It's There for the Taking

Grace, I just don't deserve it.
Never have, and never will.
But it's there for the taking - always.

Titus 2:11-13 Active Grace

The verses we are using for our conference are:

Titus 2:11-13
For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope - the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.


So this grace that is freely given by God and sets us free also disciplines us. So if you are inclined to holiness or some godly act is that grace leading you?

Accepting Grace

"God gives where He finds empty hands. A person whose hands are full of parcels can't receive a gift." ~St. Augustine

Grace in other words, must be received. ~Yancy

The Boot and the Cross

The story is told, by celebrated Japanese author Shusako Endo, of a horrific persecution which all but eliminated Christian faith in Japan in the late 16th century.
The church in Japan was estimated to be over 1/4 million at this time. The Shogun decided that the growing movement was a threat from the west against Japan so they set out to destroy the church which was being nurtured by Portugese missionaries.
Many missionaries and disciples were arrested and told to deny the faith or face a brutal death. Silence is the story of one such Missionary who faced this dilemma with a slight twist. Though willing to die himself, he was not prepared for the torturous deaths which faced the people he had come to know in the village. He was not going to be killed but in darkness he listened to the pain and groans of many others being tortured to death.
He was told that all he needed to do was to trample on a medallion of the virgin Mary and Child which would represent his apostasy, the turning away from his Lord and Savior. So much pain, so much hurt, so many dying, he continued to cry out to Jesus for an answer to his prayers. "Silence" (the name of the book) was the only thing he heard.
Finally, broken and sorrowful, he decided he publicly would trample the "fume". As he lifted his foot to do what he never imagined, symbolically grinding away at the face he so dearly loved, Jesus breaks the silence, speaking from the medallion. "Trample, Trample," Jesus said, "for this is the reason I came into this world, to be a ransom for many...Trample!"
This is not a story of triumphalism. This is a story of grace... scandalous grace which challenges us to see, once again, the story is about Christ, not about us. I would love to think I would stand firm but, more foundationally, I need to know that God’s grace is far more dependable than my supposed courage, no matter how fueled by devotion. We have not really known God’s grace until we have been offended by that grace.
Peace

Who Deserves Grace?

Who deserves GRACE? Are these people in the pictures outside the bounds of grace and salvation or are they given the same FREE GRACE that someone else does? What makes someone in the bounds of grace? Is there a certain "goodness" that someone has to have? Or is grace just given- as an offering to everyone? What do you think?

God Looking for Us?

"So long as we imagine it is we who have to look for God, we must often lose heart. But it is the other way about - God is looking for us." Simon Tugwell

Is this another way to discribe grace, God looking for us?

Forgiveness & Grace

"To forgive is to blame," says Miroslav Volf in his treatise on Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace. The ongoing battle between grace and justice can become an endless cycle of ever increasing accounts of victimization and justification. "To forgive is to blame, not to punish," says Volf. "In forgiving, I absorb the injury."

Tolstoy says, "by forgiving a person one swallows evil up into oneself and thereby prevents it from going further."

I ask the question, can this be done? Maybe personally? What about entire nations and cultures? Is our quest for revenge out of our woundedness creating an endless cycle that keeps evil front and center?

Vengeance

What about vengeance? In the book What's So Amazing About Grace? by Philip Yancy, Yancy writes about the problem of revenge. Is revenge a solution? Is grace just giving someone a "get out of Jail free" card? Yancy claims that vengeance never gets what it wants. What happens instead is an escalation of pain and injury to both parties. Can revenge be a solution? Or, is grace really the only solution?

"Cheap Grace" & "Costly Grace"

"Cheap Grace" & "Costly Grace," have become pretty come terms. It was first coined by D. Bonhoeffer in the first chapter of his Cost of Discipleship. He was executed by the Nazis at the end of WWII. I thought I'd add a summary of his thoughts here.

"Cheap grace," writes Bonhoeffer, "means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything, they say, and so everything can remain as it was before....Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

"Costly grace is the hidden treasure in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has....Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because if calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of His Son: 'ye were bought with a price', and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon His Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered Him up for us, Costly grace is the Incarnation of God."

To read more of this chapter you can go to the link below.

http://www.presenttruthmag.com/archive/XIII/13-3.htm

Grace & God

Two quick thoughts, and I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.

