Monthly Archives: September 2016

Expected Grace

Christians, we are a fortunate lot, aren’t we? We serve the God of ceaseless mercy, second chances, and staggering grace. We know that we know that we know that when we walk out of His will, God will lovingly forgive us once again.

I used to envision Him as a God that begrudgingly forgave me again and again because it was, after all, what He does and Who He is.  It is part of His job description. I do not know why I saw Him as being reluctant to forgive, but I did. But when it hit me that the Father of the Bible’s very own Prodigal Son was a true picture of God Himself sprinting toward me at the first hint of repentance, my perspective of Him changed, praise God! He is not irritated with us when we sin, turn back to Him, sin, turn back to Him, sin, and once again turn back to Him. He is overjoyed. He may have every right in the world to be annoyed and/or angry, but instead of rolling His holy eyes at us, He reaches out His forgiving arms to us.

However, when we repeatedly choose the sin over the Son, what we are truly saying is that we would rather sin…commit an act against God…do the very thing that separates us from Him, than walk with Him and deepen our relationship with Him.

I suppose we could continue on in that pattern…knowing that even though we are sincerely apologetic, the sin might be victorious again because well, even though we haven’t admitted it out loud, we have decided it is easier to rely on expected grace than to work, fight, and pray through to a victory of overcoming sin. I have been there on more than one period in my life regarding more than one sin. Allow me to share with you the affect that continuing on in that pattern had on my relationship with Jesus, and why my encouragement to you is: “Stop the cycle!”

  1. We know the act itself… the gossip, the cheating, the lying… is not what detaches us from God. Not that these are minor issues in any way, shape, or form. There are undeniable consequences to all of these acts. However, I believe that God is most concerned about what lies at the core of our choice to deliberately reject His way. The heart condition that causes us to sin is what causes the disconnect. Every time the sin wins, we are making a choice between telling God and showing God that our love for Him is first and foremost in our life or our love for Him is secondary to our love for unfulfilling ways.
  2. Another thing that happens is that we make it harder to hear from Him. Our hearts harden, our resolve weakens, and the distance between us expands.  Oh, Friend, we can rest assured that He is ready to run toward us even if He has farther to go, but the road IS longer and our weariness may set in sooner. The discouragement we feel when we realize we again allowed the Holy Spirit’s voice to be drowned out by our self-centeredness can make us feel defeated and ready to give up. The deeper we allow ourselves to go into the ugly pit of sinful behavior, the harder to get back to the beauty of the surface.

When we begin to take advantage of God’s grace in order to continue in our sin, we are making a decision to be satisfied with the temporary, artificial happiness that sin provides, instead of being secure in the contentment of the lasting, authentic joy that God provides.

God offers us an incomparable gift in His grace. Let us be gracious; not greedy, in receiving it. Let us never feel entitled to it, and instead feel empowered by it to dive more deeply into relationship with our amazing God.

 

What About Love?

A quick check of trending Twitter topics often include hashtags that involve the word, “love.” There are memes about love and movies about love. Music has a whole genre devoted to love. Songs tell us that love, sweet love, is what the world needs now, that love will keep us together, that love is a battlefield, and that love can build a bridge.

We have all heard sentences begin with, “If he loved you, he wouldn’t do such and such,” and “If she really loved you, she wouldn’t have said so and so.” Maybe you and I have started some our own sentences with something very similar.

Love. The word itself gets thrown about quite liberally, and so do opinions on it. Beliefs abound on what it should look like and sound like. How it should act and react. Unfortunately, we get bombarded by several worldly views and versions of love. Take just a moment to determine how many times you hear made-up definitions of love that are not drowning in self-centeredness and superficiality?

Recently, this thought has occurred to me: what if we quit assigning our own meanings to love and instead went directly to the Originator of love to determine what it truly is? Can you imagine what would happen if we would decide to immerse ourselves in God’s Word, which so wonderfully displays His pure and perfect love? If we would learn it and then live it? We would do well to educate ourselves on His definition, espouse it as our own, and strive to excel at living it out.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7 is arguably the most popular passage in the Bible regarding love. It reads: 4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

That is quite a list! If we strive to adhere to that list of verses when we love others, then the first three words of the very next verse (1 Corinthians 4:8) will show itself to be true: ‘Love never fails.’

Conversely, the worldly views of love that we are seemingly inundated with are prone to failure.

The instructions on how to give true, unfailing love are found in God’s Inspired Word, which we have wide-open access to.

Therefore, we can choose to research the real meaning and choose to reject the world’s meaning. We can choose to show the real meaning and choose to shun the world’s meaning.

Lord, with Your help, please help us live out true, unfailing love. Amen.