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Thankful for Grace

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“O God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, we hope in thy Word. There we see thee, not on a fearful throne of judgment, but on a throne of grace, waiting to be gracious, and exalted in mercy. There we hear thee saying, not ‘Depart ye cursed,’ but ‘Look unto me and be ye saved, for I am God and there is none else.'”

I’m thankful for that throne of grace. I know I deserve the fearful throne of judgment. If I’m honest, there’s no way I could hope in a million years for mercy. If I got what I deserved, I’d hear the words “Depart ye cursed.” But I hear the words “Look unto me and be ye saved, for I am God and there is none else.”

The question isn’t why aren’t there more ways to be saved than through Jesus. The question is why do I get to be saved at all, considering what I’ve done and what thoughts go through my mind and who I could be apart from the very grace of God.

The question isn’t why bad things happen to good people, because we know there aren’t any good people who have never sinned. As R. C. Sproul once said, bad things happened to a good man only once because He volunteered for it. He chose the nails. He chose the cross. That’s why I can be declared righteous.

I remember people used to say things like “If anyone deserves to get into heaven, it’s . . .” fill in the blank with any upstanding citizen. But truthfully no one deserves to get into heaven. Not one. Not you. Not me. None. Only Jesus deserves to be in heaven, but He left His throne for the likes of you and me so we could get there, not by our own efforts but by His own shed blood.

I’m thankful that salvation belongs not to the strong or the fast or to the intelligent or the clever. Salvation belongs to those who humbly repent and place their faith in Jesus as Savior and Lord. That’s it.

Master and Teacher

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“Having a master and teacher means that there is someone who knows me better than I know myself, who is closer than a friend, and who understands the remotest depths of my heart and is able to satisfy them fully. It means having someone who has made me secure in the knowledge that he has met and solved all the doubts, uncertainties, and problems in my mind. Jesus wants us in a relationship where He is so easily our Master and Teacher that all we know is that we are His to obey” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest).

We are all disciples of something or someone. You can tell who is discipling you by your calendar and your checkbook. Where do you spend the most time and who or what gets your money? It’s not a matter of if you’re being discipled, but by whom.

Too many are being discipled by social media and the news. They’re getting fed a worldview that is not of God nor does it promote God or a healthy view of life and morality. Some are discipled by celebrities or influencers. Some by sports or hobbies. Some by their peers.

I’d rather be discipled by Jesus. I’d rather turn off the TV and the social media and spend time in God’s Word. But often, I don’t. Often, I find myself turning to Facebook instead of Scripture. I end up doing what I don’t want to do and not doing what I should.

But a question my pastor asked still haunts me. All who are believers need to have people to disciple them and to have people to disciple. The question is this: Who are you discipling and who is discipling you?

That’s it. That’s the question. Who are you discipling and who is discipling you?

The Cut-Out Bin

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“Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these ‘nobodies’ to expose the hollow pretensions of the ‘somebodies’? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God” (1 Corinthians 1:26-31, The Message).

As I mentioned a few posts ago, one of my favorite things to do back in the day, i.e. the 80’s, was to browse the cutout bins at the local record store. For me, that primarily was Camelot Music in the Hickory Ridge Mall in Memphis, Tennessee.

You could always pick out those CDs earmarked for discount by the telltale slash on near the CD label. My understanding is that record labels designated albums that didn’t sell very well to be moved to the cutout bin. Usually, you’d find a lot of unknown artists or the “sophomore slump” albums by those one-hit wonder bands or a failed comeback attempt. Every now and then, you might find a diamond in the rough that deserved better than being relegated to the cutout bin.

I discovered a section in McKay’s today that I will probably need to investigate further. It’s the “very scratched” section. It’s a good deal because 1) you can fix most CD scratches with 70% or stronger rubbing alcohol and/or toothpaste, 2) most of the CDs in that section are barely scratched, and 3) even if you wind up with a dud, you still haven’t lost much more than $1.

To paraphrase 1 Corinthians 1:26, God didn’t choose the top 40s of the world. He chose those of us stuck in the cutout bin. He selected those overlooked by everybody else, those whose best days seemed behind them, those who don’t look like much or don’t seem to possess anything special. He chose you and me.

That’s something worth celebrating. That’s something worth remembering on those days when you don’t feel like your life means much or that you don’t matter.

That also begs a question. If that’s who God chose, who am I to treat people any differently? Who am I to be elitist and snobbish when God condescended Himself and met the lowest of us at our most desperate point of need? Who am I to ever denigrate anybody else (or even me) when God proved His love by sending Jesus to die for all of us?

As always, I believe. Help my unbelief.

 

Another Night of Worship

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Kairos is always good. But every now and then, it gets taken up a notch to an epic level known as a Night of Worship. Usually, that means more worship songs. Hence the name.

Tonight’s theme was the love of God from 1 John 4:10. The question was this: “Do you see yourself the way God sees you?”

