritual prowess?

Imagine again, if you will, this world where rules of religion reign and those who make the rules reign even more supreme. Imagine a man coming into that culture and telling people that they do not have to live up to that standard anymore, but they already have been brought to that standard. Imagine him telling you that God is not distant, but present, right here—right now, with you and is not embarrassed by your failures or your struggles, in fact, he is proud that you even want to try to serve him. Imagine the responses of those who have staked their lives in this rule based society that has given them the power they wield over those who listen to their word.

It would be a scandal. And even so it is today…the scandal of grace.