If I don't understand grace, I can't understand God.

And...

Now that I got grace,,, what do I do with it?

So What About Justice?

So what about justice?

Is it fair that someone who murders or rapes a family member of mine is extended grace? I’m just suppose to forgive and forget? Are we saying you should continue to live in an abusive situation and turn the other cheek? It doesn’t seem fair and it doesn’t seem right.

I was thinking about this earlier in the day and trying to answer my own questions.

I was just reading The Prophetic Imagination, and stumbled across this.
"I am aware that this runs dangerously close to passivity, as trust often does, and that it stands at the brink of cheap grace, as grace must always do. But that risk must be run because exiles must always learn that our hope is never generated among us but always given to us. And whenever it is given we are amazed."

So the quote doesn’t directly answer my questions. But it’s a start and it reminds me that this grace stuff is not always easy to understand or apply at least not for me anyway.

Law of Grace

Often when I look to God and to life I feel unworthy, condemned, and confused. If there is an all-powerful God then I am unworthy of it. If there is a law that says what is right and what is wrong, then I am condemned because of it. In the end I am left confused about what all this love is about God. God however does not operate on the law alone, but has fulfilled it with the law of grace. Thinking under this law, no longer am I condemned, but have life because of the love of God.

Loved anyway

Again, from Philip Yancey's book.
The chapter is title "An Unnatural Act"
"The Gospel of grace begins and ends with forgiveness."

and from the story he tells about Will Campbell. Will sums up Christianity,
"We're all bastar** but God loves us anyway."

Living Grace Everyday

All my life is built against understanding, accepting grace. I work so I can eat, I study to show myself approved, I’m frugal to weather financial storms. You get what you pay for. There is no such thing as a free lunch. And I try to organize my life around this stuff.

And then I am told that I am freely accepted by God, not based on merit but on grace. It’s hard to fit that into my life. Well, so I believe it a little because I feel deep inside me there must be at least some small thing that is wrong with me so grace can cover that. And then there are moments when I realize and I’m overwhelmed with the depth of my own evil. But there is still a big piece of me that wants to think mostly I earned God’s acceptance. And that you have to earn it too. It’s hard to wrestle that thought out of my mind. (And it’s hard to just accept an unearned gift. But that’s the other side of the coin for another blog.)

So I slip into a line of thinking that has me believing I am "saved" by grace, and that takes care of the "eternity" question, the big question. And this is a huge issue, what happens in eternity, and I can understand why grace is needed here. I can hardly get my mind around the idea of eternity yet alone think I can earn my way to good standing forever, so surely I will grab onto grace here. But that too is a problem, grace is so wrapped up in salvation and eternity that I begin to see it as a one shot deal. Once I accept grace for that issue it's settled I then move back to living by merit like the rest of society. And grace has no impact on my day to day life.

But I don’t think grace was meant to be a one shot deal. I think maybe it was meant to help me unclinch my hands. To see that my foundation is all wrong. That I am to live generously like God, daily.

But I’m still thinking about that and this post is too long already.

Is Grace Like the LOTTERY?

Is Grace LIKE THE LOTTERY,
you’re the recipient of a great prize due to no effort of your own?

I don’t like that comparison, it grates against me. Maybe because only one person wins big in the lottery. Maybe I’m jealous because I haven’t won. Maybe because it is so arbitrary.

With grace everybody wins.

So it is a shallow comparison, right. But there is still at the root a connection. You basically get something for free. And that’s what really still grates against my sense of fairness.

Think about that parable of Jesus. I work a long 12 hour day and the guy who only works for 1 hour gets paid the same as me. Am I suppose to be happy for him? It’s just not fair.

Judging Other Christians (Where is Grace in all this?)

Is it easier to judge than to give grace?

Christian on Christian violence
How often do Christians point the finger in blame at one another? As Christians when we look at the standards of other Christians we expect them to be perfect and expect them to be better than non-Christians. This does two things. It degrads non-Christians and their worth as children of God. It also, makes us judgers of other Christians. So, when another Christian sins and fails we do not give them grace.

Grace ... it's not just for beginners.

Grace ... it's not just for beginners.

