Why We Need Grace

"Initially, grace is the forgiveness of sin but the coastline of an ocean does not even begin to reveal its depths. Grace is coming into Jesus and then manifesting Him as you grow in His nature." (Unknown)

We need grace because

• We are Sinners (Ephesians 2:8,9).
• We are Servants (1 Corinthians 15:9,10).
• We are Stewards (2 Corinthains 8:1,2).
• We are Sufferers ( (2 Corinthians 12:7-9).
• We are Soldiers ( (2 Timothy 2:1,3).
• We are Students (Titus 2:11,12).

These take us to those ocean depths. Maybe these are the waves intimated by John when he speaks of our having received, "grace upon grace" - waves of grace (John 1:16).

In any case Peter tells us to, "Grow in grace . . ." (2 Peter 3:18), and by His grace we will.

God is God

Ask a Jamaican believer, “How are you?”and he will often say, “God is good.”

Keep in mind that many such people are impoverished, sick, or in pain. They may be homeless or hungry. Yet they say with sincerity, “God is good.”

I think this is a great testimony. It expresses biblical understanding that has been lost by many of us. In such situations, we are more likely to respond, “Why me?” or “Why would God allow this?”

Paraphrasing C. S. Lewis: The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of God who is good, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word "good"  and look on things as if man were the center of them. So think about it for a minute. When we assert God’s goodness, we are also truly affirming His “Godness.”

I have never heard a Jamaican ask: “How could a good God allow this to happen to me?” Maybe this is because they, like Lewis, know that man is not the reference point nor is he at the center of anything. God is, and we ought not diminish God with such questions. Instead, we joyfully say, “God is God.”

You have no food? God is God. You lost your job? Yes, but God is God. You are suffering? Yes. He is my God.

Make no mistake. This is not some kind of meek, fatalistic surrender to the inevitable. Rather it is strong faith, filled with positive hope for the future and readiness for present testings and coming battles. 

Like Job, having now seen Him we take back those man centered words and repent (42:5,6). When we do, then God is honored—the God who always does what is good and who delights to give good gifts to His children. (Psa. 84:11; Mt 7:11)

A "Punditocracy"? What's that?

A PUNDIT in today's western usage  is a person thought to be very well informed; an expert or authority; one who believes that everything can be known and should be pronounced upon . . . and he's the one to do the pronouncing.

We used to scorn such people as "know it alls". "Full of hot air," we said. But now we not only don't seem to mind their pontificating, we look for it. One person writes with all seriousness: "The key to a successful adult life lies in surrounding yourself with experts, a master person for every need."

Some say that we Americans live in a "punditocracy" - described as a society where we no longer have to learn or think, exert ourselves, or take risks. Life is manageable and secure to the extent that we choose the right people to give us answers to our questions. And so we are very much "pundit dependent".

Sadly, Christian workers can also be the same way. Experts and specialists keep telling us that we just can't make it without them; that we really need them if we are going to experience growth, usefulness, effectiveness, or just about anything else. They are ever ready to enlist us in a seminar, conference, or retreat, a CD or DVD series, a radio or TV program, book, journal, web site . . .

J. R. DeWitt writes: One occasionally gets the idea from some who preach and write that the whole of the Christian age awaited the advent of their ministries; that it is with them and the burden of what they have to say that the Christian faith began to make sense and to be understood in all its implications. But such an approach is entirely unacceptable, and those who speak in this way, introducing at the same time their own absurdities as though they were the gospel of our Lord Jesus, are to be reproached and their teaching repudiated.

This sounds to me like the days of the Old Testament prophets. The same kind of scenario. God's spokesmen had relinquished their ordained roles to become instead, "Pundit Prophets". They went about speaking comfortable words . . . their own ideas . . . none of it true but all of it accepted by Good's pundit-dependent people. In seeming amazement and disbelief, God asks: But who has stood in the counsel of the Lord, that he should see and hear His word? Who has given heed to His word and listened? The answer: "No one." Not the prophets. Not the priests. And certainly not the people. A few verses later: But if they had stood in my counsel and had caused my people to hear my words, then they would have turned them from their evil way and from the evil of their deeds" (Jeremiah 23:18,22).

