Forgiveness

We've all hurt someone’s feelings and needed to ask for forgiveness. Asking for forgiveness is hard. It forces us to face our guilt and shame. Sometimes, the damage appears irreparable and forgiveness seems hopeless.

David wrote Psalm 51 as a prayer to God after he committing adultery with Bathsheba. David’s words reveal the confidence he placed in God’s grace. Imagine how hard was for David to talk to God after committing adultery. Think of the lies being whispered in David’s ears: “This time you’ve done it. God will never forgive you for that.” Yet, David’s confidence in God’s unfailing love and compassion enabled him to come to God and boldly ask for forgiveness. More than that, David confidently seeks God’s help in overcoming his sin by asking for a willing spirit and the restoration of joy.
No matter how dirty or unworthy we feel, God can use our sin to bring us to a deeper understanding of His grace and draw us closer to Him. Understanding the purchase price for our complete eternal forgiveness opens the door to be "Christlike" so that we can forgive those who may have offended us as well. Forgiveness is way cool!

Strength

Grace is simply another word for God’s tumbling, rumbling reservoir of strength and protection. It comes at us not occasionally or miserly but constantly and aggressively, wave upon wave. We’ve barely regained our balance from one breaker, and then, bam, here comes another. “Grace upon grace” (John 1:16)… We never exhaust his supply. “Stop asking so much! My grace reservoir is running dry.” Heaven knows no such words. God has enough grace to solve every dilemma you face, wipe every tear you cry, and answer every question you ask. Max Lucado

Chill

"Cease striving and know that I am God." Psalm 46:10 (NASB)

Or "Be still, and know that I am God." (NKJV)

The Hebrew word that is translated "Cease striving" or "Be still" is 'Raphah.' What a great disposition for us to have toward God. The word means:

to sink down, to sink, drop, to relax, withdraw, idle, to let drop, abandon, refrain, forsake, to let go, to refrain, let alone, to be quiet, to show oneself slack

So chill. :) Relax, give yourself some slack, let go, stop struggling, cease striving, be still, abandon yourself to God... lighten up and know Him.- Grace Roots

Grace Messes up Your Hair!

Nothing is more difficult for us to get our minds around that the unconditional grace of God.

It offends our deepest sensibilities. We are actually conditioned against unconditionality – we are told in a thousand different ways that accomplishment precedes acceptance and achievement precedes approval.

Society demands two-way love. Everything’s conditional; if you achieve only then will you receive: meaning, security, respect, love, and so on. But grace, is one-way love, “Grace is love that seeks you out when you have nothing to give in return. Grace is love coming at you that has nothing to do with you. Grace is being loved when you are unlovable.”

Like Job’s friends, we naturally conclude that good people get good stuff and bad people get bad stuff. The idea that bad people get good stuff is counter-intuitive; it seems terribly unfair and offends our sense of justice. Even those of us who have tasted the radical saving grace of God find it intuitively difficult not to put conditions on grace. The truth is that a “yes grace, but” posture is the kind of posture that perpetuates slavery in our lives and in the church.

Grace is radically unbalanced. It has no “but”; it’s unconditional, uncontrollable, unpredictable, and undomesticated. As Doug Wilson put it recently, “Grace is wild. Grace unsettles everything. Grace overflows the banks. Grace messes up your hair. Grace is not tame. In fact, unless we are making the devout nervous, we are not preaching grace as we ought.”

Grace is more important than religion. Grace is more important than healing. Grace is more important than prosperity. Grace is more important than success. Grace is more important because it gives you and I the one thing that none of those things can give any of us.....REST

“It is finished” means “I am finished.”

GRACE WRECKS THEN RESCUES
Turn to Luke 7:36-50. This is the famous account of the sinful woman (most likely a prostitute) barging into a party of religious leaders and washing the feet of Jesus with her tears of repentance. Grace wrecks then rescues...two rescues are happening in this passage: the obvious rescue of the immoral person but also the rescue of the moral person. Only in the gospel does love precede loveliness. Everywhere else loveliness precedes love.

Normally, when we think of people in need of God’s rescuing grace, we think of the unrighteous and the immoral. But, what’s fascinating is that, throughout the Bible, the immoral person gets the gospel before the moral person. It’s the prostitute who gets grace and the Pharisee who doesn’t. What we see in this story is God’s grace wrecks and then rescues, not only the promiscuous, but also the pious.

The Pharisee in this story can’t understand what Jesus is doing by allowing this woman to touch him because he assumes that God is for the clean and competent. But Jesus shows God is for the unclean and incompetent, and when measured against God’s perfect holiness, we’re all unclean and incompetent. Jesus shows the Pharisee the gospel isn't for winners, but losers. It’s for the weak and messed-up person, not the strong and mighty person. It’s not for the well-behaved, but the dead.

MORTAL NOT MORAL
Remember: Jesus came not to put into effect a moral reformation but a mortal resurrection (moral reformations can, and have, taken place throughout history without Jesus. But only Jesus can raise the dead, over and over and over again). As Gerhard Forde put it, “Christianity is not the move from vice to virtue, but rather the move from virtue to grace.”