Often, it’s easy to look in the mirror and see failure, broken promises, and unfulfilled potential. It’s easy to focus on the might-have-beens and on what you lack instead of what you have and who you are.

It becomes infinitely easier to love yourself once you begin to grasp how deep the Father’s love for you truly is. How deep and wide and high and long. How unfathomable. Once you realize you did nothing to earn it and can do nothing to lose it.

It’s easy to worship when the emotions are running high and the crowd is hyped, but what about when you’re stuck in that morning traffic or slogging through emails at work? Or pouring that all-important first cup of coffee while it’s still dark outside?

Music and singing are a part of worship, but not all of it. Not even close. Worship is how you make much of Jesus in everything you do wherever you are whenever you are. Even taking out the trash or scrubbing toilets can be an act of worship when done in gratitude.

Still, the music part is nice.

Another Good Question from Kairos

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“If all you have is Jesus, is that enough?”

That was the question from tonight’s Kairos service that has been stuck on replay in my mind all night.

The topic was purpose. Aaron Bryant spoke about how God’s purpose for all of us is found in Romans 8:29: that we be conformed to the likeness of His Son Jesus.

So many look to their careers as being their purpose. So what happens to that when you get fired or laid off?

Some see their purpose in their spouses and their children. What happens when the marriage fails, when the kids don’t turn out like you hoped they would, or when they move out on their own?

Careers and family are important and meaningful, but ultimately your purpose has to come from Jesus. After all, God had all eternity in mind when He gave you your purpose.

You are not your marital status or your current paycheck. You are not your income or your car or the label on your jacket. You are not defined by your last exit interview or all those things the media tells you you’re not.

You are exactly who God made you to be and it’s never too late to become what God has dreamed for you all along. Just like Jesus.

I love Jeremiah 29:11 because I see in it a God who knows the plans He has for me, One who alone knows my purpose. I know it’s still okay to pray for a new job or a better job, for a relationship, for a family. I also know that your true destiny is to be formed and shaped to look like Jesus.

That’s what God promise all of us who have put our faith and trust in Him. And God always keeps His promises.

So for me, Jesus is enough. Ultimately, everything else is hollow without Him anyway. I can attest that everything and everyone else will at some point disappoint you or let you down. But Jesus never will.

A Really Good Question

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While I was house/dog-sitting at a friend’s house, i was channel surfing. I ran across a program that was just getting started on TBN.

Normally, I avoid that channel like the plague, but the program featured Max Lucado, one of my favorite authors, so I gave it a shot. As it turns out, I did indeed choose wisely.

Max spoke on Joseph of Old Testament fame losing everything he had– possessions, family, reputation, freedom. He was literally looking up from the lowest point in his life at one point.

Then Max asked a profound question: “What do you still have that you cannot lose?”

Maybe you’ve lost your health. Or a job. Maybe it was a spouse. Or a child.

Maybe you’ve lost your reputation.

Whatever it is, there’s one thing you can’t lose. Your destiny as a child of God. Because God looked down on you at your very worst and said, “I choose that one. I want him. I have great plans for her.”

Your identity isn’t lost when you lose everything. You are still God’s. He still loves you and still has your name tattooed on His hands and on His heart.

Joseph was faithful to His destiny and God rewarded him. And so he will reward you. Maybe not in this lifetime, but you can bet there is nothing you’ve lost that won’t be restored a thousandfold over.

I love how Max said that our lives aren’t the dashes between our birth-dates and death-dates. They’re more like a grain of sand on the beach of the eternity of God’s stedfast love. I like that.

Maybe I should watch TBN more often.

Christmas Eve Eve (Or Is It Christmas Adam?)

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Today is December 23. As the old joke goes, the day before Christmas Eve is Christmas Adam, for obvious reasons. And no, I didn’t say it was a good joke or even a funny joke.

It’s hard to get in the Christmas spirit when you can’t even take a moment to breathe. For me, I’ve been working crazy hours and getting some very last minute shopping in. All those plans for having all my presents bought early and devoting more time to celebrating Advent went the way of the BetaMax and the HD-DVD. They didn’t last long.

But as Bill Murray’s character in the movie Scrooged asks, “It’s not too late, is it?”

No, I don’t think so.

It’s never too late to turn your eyes to the manger and see the child laying there. It’s not too late to come and kneel before the infant King with the Shepherds. It’s not too late to make room for Immanuel, God With Us.

Whether it’s December 23 or after a lifetime of missed Christmases, it’s never too late. Even if you’re older than 92, you can still become like a child and receive this gift, despite what The Christmas Song says.

That’s why I love Christmas. God the Infinite became an embryo to show that no place is too small for Him to come into and make a difference. As my pastor always says, all He needs is a place to start, the tiniest opening in the heart, the most hesitant of acceptances to begin the miracle of change.

If God can change a heart like mine, He can change yours. That is what Christmas is really all about, Charlie Brown.

