LIVING IN GODS WONDERFUL WORLD OF GRACE

If you ever have the read the book of Job, you learn very quickly that life is not fair, no one is safe, and this world is very unpredictable. Try to control you life, strive for safety and security, and watch what can happen. Job, a righteous man, lived a life like we all do, he had it all and one day lost it all. Why good and righteous Job? When it happens to us we ask "why me"?

We all want control over our lives and frankly, we are able to maintain allot of control because of the times we live. We have access to doctors, education, entertainment, food, water, disposal, and transportation. We have good jobs, comfortable homes, and ordered lives and schedules. For most of us, business as usual is a good thing for us in order to maintain a sense of control and order.

That is, until like Job, we are interrupted by some loss. When something happens suddenly that causes us to lose something whether by cancer, failure, disappointment, unemployment, violence, injury, divorce, or death we lose any sense we had that we are in control.Suddenly, we realize how limited, finite, needy, and weak we really are. We have to face that reality square in the eye. our lives have been interrupted. Our expectations have been shattered. We resent the intrusion, the inconvenience, and the cessation of business as usual. We think, "This is not on my agenda for my life!" We cry out, "God, I have plans that you are interrupting." "Why?"

Most of us not only want our life to be under our control, we want life to be fair. So when bad things happen, we claim the right to receive what we deserve, which is justice. We demand to live in a world where good deeds are rewarded and bad deeds are punished, hard work succeeds and laziness fails, decency wins and meanness loses. In Hinduism it is called Karma. When life does not turn that way and we do not get what we feel we deserve, we feel that we have been cheated by God.

Now don't get me wrong, I do not believe that many of the tragic things that happen are us simply getting what we deserve. We are all sinners and most of you reading this are undoubtedly not worse than allot of people and perhaps even better than some people who have dream lives. But what I have come to see is that thinking that living in this life and suffering or prospering according to our merit is far too simplistic a view of life and even more so does not square with human experience.

I have known some wonderful people who have suffered unfathomable tragedies and losses. What did they do to deserve such loss? I have also known some pretty despicable people who have had a very good and prosperous life. What have they done to deserve such a blessing?

So I have come to conclusion that life is not fair nor can life be controlled. Good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people. But it is allot more deeper than that. Though I cannot adequately explain how this works and why it works, there is something I am coming to see.

There are two worlds that we can live in. We can try to live in a world where everything is fair and just, where we get what we deserve; or we can live in God's world of grace, where we do not get what we deserve. Grace is only grace when we get what we don't deserve. The problem in living in a perfectly fair world is that it is not a perfectly fair world! Everything is not fair and just deserved; good things happen and bad things happen; but there is no grace in this world.

Think about it. In a world of grace we may expedience bad things that we don't deserve, but we also experience good things that we don't deserve. Before God, if we all desired His world to be like ours, where we received our just deserves, we would all be in a world of nothing but loss, punishment, wrath, and bad things happening to us. The beautiful thing is that when we live in God's world of grace, we never get what we deserve. So, we may suffer loss, but we also receive mercy. Life make get worse than we planned it to be, but life will also be exceeding abundantly above anything we thought it would be (Ephesians 3:20).I may receive the bad that I did not deserve from others, but I will get the good from God that I did not deserve as well. I may find undeserved pain and sorrow in this life but I will also experience undeserved grace and joy from God.

Not only that, but when we live in a world of grace, our eyes are opened to see the Father;s grace coming to us in so many wonderful ways. Look what it did for George Mueller. When he suffered the devastating loss of the death of his wife Mary of rheumatic fever in 1860, he preached her funeral message from Psalm 119:68, "Lord, You are good and do good". His three points were:
The Lord was good, and did good, in giving her to me.
The Lord was good and did good, in so long leaving her to me.
The Lord was good and did good, in taking her from me.

Do you see what grace can do to our perspectives in a world of suffering, tragedy, and loss?
We cannot live a lifetime and expect everything to be free from disappointment, loss, tragedy, and and suffering. In a world of merit and rewards and punishments we will get many things we do deserve and many things we don't deserve, but that is all we will ever get. But oh to live in a world of disappointment, loss, and tragedy with the world of God's amazing grace! Grace from the God of abundant grace that will give us so much more than we ever deserve or don't deserve:

Grace that will give us life where there is death
Strength where there is suffering
Healing in our brokenness
Joy in the midst of sorrow
Gain where there is great loss
Love where there is hate
Light where there is darkness
Companionship in the midst of loneliness
Mercy instead of justice.

I am learning to live in a new world, the world of grace. That is the world I want to live in for the rest of my life.
Pastor Bill