Embracing Grace: A Realization

“For by grace you have been saved through faith.  And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

–Ephesians 2:8-9

So many people (and so many churches) are searching for something.  Throughout history, much of humanity has struggled with religion, trying to seek God in various forms and in various ways.

Obviously, religious expressions have taken almost countless forms over the years.  There are now variations of almost every religion. There are variations on top of the variations that have split to form different denominations and congregations…and that is just within Christianity!

I personally have come to believe that Christianity is the true and trustworthy system of faith.  There is something unique and formative about the message of Jesus in Christianity that is not present in other major religions and trains of thought.  But believe me…much of the Christian church is still terribly and tragically flawed in many ways.  Why is it flawed?  Because people are in Christian churches, and people are not perfect. (Romans 3:23)  The Christian church may have gone through a Reformation, but it needs a revitalization.  The church is imperfect, partly because it has downplayed the message of God’s grace and love as exemplified in the Gospel message of Jesus Christ.

Fact is, churches are confusing, and frustrating!  There are TONS of choices when looking for a church!  Which one is right?  Which one is wrong?  What’s what?  Who’s who?  Who knows!?!  What sets a church apart?  What sets Christianity apart?  I believe it is one simple thing: Grace.

The thing that sets biblical Christianity apart is the central teaching of God’s loving mercy, found in the grace that God freely gives us in Christ Jesus and His death on the cross for all sin.  The concepts of grace and love as found in the Bible are not to be dismissed or brushed over.  Dwelling on God’s grace is not a sign of an “immature faith” or a “dismissal of sin.”

If you cut grace out of your faith, out of your church, or out of your Christianity, you cut the heart and soul, out of the message of Jesus.  To be honest, I don’t even know what you would be left with at that point.

Stressing God’s love and God’s grace does not cheapen grace. It centralizes it as the unique, formative teaching that the Bible clearly shows us that it is.  You do not need to dismiss sin in order to more fully embrace grace.  Grace is the pure expression of God’s undeserved love and mercy that has been freely given to us.

If we as Christians, or we as the church, are to truly be changed to be more like Jesus, the only thing that will change us is the continued realization of God’s grace, through the guidance and teaching of the Holy Spirit.  God reveals his grace to all of us through the act of Jesus dying on the cross.  THIS is the heart of the Gospel.  This IS the Gospel.

The Good News for everyone is that while God is just, God is also Love. (1st John 4:7-12)  Nothing can ever separate you from God’s love through Christ Jesus. (Romans 8:31-39)  God is gracious and merciful, and this is revealed to us through the saving act of Christ’s death on the cross for all sin, for all people, for all time.  It is already done, and it has been shown to us…now we need only believe, and embrace God’s unfailing, unending grace.  By grace you have been saved, through faith…this is a gift from God.

This is the revelation that changes us, that sets us apart.  I believe the more we come to a realization of God’s amazing grace, the more it will change our hearts and minds to be more like Christ Jesus. If you take grace out of the equation, you are removing what is distinct about Christianity, you are removing the “other” from the church and resting on worldly ideals and values such as moralism and legalism.  It is easier to forget grace and act upon what we think people “deserve” or “earn.”  It is more human to judge than to give grace.  A lack of grace can cause damage.  A lack of embracing God’s divine gift can cause despair.  That is why we need to fight for grace; to never forget it.

“For from his (Jesus) fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 

-John 1:16-17

Grace is truth.  Grace is an expression of God’s love.  There is a beautiful simplicity to Christianity at its core.  To minimize the beauty of grace and love that all have been given through Jesus is a tragic error.  As Paul writes in 1st Corinthians: Love is the greatest. (1st Corinthians 13)  Without love, it’s all just noise.  If you forget grace, and forget the love that God gives you, you are completely missing the point.

If your Christian faith or Christian spirituality is centered on anything other than faith in the grace and love exhibited through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, then you are not going to “change”.  You are not going to “grow” in your faith.

If you find your Christianity is centered on politics, then you are lost.  If you find your Christianity is centered on power, then you are wrong.  If you find your Christianity is mixed with, or resting on a nationalistic pride, then you are perverting the Gospel.   If you find your Christianity is all about making you comfortable and giving you a feeling of superiority, then you are not centered on God’s truth.  If you cling to the Law and minimize love and compassion, then you are heading down a road of depression and failure.  A faith that prioritizes Law at the expense of God’s love and God’s grace, is a weak and misguided faith.