Could it be that sometimes ineffectiveness in our spiritual walk and work is the result of this pundit dependency? Does it not come from the ridiculous expectation that worldly wisdom can produce spiritual fruit . . . Godly achievement . . . holy lives?

And so I ask myself. And I ask you. Where are we looking? To whom are we going for our answers?

The temporal satisfaction and the eternal significance of our lives depends on our answer.

It's For You To Decide

You can do what millions of others have done. You can settle down to the monotony of American life, get married, raise children, work, retire, die, and be forgotten. Or, you can become a pioneer, trail blazer, invest your life in a great adventure for God, be the first to give some unreached tribe the Gospel, and be remembered forever. 

It's for you to decide.                                               
                                                                          - author unknown

I Heard It Again

"I just admire you missionaries SO much! You give up everything to serve the Lord. I could never do something like that!"

Such a telling statement. And then in the same conversation: "How do you missionaries go to those dangerous places and terrible climates and yet work there so happily?

I'm not sure that a response will move the person who is asking off dead center or toward those places - people generally cling to their self-protective excuses - but I'll try. The big part of the answer is this : such missionaries have settled the survival question.

Those who ask these "how" and "why" questions clearly have not thought much about it, and so they think that missionaries are either super spiritual or completely crazy, while they somehow admiring them and faintly wishing that they could be like them.

Our "survival question" answer gives insight into the way Jesus lived and conducted His ministry. "Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give His life a ransom for many" (Matthew 20:28). Jesus was able to live as He lived and minister as He ministered because He had settled the survival question.

We say, "I can't live without this or that," meaning, "I could never survive without it." This just shows how deceptive has been the spirit of this age subverting what is at the essence of the Christian life. That is: Christians cannot live authentically without the cross. "Whoever does not forsake all [that everyone else is living for, longing for, and cannot do without] and take up his cross, cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:33).

To be Jesus' disciple means to be like Him in embracing the cross and in His will to sacrifice self that the Father might be glorified through the worship of those so redeemed. This means that when I no longer ask, "How am I going to survive?" I am finally free to ask, "How can I serve?" and like Jesus, I move into all of life with freedom, authority, integrity and single-minded purpose.

Someone has said, "There's something worse than dying; it's going through life with nothing to die for." But I think there's something even worse than that. It's going through life never having died! Indeed, having never died, we have nothing to die for! 

Have YOU settled the survival question? To the extent that there is any prior commitment to self, you haven't - and you will always be amazed when you see in someone else the joy and adventure of total commitment. In fact, I predict that you will always be more saddened when you realize that the person you watch with such admiration could have been you.

The only hope

Hope and Change? That has always been the promise - explicitly or implicitly. But, well, little has changed - at least for the good, and the only real hope for the church, the nation, the world is a sweeping movement of the Spirit of God. 

I am more convinced than ever that the onset and then the ongoing significance of such revival in and through any of us will be solely, "By Prayer" - Philippians 4:6.

This that you will see did seem to start with just one man. Please watch this brief clip and consider its closing question:

http://vimeo.com/54376030

Prayer Changes the Man

And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in My name, I will do it - John 14:13-14.

In all our praying, however, it is important that we keep in mind that God will not alter His eternal purposes at the word of a man. We do not pray in order to persuade God to change His mind. Prayer is not an assault upon the reluctance of God, nor an effort to secure a suspension of His will for us or for those for whom we pray. Prayer is not intended to overcome God and "move His arm." God will never be other than Himself, no matter how many people pray, nor how long nor how earnestly.

God's love desires the best for all of us, and He desires to give us the best at any cost. He will open rivers in desert places, still turbulent waves, quiet the wind, bring water from the rock, send an angel to release an apostle from prison, feed an orphanage, open a land long closed to the gospel. All these things and a thousand others He has done and will do in answer to prayer, but only because it had been His will to do it from the beginning. No one persuades Him.

What the praying man does is to bring his will into line with the will of God so God can do what He has all along been willing to do. Thus prayer changes the man and enables God to change things in answer to man's prayer. A. W. Tozer. The Price of Neglect, pp. 51-52