oh grace.

"I don't forgive you because you've forgiven me, I forgive you because Christ's forgiven me."
Those words were spoken at the end of a heavy conversation between me and my best friend today.
I felt there weight when they were spoken.
Those words hold a powerful truth,
I in myself do not have an ounce of grace to extend. My heart cries out for justice,
I want payment, I want revenge, I want resolve. In my heart I want closure, I want what I deserve to get. Grace is surrendering all that and offering out love instead of anger, love instead of bitterness, love instead of hatred, love instead of violence.

My heart is incapable of grace on its own,
It is an depleted storage of love when it's not being filled up by another. So how could I love on my own when I do not receive love from another. I simply can't give what I'm not receiving. But the joy is that although I'm not receiving love from a horizontal source I can receive it from a vertical one.

With God as my source, my love storage is no longer depleted but at capacity. With the love of others it overflows, but when that love ceases to flow, I know that I remain satisfied in the love I know through Christ.

It is then that I can expend grace.    

The Art of Need &The Disease of Sufficiency

Let’s face it, we hate needing anything. From as early as we develop our ability to do something on our own, we often hate depending on others to help us. I remember quite clearly wanted to button up my own jacket, tie my own shoes, often revolting in my childish protest of “I can do it myself!” How about the times I couldn’t do it myself, the times I failed? Well, it would be a humbling moment where I would sheepishly swallow my pride and in defeat ask “can you help me with this?” The funny thing is we often would like to think we have outgrown such childish tendencies, but have we really? I think we let people help us out of kindness often. We don’t mind letting people help us when we know we could probably get along without them, we give them an opportunity to bless us because we know it feels good to help people, but we hate the feeling of need. When we need someone else, truly and desperately, we feel embarrassed. We hate needing anyone.  But the reality is, need is a beautiful thing.  Only in need are we truly vulnerable, truly bare. Only in need can we truly love. Think of the love that exists between a child and parents, the need of a frightened child to return to the arms of his parents, that’s ‘Need-Love’.  C.S. Lewis describes Need-Love as essential, that in reality we all need one another, we are created to be in relationship after all. He continues to describe that failure to see our need for ‘Need- Love’ and  the misleading feeling that we are not in need of anyone as a “bad spiritual symptom; just as lack of appetite is a bad medical symptom because men do really need food.”  We are not sufficient on our own, but man do we love to act like we are. Often times we approach God in the same manner, we position our lives so we don’t really need God, cause heaven forbid we would ever be in a place where we needed to depend on God daily, right? Yeah that was sarcastic, but seriously, I find that I do that in my life often. I often pray selfish prayers where I want God to give me answers, like a road map or a 5 year plan so that I won’t need him.  Because if we’re honest with ourselves the idea of stepping out day by day, relying on him moment by moment is terrifying, but beautiful at the same time.  Needing God is a beautiful thing, when we need Him we run to Him, we cling to Him and we are in that moment able to abide in Him, just like a frightened child. C.S. Lewis continues to say that: “Man approaches God most nearly when he is in one sense least like God. For what can be more unlike than fullness and need, sovereignty and humility, righteousness and penitence, limitless power and a cry for help?” I can look back on my life and see the moments I needed God the most, the moments I approached his throne as a humbled beggar, the moments I fell on my knees and cried out desperately to Him, were the moments I found myself nearest to His heart, most satisfied in Him. God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him, but we will never be satisfied in Him if we think or we act like we can be satisfied without Him. If we build our lives, our families, our ministries and our churches, in such a way where we are sufficient and seem to lack nothing, we are bringing on disease to ourselves. We must recognize the gravity of this. As foolish as a patient with chronic heart condition who fails to see a need for daily treatment, are we when we fail to see our hearts’ spiritual chronic condition and seek its treatment. The result is deadly in both, arguably more for the latter. We must see our need.  Our hearts need daily treatment, they are desperately sick yet tragically too proud to admit it. Our need for God, like a child’s need for their parent doesn’t center around the good of the parent, but rather that of the child; drawing nearer to God results in our ultimate good. The truth is we desperately need God; so we need to stop trying to get our lives, our families, our ministries, our churches, to a place where we don’t. We need to stop seeing God showing up as a bonus and see it for what it is, Essential.