God’s grace is a gift.  A gift that we should give to others.  To show others, to tell others about.  All. The. Time.

But what about sin?  Are we just to dismiss sin?  Is it all just sunshine and daisies and “Do whatever you want whenever you want!”  Nope.  Here’s the thing: Embracing Grace doesn’t mean embracing or even condoning sin. (Romans 6:1-14)  Yes, sin is real, and sin is serious, but the grace given to us is bigger and more powerful.  God is bigger than sin.  Grace is bigger than despair.

If we are under grace, if we are coming to a more expansive understanding of the grace of Jesus Christ through the power and prompting of the Holy Spirit, then we are no longer a slave to sin or walking in our old sinful ways. (Romans 6:14)

God’s grace changes people.  Grace is motivating.  It is pure. Realizing this revelation and embracing God’s endless and incredible love is the ONLY way that we, as broken/lost people, can ever hope to grow in Christ and deepen the bedrock of our faith.  We do not become more “mature” Christians by being more lawful.  We don’t advance our faith by making Jesus smaller and us bigger.

When we realize our weakness and failures, and we realize that His grace is sufficient, then God’s power and God’s strength can start to affect, change us…mold us in His image. (2nd Corinthians 12:9)  Grace has been given to us, and grace can motivate us in a loving, caring way.  As 1st Corinthians 16:14 says, “Let all that you do, be done in love.”

We do not yet fully comprehend God’s love and mercy.  The Apostle Paul says that here on earth, we only see God and God’s love as a reflection in a dimly lit mirror.  We don’t yet really understand what grace is.  It is counter-cultural.  It is otherworldly.  It is from a higher power; and we struggle with it.  That’s why we need to hear about God’s love over, and over, and over, and over, and OVER.

It may seem repetitive, or it may seem immature, but it is truth, and it is vital.  The Gospel is the story of God’s grace given to us.  It is God’s love incarnate through Christ Jesus.  God is with us, God loves us, God shows us mercy, God gives us peace and grace, and we receive this through faith.  We are empowered by the Holy Spirit to grow in this love and grace and knowledge of Christ, and to pass it on to all we encounter, in all circumstances.

I pray that the church would embrace grace more fully and more often, and that we would dwell in God’s love and God’s mercy.  I pray that this would change us, so we can truly be Christ’s ambassadors.  Everyone needs grace…when we realize this, we will experience the joy and hope that God has for us in Christ Jesus.

Embracing Grace is not weakness.  Embracing Grace is realizing our weakness, realizing how undeserving we are, and deepening our understanding and thanksgiving in the fact that God, in our unworthy state, chose to bring us out of death and into life, showing us mercy and love unending.  May we all show this love and grace to all around us, in everything we do, in and outside of the church.

“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.  Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God”

– Romans 5:1-2

December 11, 2017December 12, 2017 by Kyle Categories: Christianity, Random, UncategorizedTags: bible, Christianity, Christians, church, doctrine, Faith, gift, god, grace, Hope, Love, Religion, sin, spiritualism, theology Leave a comment

An Ambulance and a Sandwich

Darkness

It was 2012, late in the Fall.  My family and I had just moved back home to Washington State about a year and a half prior, and I found myself working as a Night Crew Manager at a tiny grocery store in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle.  My shift started at 11:00pm and ended at 7:30am, with a half hour lunch…in the middle of the night.

During the fall and winter I would rarely see the light of day.

When I got off work it would be dark.

When I went to sleep at home it would be dark.

When I woke up to go to work it would be dark.

Life felt like one long, dark day…with extended naps in the middle.

There was no night to “reset” my system.  I lost track of what day of the week it was.  Everything just blended together in a slow, dark, repetitive cycle.   I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was probably suffering from some form of mild depression.  I was always tired, quick to anger, and rarely felt content or truly at peace.  I wasn’t happy, and became very cynical and pessimistic.

My wife and daughter were, as always, amazing and supportive; but something was still just off.  Because my sleep schedule was so different, we didn’t do much socially, and our attendance at things like church and other functions was spotty at best.  When I did pull myself out of bed to do something outside of work, I was spacey and distant and mostly just thought about how I would rather be sleeping.

One of the hardest parts of working nights was the crowd that I often interacted with.  I liked my co-workers (two other guys); but the average “customer” who comes into a grocery store at 3:00am on a random weekday isn’t always there to purchase food items.

