Grace enables vulnerable love

I was directed to this quote from a friend as we discussed relationships over breakfast. Grace enables you to take risks in love. Even though loving others will bring hurt and disappointment, God's love enables you to go there, to refuse to be self-protective.

If you are going into close relationships, be prepared to be hurt. Don’t count on [getting from them] what you should expect from God alone. If you do, your hurt will damage you permanently. If your trust is in God, you will still be hurt, because God made you with a capacity to love. That capacity includes with it the vulnerability to personal hurt. But the hurt will drive you to God—to bask in His comfort, to lean on His love.
You may continue to be sad. But you will not be broken or bitter. The most important thing about your life is still intact. You are loved by God.
Let me speak directly to you. Have you been deeply hurt? A lover has disappointed you. A person you invested much in has betrayed you. Go to Jesus. He knew what it as like to be betrayed by his close friend. Lean on Him and weep away your bitterness as you release your burdens on Him.
Jesus will not only heal you; He will draw you nearer to Himself than you ever were before. Later, when you look back at the pain, there may still be sorrow. But there will not be bitterness. Bitterness by now has been replaced by the love of God in your heart. (Ajith Fernando, Reclaiming Friendship, 67,68)

Has the Gospel Broken Through?

I have been out of town on a trip to New Mexico. While driving with a buddy, we listened to an outstanding series on Romans 1-4 by Tim Keller. I have never heard such a deeply penetrating analysis of sin and grace of the gospel. Or is I have, it didn't get through my thick skin. In the first sermon Keller quoted the text below from Martin Luther describing how the gospel "broke through."

I labored and diligently and anxiously as to how to understand Paul’s word [in Romans 1:17], where he says that the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel. I sought long and knocked anxiously for the expression “the righteousness of God” blocked the way, because I took it to mean that righteousness whereby God is righteous and deals righteously in punishing the unrighteous. …I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience, and I had no confidence that my merit would assuage him. Therefore I did not love a righteous and angry God, but rather hated and murmured against him. …Then I grasped that the righteousness of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us by faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise… When I saw the difference, that law is one thing and gospel another, I broke through. And as I had formerly hated the expression “the righteousness of God”, I now began to regard it as my dearest and most comforting word. So that this expression of Paul’s became to me in very truth a gate of paradise.

…If you have a true faith that Christ is your Saviour, then at once you have a gracious God for faith leads you in and opens up God’s heart and will that you should see pure grace and overflowing love. This it is to behold God in faith that you should look upon his fatherly friendly heart, in which there is no anger nor ungraciousness. He who sees God as angry does not see him rightly but only looks upon a curtain, as if a dark cloud had been drawn across his face.

Another Gospel Centered Song

This song is called The Solid Rock (Edward Mote, 1834):

My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness;
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.

When darkness veils His lovely face,
I rest on His unchanging grace;
In every high and stormy gale,
My anchor holds within the veil.

On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;
All other ground is sinking sand,
All other ground is sinking sand.

His oath, His covenant, His blood
Support me in the whelming flood;
When all around my soul gives way,
He then is all my hope and stay.

When He shall come with trumpet sound,
Oh, may I then in Him be found;
Dressed in His righteousness alone,
Faultless to stand before the throne.

A Gospel Centered Song

Here is Johnny Cash's Redemption (from American Recordings I)

From the hands it came down
From the side it came down
From the feet it came down
And ran to the ground
Between heaven and hell
A teardrop fell
In the deep crimson dew
The tree of life grewA
nd the blood gave life
To the branches of the tree A
nd the blood was the price
That set the captives free
And the numbers that came T
hrough the fire and the flood
Clung to the tree
And were redeemed by the blood
From the tree streamed a light
That started the fight
'Round the tree grew a vine
On whose fruit I could dine
My old friend Lucifer came
Fought to keep me in chains
But I saw through the tricks
Of six-sixty-six
And the blood gave life
To the branches of the tree
And the blood was the price
That set the captives free
And the numbers that came
Through the fire and the flood
Clung to the tree
And were redeemed by the blood
From his hands it came down
From his side it came down
From his feet it came down
And ran to the ground
And a small inner voice
Said "You do have a choice."
The vine engrafted me
And I clung to the tree