Therefore, brothers,since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus,by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.

Hebrews 10: 19 -23

The Shore of Promises

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

-  robert frost, the road not taken

Far too often do our lips trace words reflecting our desire for God to lead us, yet our hearts are merely conditionally on board. If we were honest with ourselves, our prayers would sound like this: “Lord lead me, and I will follow you, as long as it’s where I want to go.” Truthfully, when the Lord leads us in an uncomfortable direction, we often ignore His guidance and continue onwards towards our desired path. This often is a huge mistake because God’s plans are greater than our own, His ways and His timing are far more superior to ours and so when we take the route of disobedience we are essentially making the inferior choice whether or not it is evident to us at that very moment. God repeatedly lead His people to places they do not want to go - take Abraham standing in front of an altar sacrificing his son Isaac, or Joseph in an Egyptian jail cell after being wrongly convicted - we do not always understand why God places us where He does. But the beautiful thing is we do not have to understand why He is leading us there, to trust Him. God has good things in store for His children, and likewise God promised good things to Abraham and Joseph as well. God promised Abraham that he would have descendants more numerous than the stars and God promised Joseph through his dreams that he would one day rule over his brothers. I can imagine that while Abraham was at the altar, ready to sacrifice his only blood heir, he was starting to doubt how God would fulfill His promise. Nonetheless, he was obedient and through that, the Lord spared Isaac’s life and made him the father of a great nation. Joseph, I can assume, may have been reconsidering the validity of his dreams as he found himself in prison for years and a slave rather than a ruler, but God made a way for his dreams to hold true. Joseph would become second in command in the Nation of Egypt and would save the nation from famine. All this to say, God has really been teaching me to follow Him in all seasons, especially when He leads me somewhere I do not want to go.

In the New Testament, Jesus, the Son of God, continues this pattern for those who would follow Him. The story of the rich young ruler concludes in a way that makes me cringe each time I imagine myself in the position of this eager, successful, twenty-something young man, brimming with enthusiasm. “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” What an honorable request. It begins safe, with a collection of commandments posed as a measuring stick for righteousness, but then Jesus looks at him with love, “One thing you lack, sell everything you have and give it to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven, and come follow me.” In love, Jesus told him to trade his tarnishing pursuits for eternal possessions, in love Jesus invited him into the relationship he was created for, in love He instructed him to remove every hindrance to that pursuit. But, it didn’t make sense, it wasn’t what he wanted to hear. In love, the young man went away sad; love, not for Jesus, not even for himself, but love for the fading standard of the world. This story, unlike the two previous examples, sketches out a path of disobedience – that we loose out when we choose the road more traveled by.

  Recently God placed a really precious gift in my hands. It was a gift He had promised yet it was much better than I had ever expected that I would one day behold. The gift was more than I could have asked for and it warmed my heart in a way which words fail to express. This was a gift I had been waiting for, a gift God had promised, but soon after it was placed in my hands, God was leading me to put it down, and I did not want to. It did not make sense to me as to how God would fulfill His promise of giving me this gift if He wanted me to put it down, it seemed counter-intuitive, but so does sacrificing your heir, being locked up in prison, and selling all of your possessions. But this is what I trust; I trust that God’s plans are not our plans, and He is able to fulfill promises He makes even if where He is leading us seems to suggest otherwise. He is far above our frame of reference; He is able to weave together circumstances in a way that beautifully fulfills His promises in a way that is most glorifying to Him. This is where my hope lies, that in the calm and in the storm, I will follow Him and He will lead me to the shore of His promises.

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28