I’d say that after about 12:00am or 1:00am, for every legitimate, normal customer, we had 4 or 5 people just coming in to steal.  Night after night, I would encounter drunks and thieves…stealing left and right.  It made me really start to dislike people in general.  When you are constantly dealing with people coming in ranting and raving, smelling like human waste, and stealing detergent and liquor…it doesn’t exactly paint the greatest picture of humanity.

I started to hate people.  I started to think the worst of everyone.  Whenever someone would come into the store at night, my first thought was: Why aren’t you just at home asleep like a normal person?  I didn’t give people the benefit of the doubt…I just doubted their intentions.  I didn’t like feeling this way, but it was how I felt most of the time.

A Promise Motivated by Hate

One night, something happened that was somewhat funny, but at the time strengthened my distaste for the human race.

It was after 3:00am, on a fairly normal night.  I man who I assume was homeless, rode his old bike up to our store and parked it by the front door.  He was a white male, middle aged…about my height, with greying, frayed hair.  He smelled like cigarettes, alcohol, and urine, and was dressed in baggy pants and several plaid shirts, layered on him.

He asked where our bathroom was, and we directed him back to the grocery backroom where the public restroom was located.  I looked at my co-worker and we shook our heads, and went back to work.  About 30 minutes later we realized that he had not come out of the restroom yet.  It was a single person unisex restroom, with a door lock.  We went back to knock on the door, to give him a warning that he had 5 minutes to “finish up” and get out.  He slurred some response, and we figured oh great he is either drunk or shooting up, which happened often.  We would usually find needles and drug paraphernalia in the restrooms at night…shoved in the garbage can, left in the sink…hidden in the upper back portion of the toilet.  Real fun stuff.

We thought we heard him leave about 20 minutes later, so we didn’t think much of it after that.  About two hours passed, and it was then around 5:00am.  We started to see a few working professionals come through, and one went back to use the restroom, and noted to us that someone was in it, and they thought they heard snoring.

We ended up unlocking the door, and finding the man passed out drunk, next to two 6-packs of beer that he had stolen from us on the way back to the restroom (cameras confirmed this later), with has pants around his ankles, laying up against the bathroom wall, surrounded by empty bottles and broken glass.  My co-worker woke him, propped him up, and I called the police, as he staggered out of our store.  He grabbed his bike, and walked/wobbled (bobbing and weaving) across the street, where he sat down on the curb in front of a coffee shop.

He immediately passed out again, slumped over, falling straight forward basically folded in half, with his head between his knees, his arms stretched out in front of him, and his pants sagging down so far that his bare butt was hanging out; effectively mooning the coffee shop (Victrola) behind him.  There he slumped for the next 2o minutes or so, unmoving, oblivious to world, mooning anyone who walked behind him.

The police never showed up.  But the coffee shop owners did.  Apparently, he was so still that they thought he was dead.  They must have called 911, because a few minutes later, an ambulance showed up and the paramedics hopped out to go see if he was still alive.  They woke him up, he looked around dazed and confused, gave them a “thumbs up” and they shook their heads, patted him on the back, and left.

He pulled up his pants, moved off the curb, and slumped against the outside wall of the coffee shop beside his bike.  My co-worker and I laughed a little, and went outside to take a quick break.  We were still frustrated that he had stolen from us, but somewhat amused at the whole ordeal.

Then something happened.  It shouldn’t have angered me so much, but it did.  A few minutes after the aid car had left, a patron from the coffee shop came out with a large warm drink and a sandwich in his hand.  He bent down to the man laying against the building, and gave him the drink and the sandwich, smiled, and shook his hand.  The drunk man smiled and waved goodbye to the charitable person, and began to eat his sandwich, all the while looking quite content and pleased with himself.

So after a hard night of getting blackout drunk on stolen beer, the man was rewarded with a freshly made sandwich and a warm drink to start off his day.

When I saw that, I swore to myself that from that day forward, I would never give a homeless person anything ever again.  I was angry.  I hated people.  I even hated people’s charity.  What I just witnessed didn’t seem right to me.  What did this bum do to deserve this kind of care and compassion?  All he had done was made my night a living hell, having witnessed him passed out drunk on stolen beer, having to drag him out of a restroom, having to call the police, having to clean up broken beer bottles and mop up spilled beer and urine!  This was just stupid.  He was a ridiculous person.

In that moment I was not loving, I was not compassionate, I was not caring…and I was not right.