We have everything

When the Lord divided Canaan among the tribes of Israel, Levi received no share of the land. God said to him simply, `I am thy part and thine inheritance,' and by those words made him richer than all his brethren, richer than all the kings and rajas who have ever lived in the world. And there is a spiritual principle here, a principle still valid for every priest of the Most High God.
The man who has God for his treasure has all things in One. Many ordinary treasures may be denied him, or if he is allowed to have them, the enjoyment of them will be so tempered that they will never be necessary to his happiness. Or if he must see them go, one after one, he will scarcely feel a sense of loss, for having the Source of all things he has in One all satisfaction, all pleasure, all delight. Whatever he may lose he has actually lost nothing, for he now has it all in One, and he has it purely, legitimately and forever. (A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God, 19)

Jesus is More than a Model

Jesus is greatest model of how to live that there has ever been. And we should have Him as our standard of character. But beware of a moralism that simply says "try harder, be like Jesus." To be like Jesus, we need his power and his motivation. That comes from drawing near him, sitting at his feat like Mary in Luke 10:38-42.

“Biblical spirituality is participatory, not imitative. It is grounded on grace appropriated through faith, not merely obedience. Spiritual life flows out of union with Christ, not merely imitation of Christ.” (Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life, 73,74)

Living Too Fast

We have become so influenced by the fast-moving lifestyle of today that we find it difficult to slow down sufficiently to enjoy truth. The joy of truth is experienced best when we stop our feverish activity to reflect on truth, to meditate on joy. Our lives are too rushed for this.This is actually a vicious cycle. Having lost the security of being rooted in the eternal reality of the Word of God, we are looking to busy activity to fill the void that has been created in our lives. And under that bondage to activity we find it difficult to linger with the Word simply for the joy of it. In fact, we may be afraid to stop our busyness lest it expose the shallowness of our lives. So we go from activity to activity, from project to project. But activity is a dangerous source of fulfillment. Instead of finding our identity, our sense of self-worth, from our relationship with God, we begin to look to success in programs and other earthly indicators of success for our self-worth. But these will never satisfy. They will only enslave us to bondage to more activity.The result of this is burnout. The lust for success makes us so uncontrolled in our drivenness that we drive ourselves into the ground. After a time our bodies and minds say, ‘That is enough. I cannot stand it anymore.’ I think the current epidemic of burnout in the ministry is an indication of our loss of security in the Word. (Ajith Fernando, The Supremacy of Christ, p. 111)

The Prodigal God (5)

The brothers’ hearts (Luke 15), and the two ways of life they represent, are much more alike than they first appear.
What did the younger son want most in life? He wanted to make his own decisions and have unfettered control of his portion of the wealth. How did he get that? By a flagrant defiance of community standards, a declaration of complete independence.
What did the older son want? If we think about it we realize he wanted the same thing as his brother. He was just as resentful of the father as was the younger son. He, too, wanted the father’s goods rather than the father himself. However, while the younger brother went far away, the elder brothers stayed close and “never disobeyed.” That was his way to get control. His unspoken demand is, “I have never disobeyed you! Now you have to do things in my life the way I want them to be done.”
The hearts of the two brothers were the same. Both sons resented their father’s authority and sought ways to get out from under it. They each wanted to get into a position where they could tell the father what to do. Each one, in other words, rebelled—but one did so by being very bad and the other by being extremely good. Both were alienated from the father’s heart; both were lost sons… Neither son loved the father for himself. They both used him for their own self-centered ends rather than loving, enjoying, and serving him for his own sake. This means you can rebel against God and be alienated from him either by breaking his rules or by keeping them diligently.
It’s a shocking message: Careful obedience to God’s law may serve as a strategy for rebelling against God. ( Keller, The Prodigal God, 35-37)

The Prodigal God (4)

