Life Of A Christian

In our first installment on grace we talked about the aspect of surrender as it pertains to grace. We also touched on a common verse as it pertains to grace in which the apostle Paul talked about working out our grace daily. I think that we have only scratched the surface on the depth of that verse though I am sure that we will getting to know more about what I think it means. There are literally thousands of books written on the subject of grace and yet there appears to be this struggle to truly understand it. I think that truly understanding grace is a spiritual exercise in which arrival at a destination should not be the goal as much as maintaining a direction of movement. Surrender, as we talked about last time, I think is the cornerstone. There has to be a level of acceptance and in conjunction a giving of ourselves for grace to take hold and grow. As our key verse implies, the depth of grace and it’s effect in our lives is something that grows and I believe will continue to grow forever. The Lord tells us that even in eternity we will forever know Him more and yet never fully know Him. I think that this expresses the depth of God and in turn His grace.

I think the reason that there has been so many books written about grace is it’s depth and the difficulty to put it into a box and put a bow on it. Since I believe grace to be a fluid process I think that part of the struggle to understand it is the human finite mind wanting to quantify a concept that is not quantifiable. I don’t think that the fact that it is so deep exonerates us from trying to understand it as much as possible though. On that journey I want to do my best to discuss the many aspects of grace specifically areas with which I think we tend to struggle most. We already talked about surrender. Today I want to talk about forgiveness. Let me first say that none of these aspects operate in a vacuum or independently. I think that as we develop in one area of grace there has to be impact in other areas. I think that this can cause what appears to be regression of growth sometimes as we strive to fit the various aspects of grace together as growth in one area impacts another area and our thought of it.

Forgiveness is a delicate subject. Someone once said that everyone wants forgiveness for ourselves and justice for others. Unfortunately, I do not think that this viewpoint will work. Jesus told us to forgive others as we have been forgiven. Easier said than done. To start down the path of considering forgiveness we first have to delineate what it is and define what it looks like in a particular circumstance. Forgiveness is the alleviation of the burden for an action or other transgression. I think that this is one of the issues people have with giving forgiveness and believe it or not receiving it also. If we are giving it we have to give up the right to revenge and in many cases the right for justice. Biblically, the forgiveness offered to us by the death of Jesus on the cross exonerates us of any burden for our sin. We are called to do the same for our fellow human beings. A tall task. Some people say I will forgive, but I will never forget. Within the context of grace I am not sure that this concept will work. I understand that trust is earned over time and appears to be a totally different discussion than grace, but we can forgive and over time even forget.

Giving forgiveness is something that I think can only truly be done within the context of the supernatural power of God. I believe that His Spirit must guide us in this process. Giving forgiveness applies to others and ourselves. In other words, unless we have accepted forgiveness and are doing that at a deeper level continuously for ourselves we will struggle to be forgiving. This is much more difficult than it would appear. Just like surrender, it is easy for many to understand the concept of forgiveness and our sins being cast as far as the east from the west and God choosing to remember them no more, but it is an entirely different thing to accept forgiveness deep in our soul and realize that we are clean, white as snow, just as if we had not sinned at all. Even with ourselves we tend to forgive but not forget. Now, I believe that we cheapen grace when we arbitrarily sin without thought of the consequence and sight grace as an excuse for us to sin as opposed to a cure from it, but we must understand that we do sin and sometimes we have areas of repeated sin in our lives that we are struggling to overcome. The difference to me is always direction and attitude. Forgiveness and an attitude that chooses to accept it and give it rely on a deeper relationship with God and understanding of grace. As we forgive more our relationship with Him grows and as our relationship with Him grows forgiveness becomes deeper. This is a key aspect to deepening and working out our grace daily.

I get to meet people every day and many of them are Christians struggling with daily living. Many of them struggle with the basic truths of the faith and some struggle in applying those truths. I think some of the issues that people have are because the enemy is good at using the culture to cloud God’s truth from the minds of people and create ambiguity as it pertains to what to believe and then, as a result, how to live. But then, there is another group of people that are strong in the truth and whether they are new Christians, young Christians or people still seeking they share one common issue. The issue is believing that grace exists and the extent of it. I think that it is easy to intellectually ponder and even accept the thought of unconditional love, the forgiveness of sins and eternal destiny determined by the atoning act of Jesus, our savior, but then to have difficulty actually letting the heart embrace it.