I didn’t think of that man as a child of God.  I didn’t want to show him love, and I didn’t want to show him forgiveness.  I didn’t want him to receive mercy, I wanted him to receive what I thought he deserved: punishment.  I judged him, and I wrote him off as a worthless person.  A drunk.  A loser.  Then I lumped everyone else that is in similar circumstance in with him.  In my heart, I decided that if ANYONE was drunk, homeless, or a criminal, or even down on their luck…that it was their fault, and they didn’t need any pity from me!  They must all be just like this guy.  They were “bad people” who did “bad things” and didn’t care.

I was wrong to think this way.

 

“You Shall Love Your Neighbor As Yourself”

In the Bible, Jesus is asked what the greatest commandment, or rather, what the greatest commandment of the Law is.  He responds by saying:

“The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

There is no commandment greater.

With the hundreds of laws and rules that are listed throughout the Bible, Jesus sums it all up for us.  Now, I knew these verses, and I knew this teaching.  But knowing something, and doing something are two different things.  Sometime’s loving people is hard.  Sometimes I don’t want to love others; let alone love them as much as I love myself.

I still remember how I felt that day when I saw a man who made so many bad (and illegal) choices rewarded.  But it doesn’t fill me with anger and hate anymore.  If anything, I am thankful that it happened, because it gives me perspective.

When I was working nights, I wasn’t just seeing darkness; I was living in it.  I allowed myself to become jaded, and my heart to be hardened towards others, because I forgot the love of Christ.  I drifted away from the light of God’s love.  I forgot that Jesus doesn’t just love me, He loves everyone.  He doesn’t just love the unlovable, He died for them too.

Jesus doesn’t see a drunk or a thief and think: That is a worthless person.  He doesn’t see a Muslim or an atheist and say: They are the enemy!  He doesn’t see gay man or a lesbian and claim: Oh they are just sinners! But He does see them…and He loves them.  He shows His love through His death on the cross, for their sins, for my sins, and for yours.

Romans 5:8 says:

“But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” 

We are all sinners, and we have all fallen short of the glory of God.  But He loves us anyway.  I am thankful that I know this.  I am thankful for God’s grace.  For us, as flawed people, the richness and fullness of God’s undeserved mercy and grace is hard to comprehend.  It is hard for us to embrace this unconditional love that God shows us, and then live our lives according to that undeserved love and affection.

I wonder what I look like to God?  I wonder why He loves me?  Don’t get me wrong, I know He does love me, and I am glad!

I wouldn’t be surprised that to God, I could look kind of like a drunk, stumbling around in the dark, lost in my sinful desires, searching for love and fulfillment in misguided and misdirected ways, smelling like urine and stale beer, with tattered clothes and matted hair.

A Life of Joy & Hope

I am thankful that I did not stay in darkness, living a cold and bitter life.  I have seen the light of God’s love.  When I see the cross that Jesus died on, I see a loving sacrifice.  I see hope and light…even if it is a dark world sometimes.

When Christians (or people) are able to fully embrace the love of God and the grace that He shows us, then we live a life of joyful thanksgiving.  We WANT to help people, we WANT to love people.  Not because we stand to gain from it, but because we are so thankful for what has already been done, and we are so filled with God’s love for us, that we simply want to pass that on to others.  We can’t help but pass on, and live out, God’s love in our lives.

Can you imagine what the world would look like if Christians truly did love God above ALL else and love our neighbors as ourselves?  That would be revolutionary.  That would change the world in drastic, dramatic, and amazing ways.

Christianity is not about judgement and condemnation.  It is not about fear and isolation.  It is not about feeling better than someone else, or more deserving than others.  It is about experiencing the joy that comes through the knowledge of the saving act of grace that Jesus completed on the cross for all of us.  It is about depending on Jesus, completely and solely.  It is about forgiveness, hope, love, joy, peace, and mercy.

It is my hope, and my prayer, that all who I know and come in contact with will be able to experience this hope and joy that I now have.  Every day I thank God for the mercy and love He has shown me, and shown others.  My goal, motivated by thanksgiving and hope, is to step out of the darkness that surrounds us, and strive to live each day learning to love God more, and love others more.  That, to me, is what living the Christian life is about.

“The Light shines in darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

John 1:5

 

 

 

 

 

April 13, 2017September 26, 2017 by Kyle Categories: Christianity, entertainment, Random, UncategorizedTags: darkness, depression, god, Hate, Hope, jesus, joy, Love, sin, thankful, work Leave a comment