Tag Archives: grace

Not like Jesus

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The best part about artists and non-believers in general is their honesty.  Artists are specifically honest as you listen to their music…at least most of them are.  You listen and hear the honest struggle within each artist.  Those are the sorts of artists I love to listen to; the raw and exposed lyrics of honest writers.  This is a quality lost in most Christian music, which is a main reason I don’t like it or listen to much of it.  These secular artists leave their reputations to the wind and write with ceaseless honesty about what goes on inside themselves.

Christians often lack this kind of honesty.  In most cases, our reputation is king.  So because of this, every piece of humanity or struggle that leaks out the holes in the mask are shocking and scandalous mostly because we never saw it coming.

As Derek Webb said in an interview, “We are all wrapped up in trying to look like Jesus instead of people who need Jesus.”

We are so fearful that people will see us as we really are.  I want to live a life where I am not afraid of letting people see me as I really am.  Because truth of the matter is I’m NOT like Jesus…I don’t look like Jesus…but I DO need him.

Without Jesus, I am absolutely lost and in the dark.  Alone, I am a man prone to being lost.  I have huge potential for being lost, but honestly I would rather people consistently see my potential lostness…my potential for being alone and broken…I would rather people see all of this instead of a pretty and shiny self-righteousness which I have a whole wardrobe full of to draw upon.  I would rather people see my brokenness and potential for straying because if all I ever show them is my righteous and confident garb they’re going to be shocked when they find out I really am a ragamuffin, beat up, broken and bedraggled.

That’s who I really am, Daddy’s little boy who likes to get into everything (especially dirt), who is a little ragged but still looks to his Daddy with phenomenal awe.  That’s who I really am, and I’d rather people just know that.

Forgotten grace

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The story goes there was a nun who claimed to hear from God each night. The priest, skeptical, told her to ask God to tell her all the things the priest had mentioned at his last confession.

The next time they met up he asked what God had told her. She replied, “God said, ‘I forgot.’”

Hebrews 10:3 says “But in those [old] sacrifices there is a reminder of sins year by year.”

All the the things we try to do for forgiveness only serve to remind us of sin God has forgotten. We cannot keep doing things to keep us locked up in shame and guilt.

In Jesus, God has forgotten all of our sin; past, present, and future.

I am soaking in the fact God has already forgotten all the sin I have not yet committed. The sins I will commit are already forgotten. (Heb. 10:17)

Grace will always be ridiculous to me.

Lessons of Levi

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Scripture, unlike our attempts at active reflection today, shows Jesus going to Levi at Levi’s tax-collecting booth.  Jesus actually went to Levi’s place of sin.

Then Jesus asks Levi to follow him.  I do not recall a sinner’s prayer or even a Roman’s Road.  Perhaps one of Jesus’ bonehead disciples had a huge wooden sign that read, “God hates tax collectors!  The kingdom of God is near.  Repent or die!”

But I do not recall that in scripture either.  Anyway!  Jesus calls Levi, and Levi follows very willingly.  Oh!  It doesn’t end there.  Going to one tax collector’s little booth was not enough.  Jesus goes to have some dinner with Levi and a bunch of other tax collectors.  Jesus sat and hung out with them. I read that he sits with them; eating.

This was not the guys getting together for some food and cards either.  Scripture tells us it was a large crowd of tax collectors.  Jesus went to a huge tax collectors’ dinner conference to hang out with them.

Oh, and possibly the most accurate reflection of today’s Christian culture in this passage happens outside the “Hyatt Regency by the Sea” were Pharisee picketers with sings and megaphones.  The signs complained, “Why DO YOU eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

Now, let’s not overlook something here.  The real thing worth noting is the Pharisees are the ones who first call the tax collectors “sinners”.  They are never referred to as sinners until the Pharisees come on the scene. They were quick to place a branding on these people. Jesus goes into the margins of the marginalized and sits with them; the Christian elite sit outside branding tax collectors with titles.

No free lunch…or grace…okay maybe grace

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God, I am sorry that I always take your grace for granted.  I so frequently find myself living under cheap grace…grace with no cost.  Sometimes I just live as though your grace was free to even you.  I live like you did not pay a cost for the grace I get for free.  I live like its free.  It may be free for me to accept but it is only there for me to accept because you paid a phenomenal price for it.  It is easy to focus on the grace being free to me, but when that’s all I pay attention to, I begin to live my life under the banner of cheap grace and ride the coat tails of grace.  Even if I don’t say it aloud or even consciously think it, I live my life as if to say, ‘God will forgive me; why not…..?”  For that I apologize.  I have taken your mercy and loving grace for granted.  I need you!  I need your grace.