The father’s welcome of the younger son in Luke 15 demonstrates the lavish prodigality of God’s grace. Jesus shows the father pouncing on his son in love not only before he has a chance to clean up his life and evidence a change of heart, but even before he can recite his acceptance speech. Nothing, not even abject contrition, merits the favor of God. The Father’s love and acceptance are absolutely free.
But when the elder brother hears from his servants that his younger brother has retuned and has be reinstated by his father, he is furious. Now it is his turn to disgrace his father.
He refuses to go in to what is perhaps the biggest feast and public event his father has ever put on. He remains outside the door, publicly casting a vote of no-confidence in his father’s actions… He’s adding things up. “I’ve worked myself to death and earned what I’ve got, but my brother has done nothing to earn anything, indeed he’s merited only expulsion, and yet you lavish him with wealth. Where is the justice in that?”
It is not his sins that created the barrier between him and his father, it's the pride he has in his moral record; it's not his wrongdoing but his righteousness that his keeping him from sharing in the feast of his father. (Keller, 25,26, 35)

The Prodigal God (3)

Jesus’s teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones… The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message Jesus did. If our churches aren’t appealing to younger brothers, they must be more full of older brothers than we’d like to think (Keller, The Prodigal God, 15, 16)

The Prodigal God (2)

Speaking of the parable in Luke 15 of the two sons, Tim Keller writes:
Throughout the centuries, when this text is taught, the almost exclusive focus has been on how the father receives his penitent younger son… We sentimentalize this parable if we do that. The targets of this story are not “wayward sinners” but religious people who do everything the bible requires. Jesus is pleading not so much with moral outsiders as with moral insiders. He wants to show their blindness, narrowness, and self-righteousness, and how these things are destroying both their own souls and the lives of the people around them.
No, the original listeners were nor melted to tears by this story, but thunderstruck, offended, and infuriated…Through this parable Jesus challenges what nearly everyone has ever thought about God, sin, and salvation. The story reveals the destructive self-centeredness of the younger brother, but it also condemns the elder brother’s moralistic life in the strongest terms. Jesus is saying that both the religious and the irreligious are spiritually lost, both life-paths are dead ends, and that the every thought the human race has had about how to connect to God has been wrong. (Tim Keller, The Prodigal God,9-11)

The Prodigal God

I want to commend a great book to you: Tim Keller’s The Prodigal God. I will be posting some bite-sized morsels over the next week or so.
Many lifelong Christian believers feel they understand the basics of the Christian faith quite well and don’t think they need a primer. Nevertheless, one of the signs that you may not grasp the unique, radical nature of the gospel is that you area certain that you do. Sometimes longtime church members find themselves so struck by and turned around by a fresh apprehension of the Christian message that feel themselves to have been “re-converted.”(Keller, xi)
I definitely relate to that. Just over a year ago, I believed I understood grace pretty well. After to being exposed to Tim Keller’s preaching and writing I am realizing how deep my legalism is.
The Prodigal God is about the parable in Luke 15 that is really about two lost sons. While the word “prodigal” is not in the Luke 15, the parable has become known as “the parable of the Prodigal Son.” Keller clarifies the meaning of that word:
The word “prodigal” does not mean “wayward” but according to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, “recklessly spendthrift.” It means to spend until you have nothing left. The term is therefore as appropriate for describing the father in the story as it is his younger son. The father’s welcome to the repentant son was literally reckless, because he refused to “reckon” or count his sin against him or demand repayment.
Jesus is showing us the God of Great Expenditure, who is nothing if not prodigal toward us, his children. God’s reckless grace is our greatest hope, a life-changing experience, and the subject of this book. (Keller, xv)