Grace is an endless well of unmerited favor that all people have access to and that can create peace, but there is a level of interaction with it that is required to truly accept it and have it make a difference. Some people say they accept it, but all they really are doing is understanding the idea of grace, but not truly engaging in it. The apostle Paul talked about working out our grace daily and a lot of people have given their opinion of what that means, but I am saying that this is what it means. It’s not at all about an intellectual understanding of it, but a deep impression that gets deeper like the pounding of a die on the casting of our heart. It’s not new information just old information that is proven to be true over and over and over again.

The question at hand is how do we do it? How do we let go of what we want and what we are doing now and embrace grace? The answer to that is simple, but not easy. We have to surrender our will and then embrace the heart and will of God. Again, simple in concept, but extremely hard sometimes in practice. I think about the concept of surrender and I think about the thought of a general who gets to that place where they are not going to win and the only option is to surrender or perish. I think that this is the crux of accepting grace. We must surrender or perish. Funny thing is, some generals would rather perish than surrender and they profess some level of honor in doing that. I think that Christians can sometimes do the same thing and  would rather perish at some level than surrender.

I know this analogy is not perfect when it comes to grace, but I hope it gets the point across because it would be ridiculous to compare the loving God of the universe who has only the best interest at heart of all humanity to a general who is engaging in battle with an enemy who only wants to destroy them. But, is it a bad analogy? I think that sometimes we see the hand of God as somehow being a tyrant who just wants to control and take over the turf of our heart and we rebel with some warped sense of honor and fall on our own sword rather than surrender. I am finding more and more this issue to be an issue of the will and I get that it’s hard and our sin nature and maybe our experience tells us to never give up total control. Some people give up some, some people give up a lot, but I think we all have those strongholds in our life that we are not giving up. Again, this is what Paul was talking about when he said to work out our grace daily.

I don’t think that God is unreasonable in this area either. I think God would love for all of us to surrender one hundred percent of our souls and our will at one time and merge our life with His will. Reality is that is probably not going to happen. We all embrace God’s grace at different rates and at different times. The issue is not how fast and how much, but whether it is going on. Are we on the path of grace and growing in it? Sometimes, we are for a while and sometimes we struggle and sometimes we even stop or regress. The wonderful part about grace is that God is just waiting for surrender, any surrender at any time. Surrender means that He has our attention and that is the cornerstone of grace. More to come.

I have seen more and more of the COEXIST bumper stickers out there lately and I have a lot of skepticism about what that exactly means. There is a cynical side of me that believes it to be a liberal effort to suppress the Christian message and advance the new age view that there are many gods and that they are all relevant and have their place in one cosmic realm. Actually, that is not my cynical side, it is what I believe with all my heart. This is exactly the message that the coexist movement is proposing. When you get specific with the people that are pushing for unity among the religions of the world the only religion that is asked to make concessions in the basic tenants of it’s faith is the Christian faith. No other religion has to change any part of their beliefs because the beliefs of other religions are not a threat to the method of interaction with the particular god of their religion except Christianity.

All other religions of the world have one common thread and they are able to unite in that similarity. The common thread is that they all have devised a manner by which the human can control his destiny and therefore control his god. Christianity is the only religion with a contrary view. Our God, the one true God, has done all the work for our redemption, sanctification and assurance of our eternal destiny. Humans only participate in this process in that we accept the free gift that God has made available to us. And even in that, He draws us to Himself. All other religions of the world do not have to compromise anything to coexist because they unite under the banner of tolerance because they have common ground under the premise that they are all striving for the same goal and they are just choosing separate paths to get there.