Why rest for the weary is so hard

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“Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” – Matthew 11:28

Sounds great! Why is it so hard to do?

We all have moments when our spirit could really use a rest. We all have moments when our hearts have been bested by our sin, our struggles, and the general beating that life often has to offer. We all have moments when we feel attacked by our past, held down by our present, and fearful of our future. Some of us live weary and heavy-laden, and this passage sounds like the most amazing freedom. Our hearts jump at the possibility.

But for the most part, our hearts remain weary and rest remains a “possibility”; never a reality. Why is it so hard to actually come to God? Why is coming to Jesus for rest so difficult?

First of all, it’s humiliating. We feel like peasants before God; utterly unworthy of the rest he offers. We see ourselves in the reality of our filth. We look at our sin and our predicament, and it paralyzes us. We stay back and grovel just outside of Jesus’ presence because we know we are unworthy, but we have convinced ourselves we are worthless, and there is a difference. We stay just outside of Jesus’ open arms, which offer our weary hearts rest because we fear rejection. We fear ourselves to be too filthy, too broken, and too far gone.

But Jesus still calls out to us, “Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden.” So he knows our predicament. He sees our filth. He realizes what has worn us down and languished our soul, and he STILL calls out to us to come to him.

It is only hard to come to Jesus for rest because we would rather stay in sorrow than to accept God’s GRACE that says, “I know you are weary, filthy, and broken, and I love you so much. Please come to me, and I will love the hell out of you.”

Every day grace

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Grace is available to the repentant. Every day grace is available to the every day repentant.

Repentance is a daily discipline, not a one time shot. Each day we should ask that God search our hearts and reveal any wickedness, injustice, or lack of integrity within us. When he reveals those things to us, which is inevitably present, we must repent of those things. We cannot then avoid what we know is there.

Psalm 7:12-16 reveals the self-inflicted pain and consequence for the person who refuses to repent. Its like he has dug his own inescapable hole to fall into.

We are to repent, and when God answers with mercy and ridiculous grace, we must give thanks and never take it for granted, even with every day repentance.

Why Ted Williams is unwelcome

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“Oh wait! You actually needed more help than the makeover we gave you? We are ashamed of you now.” - America

I have been sucked into the firestorm of the Ted Williams story this week. I cannot help but see a hard reality of our media and American culture weaving its way into the story.

We were so quick to overlook any possible deeper issues in order to make ourselves look better by helping this man with a makeover, but once they cleared away the dirt, grime, and hair, they found “demons” like alcoholism and a dark past. Now the story changes.

Suddenly, the man with the golden voice is another tabloid regular, and there is an air of disappointment in the media coverage.

It makes me wonder, “Do you really think all you had to do was cut his hair and give him some new clothes?”

Today, I am wondering how many churches do the same thing. How often do we want simply to get someone “saved” without any concern to the reality of brokenness that lies underneath? Are we willing to enter into those things after the initial saving?

Suppose we do enter into someone’s broken story, are we going to react with grave disappointment as though we never expected the sin-soaked nature of humanity to rear its ugly head after they accept Jesus Christ?

No answers here…just reflection…

 

Third Servant Church

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The Church is full of third person servants. When you read the parable of the talents in Matthew 25, you typically realize that everything we have been given is a gift. We should use those things to further the kingdom. We commonly think about our gifts, talents, abilities, and our money. We wonder what we could do to better use those gifts to further the kingdom of Christ. We commonly remember that we are called to be effective ministers of the gospel with the things we have been given, but there are other things we have been given than resources alone.

Our God has given us hope, grace, mercy, and an outstanding love.

We have been given these phenomenal gifts, and our common response to the parable is to think of our abilities, our talents, our money that, yes, IS God’s. We tend to overlook other gifts like hope, mercy, grace, salvation, love. We have been entrusted with those as well, and the question is the same. What do we do with those gifts?

When I look at those gifts, I see an American church nearly full of third servants. We have hoarded those things in ourselves. Every Sunday we come and bury those things in the field of our common services. We talk about those things with people who already believe what we believe. We have not taken many risks to invest those gifts for a larger return.

It IS a risk to invest, but the first 2 servants take those risks and find blessing and return on those investments. They also come to see that there are so many opportunities to expand the kingdom with the gifts we have of hope, mercy, grace, love, salvation.

The only way to reveal the kingdom and become one of the first two servants is to take those things OUT of the burial ground of our walls and invest them in areas outside of our comfort. There are risks of fear, awkwardness, etc. But the return on those risks are incredible.