The Gospel, Idolatry, & Love

by Gary DeLashmutt

The gospel, idolatry, and love are the central themes of Christian spirituality. The gospel is absolutely central—the gospel being all that God has given us through Jesus (e.g., adoption, justification, Holy Spirit, eternal life, etc.). From this gospel-center, two dynamic relationships form the pulse-beat of a healthy Christian life:
· The gospel and idolatry: On the one hand, the gospel is what makes us able to bear the exposure of our idolatry and depravity. Without an understanding of the gospel, we will deceive ourselves about the depth of sin in our hearts. On the other hand, only as we allow God to expose the idolatry in our hearts do we continue to be astonished by and grateful for the gospel. Otherwise, it is “old hat.” Finally, the ongoing cultivation of the gospel as our true treasure and identity is the only way to prevent sliding back into idolatry.
· The gospel and love: On the one hand, only as we continue to focus on the gospel are we motivated to truly love others freely and for God’s glory. Without this motivation, we will inevitably pervert “ministry” into a means of establishing our identity at others’ expense. On the other hand, God’s high standard of agape love reveals our depravity and drives us back to the gospel for the motivation and power to love. Any so-called focus on the gospel without giving ourselves away in love leads to spiritual self-deception and stagnation.

Many passages combine these themes and teach these different dynamic relationships:
· In Isaiah 6, Isaiah sees the holiness of God, which exposes his own depravity and convinces him that he deserves God’s judgment just as much as the people on which he just pronounced God’s judgment (Isa. 5). This leads to his deep gratitude for the forgiveness God mediates to him through the sacrificial altar. And this in turn leads Isaiah to jump at the opportunity to represent God—even when he is told that few to none will respond to his ministry.
· In Titus 2,3, the grace of God “trains” us to deny idolatrous “over-desires” (2:11,12) and motivates us to deeds of love (2:14; 3:7,8).
· In Luke 7, Jesus points to the adulterous woman’s extravagant gratitude as the proof that she has received and understands how much she has been forgiven.

Great literature and hymns illustrate and celebrate these themes.

“Take me to you, imprison me, for IExcept you enthrall me, never shall be free,Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.”(John Donne, “Batter My Heart, Three-Personed God,” early 1600’s)

“Thus might I hide my blushing face while his dear cross appears:Dissolve my heart in thankfulness, and melt mine eyes to tears.But drops of grief can ne’er repay the debt of love I owe;Here, Lord, I give myself away—‘tis all that I can do.” (Isaac Watts, “Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed,” 1707)

A Huge Carrot

Once in a kingdom long ago, a gardener grew a huge carrot, and decided to give it to his prince, because he loved his sovereign. When he gave it, the prince discerned his love and devotion, and that he expected nothing in return. So as the gardener turned to leave, he said, “Here, my son, I want to give you some of my land so you can produce an even greater crop. It is yours.” And the gardener went home rejoicing. A nobleman heard of this incident and thought, “If that is what the prince gives in response to the gift of a carrot, what would he give to me if I gave him a fine horse?” So the nobleman came and presented the prince with a fine steed as a gift. But the prince discerned his heart and said, “You expect me to give to you as I did to the gardener. I will not. You are very different. The gardener gave ME the carrot. But you were giving yourself the horse.” (from a sermon by Charles Spurgeon)

Do you serve and do good deeds so God is in your debt?

A Garden, Not A Factory

Have you ever considered the vast difference between "works" and "fruit"? "Works" suggests a factory complete with pressures, deadlines, and the constant need to produce. But "fruit" pictures a peaceful, tranquil garden, a place where we are inclined to stay and drink in the beauty while we enjoy each other's company. It's important to realize that God doesn't come to His factory looking for products. He comes to His garden to enjoy its fruit. The gospel of grace invites us to leave behind the smog and pressure of a factory-like life of works and instead bear the fruit that God desires to see in the garden of our lives.
Look at the luscious fruit hanging on a peach tree. The peaches aren't out there struggling and working day by day trying to get ripe; all they have to do is hang in there. Ripening is the natural product of relationship. As long as they are abiding, they are going to bring forth sweet fruit.
This is true of our own experience as well. If we are truly abiding in Christ - which is a position of faith - then fruit will come forth from the relationship
(Chuck Smith, Why Grace Changes Everything. To read more go to http://www3.calvarychapel.com/library/smith-chuck/books/wgce.htm#06 )