The Gift of Grace

I’ve been a Christian for over 50 years, so I have to admit that I don’t often think about the salvation side of God’s grace.  When I trusted God at the age of four to save me from the eternal death I was destined for because of my inherited sin nature, I had not yet acquired a long list of sins or any understanding of the shame and guilt that could have characterized my life if I had not chosen to follow God.  All but the first four years of my life has been wholly permeated by the concept of grace, so I struggle to understand what it would be like to live any part of life without it.  I have had to learn from others about the depths of God’s saving grace and the effects it can have on a life.  Adults who are new Christians always bring a refreshing dimension to my walk of faith because they have a perspective I have never experienced.

So today I’m looking a little closer at this aspect of God’s grace.  In order to understand how it works, we have to remember that all of God’s character traits operate in conjunction with each other: his grace, mercy, love, holiness, and righteousness are interconnected.  God’s mercy is the compassion that moved him to provide a Savior, and his love is the motivation behind everything he does toward man.  But grace couldn’t operate until God’s holiness and righteousness were satisfied by a sufficient answer to sin.  Grace rules out all human merit because no amount of human effort can provide a sufficient answer to sin (Ephesians 2:8-9).  Only God could satisfy the requirements created by his own character.  All we can do is admit our own insufficiency and accept his free gift of grace in providing a suitable sacrifice that covers every possibility of sin in our lives and bridges the gap between ourselves and a holy God.

Thinking this through again makes me feel like I need to celebrate!  Don’t let a day go by without thanking God for his wonderful gift of grace! 

Losing Can Be Winning

Yesterday I attended a memorial service for an elderly gentleman from our church.  Then I came home and watched the news and discovered that today is the 6-month anniversary of a terrible landslide in our area that claimed 43 lives.  So today I’m thinking about the different losses that we go through in life.  There are many different kinds of losses – loss of life, loss of a job, loss of a friendship, loss of a home or other assets, loss of ministry, loss of health, loss of memory, loss of purpose, loss of innocence . . . the list goes on and on.  Most of us have experienced one or more of these in our lives so far.  As Christians, trusting God is essential through the process of coping with any loss – and yet often the most difficult thing to do.  All loss brings the same result to those affected: the experience of brokenness, emptiness, and feelings of hopelessness.  But how do we move beyond these initial results and allow God to work in us through the loss?  How can losing be turned into winning? 

We are called to face loss with faith so that the changes that occur in us result in growth.  You see, change is an inevitable result of loss, but growth is not.  Loss changes who we are and makes it necessary for us to redefine “normal” – figuring out who we are without whatever we lost.  The apostle Paul taught us in 2 Corinthians 10:5 one of the most important things we can do when we face loss: “ . . . we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”  So that’s the starting point.  Don’t let the enemy steal your thoughts!

After that, it’s all about perspective.  We humans usually approach earthly life as something that we need to hang onto or cling to; but Jesus told us we shouldn’t do that (Luke 17:33).  Clinging to this life means trying to escape physical loss and feeding a materialistic and individualistic perspective on life instead of an eternal one.  A proper eternal perspective recognizes that whatever we have on earth is temporary and that everything we gain on earth is a gift from God to be used for his glory..  Our natural earthly perspective makes us act as if we have a “right” to the gains God has given us, which leads to our interpretation of losses as injustice or unfairness.  This difference in perspective is critical because where it leads is the difference between hope and hopelessness.  When we experience loss, either response is a possible outcome. 

One more thought for today: When we experience loss, healing comes when we allow God’s presence to fill the hole that is left in our lives by the loss.  Did you notice that this requires action on our part?  But, when we choose to trust God’s presence in our lives and rely on him to take the place of what we lost, we receive another gift from him: the gift of contentment.  Let’s agree to trust God through our losses and not allow them to have the final word! 

How's Your Focus?

Yesterday at church I picked up a brochure for our upcoming women’s fall retreat.  The theme is based on Hebrews 12:1-2, which encourages us to get rid of all the extras that might slow us down and run the race of faith as well as we can.  Not surprisingly, this idea is right up my alley – because I believe that everything in life is about faith.  I also believe that faith is ultimately all about focus.  Here’s how these verses plus verse 3 say it:

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with patient endurance and steady and active persistence the race God has set before us.  We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, Who is the Leader and the Source of our faith [giving the first incentive for our belief] and is also its Finisher, [bringing it to maturity and perfection] . . . Think of all the hostility he endured from sinful people; then you won’t become weary and give up.”

This Scripture comes right after Hebrews 11, which is an exhaustive list of examples of past people of faith.  The writer helps us to remember that the Christian life is a long-distance race rather than a short sprint and that we need to be encouraged by the lives of those who have struggled with faith prior to us in order to keep faithfully running.  This is the first part of having a properly focused faith.

But even more important to remember in terms of focus is that the writer of Hebrews tells us to fix our eyes on Jesus.  Since Christ is both the start and the finish of our faith-race, weariness and discouragement can be overcome by properly fixing our eyes on him.  Just as a runner who looks at his feet, we will surely stumble if we look at ourselves or our circumstances.

I hope these verses encourage you to keep your focus on the right things and to not allow your faith to waver because of what you encounter in life.  Life is always changing, but Jesus never does; and keeping our eyes focused on him affects how we look at everything else.    

First Post!

Today is my birthday – a day each year when I have the opportunity to celebrate, to think about the past year, and to look ahead to more years in the future.  So this seems like the perfect day to begin this weekly blog about the life of faith – a journey that also celebrates, remembers the past, and moves toward the future as God reveals it each day.

Faith is an interesting thing.  Everyone has faith in something – either God, themselves, other people they are in relationships with, the law of gravity, the laws of nature, etc.  Faith seems to be hard-wired into each of us, but faith in God is not something we can give to someone else or cause to happen in ourselves.  That’s because the Bible makes it clear that God is the source of faith, and faith is his gift to us (Ephesians 2:8-9).  He has begun a work of faith in each of us and has every intention of completing that work: “. . . being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion . . .” (Philippians 1:6).

The interesting thing about faith is that, even though it is a work begun by God, we can’t just sit back and expect him to do all the work to make it grow.  As Philippians 2:12-13 tell us, faith involves us working out our salvation as God works in us: “Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear.  For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.”  We can’t make our faith grow without God’s help and power, and he has chosen to limit his ability to work in us to include our effort in the process.  That’s because God is all about relationship – and faith is a relationship with the sovereign Creator of the universe.

Here’s the thing, though, about relationships: no two look exactly alike.  Although grounded in the same truths, my faith will look different than your faith.  I have found that God teaches us different parts of himself at different times and in different ways.  What our faith looks like at any given moment directly relates to what God is teaching us through our experiences and his Word.  Faith is a lifelong journey, and everyone is on a slightly different path.  That’s why I believe that faith is not always simple and not always a foregone conclusion, no matter how long we walk with God.  Working out our faith on a daily basis may sometimes involve questioning and struggling along the way, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re not on track with God.  The struggle may be God-ordained to help us grow a little more in our faith.

So the question on my birthday is this: are there faith milestones to celebrate from this past year?  Have I learned how to trust God more because of how I followed him during the year?  And am I ready to move into the next year with confidence that God will continue to reveal the best path for me to grow in my faith as he keeps carrying on the good work he began in me?  May I continue to be found worthy, and to God alone be the glory!