Wrecking every religious category he had, Jesus tells the Pharisee he has a lot to learn from the prostitute, not the other way around.What we see in this story is God’s grace wrecks and then rescues, not only the promiscuous, but also the pious.

The prostitute, on the other hand, walks into a party of religious people and falls at the feet of Jesus without any care as to what others are thinking and saying. She’s at the end of herself. More than wanting to avoid an uncomfortable situation, she wanted to be clean–she needed to be forgiven. She was acutely aware of her guilt and shame. She knew she needed help. She understood that God’s grace doesn’t demand you get clean before you come to Jesus. Rather, our only hope for getting clean is to come to Jesus.

Only in the Gospel does love precede loveliness. Everywhere else loveliness precedes love.

RELEASE YOUR GUILT AND SHAME
What the Pharisee, the prostitute, and everyone in-between need to remember every day is that Christ offers forgiveness full and free from both our self-righteous goodness and our unrighteous badness. This is the hardest thing for us to believe as Christians. We think it’s a mark of spiritual maturity to hang on to our guilt and shame. We’ve strangely concluded that the worse we feel, the better we actually are. The declaration of Psalm 103:12 is the most difficult for us to grasp and embrace: “As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.” Or, as Corrie ten Boom once said, “God takes our sins—the past, present, and future—and dumps them in the sea and puts up a sign that says ‘No Fishing Allowed.’” This seems too good to be true…it can’t be that simple, that easy, that real!

God’s grace doesn’t demand you get clean before you come to Jesus. It is true! No strings attached. No but’s. No conditions. No need for balance. If you are a Christian, you are right now under the completely sufficient imputed righteousness of Christ. Your pardon is full and final. In Christ, you’re forgiven. You’re clean. 

It is finished and, for now, so am I.

Miners Keepers!

Luke 2:40 KJV
And the child grew , and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him.

John 1:17 KJV
For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.

Acts 15:11 KJV
But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved , even as they.

Romans 3:24 KJV
Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:

1 Corinthians 15:10 KJV
But by the grace of God I am what I am : and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.

2 Corinthians 9:8 KJV
And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work:

Galatians 2:21 KJV
I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.

Ephesians 1:7 KJV
In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace;

Philippians 1:7 KJV
Even as it is meet for me to think this of you all, because I have you in my heart; inasmuch as both in my bonds, and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, ye all are partakers of my grace.

Colossians 4:6 KJV
Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.

2 Thessalonians 2:16 KJV
Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God, even our Father, which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace,

1 Timothy 1:14 KJV
And the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.


2 Timothy 1:9 KJV
Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began ,

Titus 2:11 KJV
For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men,

Hebrews 13:9 KJV
Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines. For it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace; not with meats, which have not profited them that have been occupied therein .


James 4:6 KJV
But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith , God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.

1 Peter 1:13 KJV
Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober , and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ;


2 Peter 3:18 KJV
But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever . Amen.

Never Cracked or Broken

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
all the kings horses, and all the kings men
couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again.

Poor Humpty, hitting bottom, broken, and without hope, Dispite all the advances of human technology, despite the resources of all the Kings men, he remained undone, and broken forever.

The good news is that we don't have to remain like Humpty. God has restored us even though we are far more complicated and fragile. It begins with His mercy...

Psalm 23:6 "Surely goodness (grace) and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever."

We demonstrate mercy when we come to the aid of a family member or friend when they are in need. Jesus demonstrated mercy in Luke 18:35 “And it came to pass, that as he (Jesus) was come nigh unto Jericho, a certain blind man sat by the way side begging: And hearing the multitude pass by, he asked what it meant. And they told him, that Jesus of Nazareth passeth by. And he cried, saying, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me. This blind man Bartimaeus had no options available to him. He had no eye institute to look to, he had no eye specialist to prescribe some innovative course of action; He had nothing but the mercy of Jesus to cry out to. Sometimes, with all the advantages we have to us we simply have nothing that can meet our need but the mercy of God through Jesus Christ.

God supplied that mercy, that “Living Water” (John 7:37-39) in Christ not in us. Truth is, our human mercy is measurable. It has boundaries, expenses, agendas and priorities. It's true, that sometimes we simply give up on people. We reach a point where our mercy changes to suggested behavioral change for the one person who has taken to long to “get over it”. Thankfully God never ever reaches that point. Psalm 107:1 “O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever.”

It is the reality of God's mercy, found in Jesus, that brought us to accept Him as Lord of our lives. We needed forgiveness, a “do over” to repair our broken spirits. God in His mercy for all of us provided a redeemer.

The remaining process God uses to “put us back together again” is God's unmerited favor, His grace. The forever forgiveness that not only fills in the cracks but keeps everything together, amazing forgiveness that restores us when we fall, every time we fall.

We are never cracked or broken in the eyes of God because once we accept His mercy and His grace He only sees Jesus in us.

Honest and Extravagant

Grace, if nothing else, you’d think, would give us the ability to tell others we love when we’re hurting. We make the statement “What if there were a place so safe that the worst of you could be known, and you’d discover that you would not be loved less but more in the telling of it?” What if we possessed such an abundance of grace that we felt both confident in our honesty and extravagant in our love for each other. That place is in Jesus Christ.