Limping, but far more alive...

"God's grace does not mean that God benignly accepts humans in all their fallenness, forgives them, and then leaves them in that fallenness.  God is in the business not of whitewashing sins but of transforming sinners."-David Garland


The cross of grace, I have found is a heavy burden to bear and more oft than not we bear the cross of sin with joy. But where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. We are fooled into believing that the cross of grace is easy and carefree, but I can testify to the enormous weight of God grace, because in my life, where my sin was great,  God's grace was higher and longer and deeper and wider than my sin and I struggled under the weight of God's enormous kindness because where my sin was great, his grace was greater. I encountered God and wrestled with him, and he took away my cross of sin, replacing it with a cross that I was never meant to bear. The cross of grace. It was too good. It was a cross that ransomed me from the throws of death and hell. It was a cross that bore witness to God's forgiveness and unfailing love. Here's my encouragement to you: Wrestle with his grace. Trust me, it's okay to struggle with it. It is only natural to fight against it because grace is so unnatural to us. Even if you come away from your life changing experience with his grace and you are beaten and battered and limping, you will be stronger because where our sin is great, God's grace is greater. It is not a pretty fight and we are bound to come out bloodied and battered and limping but we are far more alive afterward than we were before we began.  

Psalm 137

Psalm 137
  By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
       when we remembered Zion.
  There on the poplars
       we hung our harps,
  for there our captors asked us for songs,
       our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
       they said, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"
  How can we sing the songs of the LORD
       while in a foreign land?
  If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
       may my right hand forget its skill .
  May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
       if I do not remember you,
       if I do not consider Jerusalem
       my highest joy.
  Remember, O LORD, what the Edomites did
       on the day Jerusalem fell.
       "Tear it down," they cried,
       "tear it down to its foundations!"
 O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
       happy is he who repays you
       for what you have done to us-
  he who seizes your infants
       and dashes them against the rocks.

God's Love Toward Us

"And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God"-Ephesians 3:17b-19

It has been a long while that have I wrestled against grace. Trying to make it to God on my own, I abandoned the concept of grace altogether and tried to make my way to heaven on my own and I tried to somehow surpass the glorious gift given to me. That did just about as much good as trying to sail a ship with no rudder and a giant gaping hole in the bulkhead. Slowly however, God has taught me to trust him and he has begun to patch the holes in my ship and I have started to, in a very minuscule way, begin to understand the grace God has given to me through his Son Jesus Christ. 

I am in the process of preparing for a weekend retreat where I have the opportunity to speak on the theme of God's glorious love toward us. I consider myself blessed to get the opportunity to preach God's word and to, over six sessions, teach out of Ephesians 3:17b-19 and other portions of scripture which portray God's love toward us. 

As I have studied this theme of God's love toward us, I have learned a considerable amount. I think however, the biggest thing I have realized however is that I am in no way capable of grasping just how deep and high and long and wide the love of Christ is for me, and that is a humbling feeling. 

For all of my striving, for all of my working, for all of my poor and feeble attempts to reach God on my own, I was failing to recognize that Jesus loved me unconditionally and without reason. That grace was mine, and that I can rest in the knowledge that he loves me more than I can fathom. 

With this, I will conclude. I was listening to a sermon recently at Camp Living Stones(http://www.camplivingstones.com/)and Jon Smeltzer, the camp pastor said something that really stuck with me and it is something that I am still working through. He said "Men and women of God are not characterized by their love for God, but by their understanding of God's love for them." I am amazed and humbled at the vastness of the depth of Christ's love for me and the grace he has given me, but each day I am striving and pushing farther up and farther in, so that I can come to a more complete understanding of God's love for me.