Christianity has to compromise every basic belief it has to coexist with the other religions by the definition of coexisting that they have established. So with that in mind, what do we do with the concept of coexist? On the surface, coexisting doesn’t sound like an evil concept, but it is indicative of what is going on in the world culture and this movement to blur the lines as much as possible in respect to religion and ultimately undermine and minimize the Christian message. Slowly but surely the edge is being taken off the gospel message and the problem is that the undermining is being done from within the Christian faith as the church strives to be more relevant and modern. I believe that we have to coexist in that the Bible tells us to be in the world, but I think that we have to draw the line at anything that makes us of the world. This may be a hard thing to do but we must not allow the primary beliefs of our faith to be eroded in an attempt to unite. Coexist an alluring message and one similar to the one God stopped when he confused language as a result of the tower of Babel.

Christianity is the only religion that is described as exclusive and intolerant by it’s detractors. All of the other religions and their views are accepted as just that, their views. Only Christianity and the gospel message are seen as some form of threat to the lives of people of the world. People are martyred all over the world for religion every day, but only one faith is attacked so vehemently and that is Christianity. It scares people like no other faith and the liberal message has always been that Christians need to couch their message and not be so exclusive and intolerant. I think that Christians can coexist in this world as long as the message is communicated that there will not be coexisting going on in the afterlife. A side and a destiny must be chosen and it is determined by our allegiance in this world. Every knee will someday bow, but only the knee that bows now will be recognized at the judgement seat. I think that we have to communicate a clear message that we will all coexist for eternity somewhere and we have to choose now where that will be..

Christians are sometimes not seen as the most kind, loving and compassionate people by non Christians. I know that some of that is inherent as Jesus told us that the world would hate us because they hated Him. The origin of the hate that Jesus talked about comes from a clash of world views and the natural bent of Satan to protect the realm that he was given dominion over. I don’t think that people are necessarily evil in their approach to this hatred as much as it just develops from a clash of perspectives that I touched on in my last post before this one. I also think there is a natural inclination to develop animosity towards views that are different than our own. I don’t think that our human sin nature lends itself to want to be accepting and tolerant.

With that being said, I think, as Christians, we are supposed to be different. We are not supposed to do what our emotions lead us to do and we are to be spirit led. I think that sometimes Christians think that they are being Christlike when they criticize unbelievers and an unbelieving world. It is difficult because Jesus told us to be in the world but not of it. Sometimes, it is very difficult to maintain that boundary of being in the world enough to make a difference and maintain separation from the ideals that drive it. Often, a way that we do that is to come out against lifestyle and habit that is contradictory to a Christian world view. with that we maintain that separation, but then we also loose any connection and opportunity to reach a lost world.

The problem is that it’s easy to reject the message that we are trying to share when we are not connected because it’s easy for non believers to poke holes in our character and then just label us as hypocrites. Truth be told the only difference between non Christians and Christians in many cases is destiny and while as a Christian I understand that a non believing world just sees it as off putting and exclusive. Jesus was inclusive. It is what got Him in trouble. When you break it down Jesus was crucified for challenging the beliefs of the religious leaders of the day and a main belief that he constantly challenged was that all people matter especially those that are struggling.

I believe that we can be much more effective in ministering to a lost world by not focusing on their negative behaviors, but to focus on the positive attributes of a loving God. It’s an attitude that I like to call for not against. As Christians, we spend a lot of time bringing to light the negative qualities of the world and the people that live in it. I don’t think that this is at all necessary. Everybody knows that the world is a messed up place and becoming more depraved on a daily basis. Jesus said this would happen in the end times and I believe that we are quickly approaching the end. He also said that there would be a greater gulf between ideologies in this world and I believe if the church is to remain relevant then we will have to not let that gap widen and even close it.

I think that it is hard enough to reach a lost world without alienating them and proving to them what they already think that they know. Christians are often seen as just self righteous people that don’t know how to relate to those that are struggling with sin. By the way we all struggle with sin. Some of us just have a better future as it relates to it. The issue, in my opinion, is humility and a proper understanding of grace. If we truly have a grasp on the fact that we are so undeserving of God’s favor and that He yet still loves us and has provided a way for us to be saved then we will not be condemning, but we will be compassionate to those that are condemned as we once were. We need to be for God’s love not against sinners.