Do You Want It?

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I have a question for you that I heard tonight, but first let me give you a little bit of background before I dive in to the deep end.

Job was a man of integrity. God called him “a man of perfect integrity, who fears God and turns away from evil.” Integrity is when your actions match your words. It’s what you do for someone who can’t really benefit you in return. It’s what you do when you’re alone or when you think no one is watching.

God allowed Satan to test Job by letting him take away Job’s possessions, house, family, and –finally– his heath. Job was able to say, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Even when his own wife told him to curse God and die, Job responded that he should accept not just the good from God’s hand, but also adversity.  He had integrity.

My favorite is one I heard describing integrity as derived from the word integer. As in a whole number, opposed to a fraction. In other words, your life isn’t divided into how you act in this scenario with this group of people versus another scenario with a different group of people. You are whole. A good definition is “ The quality or condition of being whole or undivided; completeness (from thefreedictionary.com).

The question I have is this: how much do you want God to say about you that you are a man or woman of integrity? How much do you want to be known for that? How much do you really want to put pleasing God above pleasing people?

OK, I cheated a bit. That’s actually three questions. Or you could consider it The Question Trilogy, since trilogies are all the rage in movies these days.

Do you want it enough to be thought of as ridiculous and foolish by your peers, friends, family, and co-workers? Do you want it enough to separate from the majority who are willing to compromise when its convenient and fudge the facts to make themselves look a little better? Are you willing to be honest even when it hurts?

Honestly, right now. I can’t say that I want that. I want to want that. Most of the time, I want to be liked way more than I want to be upright. I want to be admired way more than I want to be a man of integrity.

As a pastor once said, all God is looking for is a place to start, however small that is. If you start with a hesitant agreement with God to be that man of integrity, God will honor that and grow that desire in you until it becomes your passion.

You just have to start.

A Letter to Kim Kardashian

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Kim,

I don’t know if you will read this or not. Realistically speaking, I’m pretty sure you won’t, since you probably don’t have time to read blogs by people you don’t know who aren’t famous. But if by some extremely remote chance, you happen to stumble on this quaint little blog, I hope you know I’m rooting for you.

I know a lot of people will look at your decision to start a Bible study and question your motives. They will say you just want to hook up with Tim Tebow or give some other reason why you can’t legitimately want to read God’s Word for its own sake.

I am not one of those.

I hope you read the Bible and find all that God has for you in there. I hope you find God’s love letter to His people, including you, and how much He loved His people and what great lengths He undertook to win back His people lost to sin and death.

I hope you will find that true beauty is in what God says about you, not what some magazine or television producer says about you. God says, “I made you and that makes you beautiful, because I made you in My image.”

I hope you will know that Jesus loves you just for you, not because of what you do or what you wear or who you know. I hope you can find joy in the fact that Jesus looked at you in your worst moments and thought you were still to die for.

I hope you fall in love with God’s Word and want it more than anything else. I hope you are transformed by what you read and that every time you read the Bible, you put it down a different person than when you picked it up. More than that, I pray you will take what you read and live it out in compassion for the needy and love for those whom God loves.

I hope you understand that no matter what you’ve done in the past, God has a purpose for you. He can work in and through you to do some pretty amazing things that will blow you away.

Like I said before, I’m rooting for you and hoping you find the peace you’re looking for.

Signed,

A Ragamuffin who is just trying to tell others about the grace of God that he’s found

PS It’s still not too late, no matter how messed up your life seems right now. Jesus can still turn your mess into something beautiful.

Last Thoughts on the Beatitudes

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Obviously, I’ve had the Beatitudes on my mind for some time now, having blogged on each one individually for the past several days. The question that remains is how do they all fit together. And what is the purpose? Ok, so I lied about only having one question. Sue me.

How do they fit together? It seems like they are all describing one person. A believer.

What is the purpose? If it’s a to-do list, I’m sunk. I can never make myself be poor in spirit or meek or any other of these things. The same goes if it’s a list of to-be’s, as in you should be all these things if you are a believer. Then what? I heard someone say that the Beatitudes are what it looks like when the Kingdom of God breaks through in a person. When God’s reign is manifested in an individual.

Well, then. How can we seek for a Kingdom breakthrough? By seeking the Kingdom. “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:33). And the Kingdom is nothing more than God Himself, God ruling over His creation. So seek God first, and everything else will fall into place. Make Jesus your first– your only priority– and you will have found your purpose.

Again, I like how the Message puts it: “Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.” Steep your life in God. Let every part of your life be filled with every part of God. Let every thought, breath, word and action be a living prayer to Jesus. Live with open hands and open minds toward all that God has for you.

Jesus, be thou my vision, as the old hymn says. So fill me with Your Spirit that all I see is You and how You are working in the world. So inhabit my senses that my heart breaks with what breaks Your heart. So enrapture me with Your love that everything else fades away.

Amen.