Have you ever been lost in the middle of your own faith? What I mean is those times when it is difficult to connect the beauty of what you believe to the rough and often difficult realities of your daily life. I read an article some time ago and it blessed me this morning as I read it again.
So, I have taken some of it's highlights and put it in my blog this week. I have an impeccable theology and can well articulate what it means to say that I have been "saved by grace" (Ephesians 2:8-9) and by faith I know that I am going to spend eternity with Jesus. My problem often times is in the here and now. Day after day, in situation after situation, and relationship after relationship, I don't always carry with me a vibrant and practical sense of the nowism of the grace of Jesus Christ. Yes, I believe in life after death, but I desperately need to understand life before death; the kind of radical life I will live when I understand what Jesus Christ has given me for the life he has called for me today, right here, right now (John 10:10).
I am trying to understand and hold onto the nowism of grace. This means at least four things to me at the moment:
1.God's grace will decimate what you think of you, while it gives you a security of identity you've never had. Grace will expose your sin, but it will not leave you without identity. Grace has liberated me, but I want to know it and live like it. I have not only been forgiven and empowered, but I have been given a brand new identity. I cannot look inward for his identity. I cannot measure my potential by my track record or the size of the problems I face. My potential is as great as the grace of Christ. I want to be freed from looking outward for my identity. I want no longer to have to search for identity in my relationships, possessions or achievements. I want to be freed from looking horizontally for what he had already been given vertically. Paul reminds me, " if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come"(2 Corinthians 5:17).
My sense of self is no longer rooted in what I can earn or achieve, but in what I have already been given in Christ (2 Peter 1:3-4).
2. God's grace will expose your deepest sins of heart, while it covers every failure with the blood of Jesus. Nowness means I no longer have to work to excuse, deny, rationalize, or minimize my sin. No longer do I have to exercise my inner lawyer when the Holy Spirit, the Word of God, or someone points out a wrong. Because of the cross of Jesus, I can admit my weakness and failure before a holy God and be utterly unafraid (1 John 1:9; 2:1; Psalm 103; Micah 7:7-9; Romans 8:1). And if a holy God has accepted me as I am, why would I need to fear the opinion of others? Jesus has taken my rejection so that I would never see the back of God's head. Grace had freed me from having to prove to God, myself and others that I am righteous. My hope and security is no longer in my own righteousness, but the righteousness I have been given in Christ. Grace will make you face how weak you are, while it blesses you with power beyond your ability to calculate.
3. God's grace does require you to admit how weak you are, but it doesn't leave you there. The cross not only dealt with the guilt of sin, but with the inability if sin as well. In this broken world of regular difficulty and constant temptation, I feel weak and unprepared, thus I often live more out of fear and avoidance than with hope and courage. But I have not only been granted forgiveness, I have been filled with power; power beyond my ability to calculate.
(Ephesians 3:20, 21) 4. God's grace will take control out of your hands, while it blesses you with the care of One who plan is unshakable and perfect in every way. I have a very strong belief in the absolute sovereignty of God, but often times it was almost completely separate from my everyday experience. I often live like I have no idea that Jesus is ruling over all things for my sake (Ephesians 1:20-23). That is why I often deal with the frustration of trying to control people, circumstances, and things which I have little power to control. When we lose the "nowism" of grace we spend way too much time calculating the "what ifs" and regretting the "if onlys".
I am learning that my security and rest are not to be found in my ability to predict the future and control the present, but in the faithful love and expansive wisdom of my sovereign Savior, Jesus. When I live like this, my living will be more restful than anxious rather than more anxious than restful.
So I am learning that I don't need more grace. No, I need to understand and live in light of the grace I have already been given. I want to stop being a grace amnesiac and so he living like I am poor, when grace has made me exotically rich. I want to stop living like I am weak, when grace has made me strong. I want to stop living life there is no plan, when, in fact, I have been included in the unalterable plans of the God of redeeming grace. I want to live in the "nowness" of grace and live out of the freedom, beauty and security of what I have been given right here, right now.
What about you?
Pastor Bill
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