I saw this quote somewhere yesterday and have been thinking about it off and on. I wonder if this is part of our problem as a church. We don't see grace as an ongoing experience that we both recieve and act upon. But rather it is so tied to the concept of salvation that we don't look for it beyond that experience. Sometimes I'll acknowledge it in small things of life, a smile , a kind word, a short line when I'm in a hurry, or not. I don't want to dismiss these, but somehow I can easily miss grace or don't anticipate it in the boarder world.

P. Yancey in his book said as he talked to people about church, no one, not one, talked about church as being a place of grace. Isn't that sad, maybe worse isn't that condemnation of us?

Opportunity

What are some everyday opportunities for grace?

What does it look like?
Do we show grace?
Do others show grace to us?
What does it look like?

Is Grace Overwhelming?

OK, still another thought from Yancey's book on grace.
"God loves us because of who he is and because of who we are."
I'll probably be adding a few more of these quotes as I work through the book.

I'm finding out like Yancey did that it is difficult to come up with a brief, powerful, definition of grace. Unmerited favor is brief and even accurate definition but it doesn't come close to giving me the sense of the overpowering nature of grace.

And I wonder what a day or a week would look like if I purposefully lived and shared grace. It's funny I'm not sure how I would even start to go about doing that. How would my day change, my interactions with people, my prayers, etc. And then I wonder as a long time follower of Jesus am I subconsciously, at least in part, living in and through grace already? I like to think so. But I think I have a long way to go.

And if grace is as I believe, overwhelming if not overpowering, shouldn't I almost feel it cruising through my veins. But gratitude, forgiveness, generousity are not easy parts of my being.

Philip Yancey Quotes

OK two quotes off the jacket of Philip Yancey's book What's so Amazing About Grace. "There is nothing we can do to make God love us more. There is nothing we can do to make God love us less." And "We speak of grace often, do we truly believe in it ... and do our lives proclaim it as powerfully as our words?" Take either quote and spend tomorrow thinking about it.

A Story of Grace

I met a man in China who spent 25 or so years inprison because of his faith, being beaten almost daily. He continued to show love for his tormentors though and many of them came to know Christ through his care for them. He has been released now and is in his 70s. He is still involved in the underground church and threatened by the police to stop or they will put him back. He won't though and is giving his all for Christ. Grace in reaching out to his tormentors. Shannon sent me this story

A Piece of God

I read a sermon on grace this morning, nothing particularly profound. But the thought struck me, and it's not particularly profound either, that God doesn't just accept me into heaven, God accepts me. A simple thought but a piece of God's grace I'll be thinking about all day.

Meet the C.U.R.E. Team

Forrest, Tom, Pete, Derrick, & Russ

Who Receives Grace?

Who's receiving grace if you were to help this poor person? You or the poor?

To give or recieve?

Is it easier to give or recieve grace?

What do you think & why?

What IS Grace?

Here's a quick summary of grace & justice, just in case you don't want to read the previous blog.

Justice = Getting what I deserve
Mercy = Not getting what I deserve
Grace = Getting what I don't deserve

Understanding Grace

Here's a summary of the concept of Grace from Wikipedia In Western Christianity, and especially in the view of the Catholic Church, grace is God’s benevolence toward humanity. The essence of grace is that it is a freely offered gift. We do not earn or deserve or merit grace. We cannot claim it as our right. Grace in general, is a supernatural gift of God to humanity and angels for their eternal salvation. Eternal salvation itself consists in heavenly bliss resulting from being in the presence of God. Christian grace is a fundamental idea of the Christian religion, the pillar on which, by a special ordination of God, the edifice of Christianity rests in its entirety. Among the three fundamental ideas -- sin, redemption, and grace -- grace plays the part of the means, indispensable and Divinely ordained, to effect the redemption from sin through Christ and to lead men to their eternal destiny in heaven.
First and foremost, grace is God’s supernatural gift of all that we need to reach eternal salvation, including sanctifying grace, the infused virtues, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and actual grace, all of which we need to be in the Divine prescience. Second, grace includes miraculous gifts of healing or prophecy. Grace is divided into two forms, Actual Grace and Sanctifying Grace.
Actual Grace is God’s temporary enlightenment of our mind or strengthening of our will to perform supernatural actions that help us obtain, retain, or grow in sanctifying grace. Sanctifying grace is a supernatural state of being infused by God into our soul that gives us participation in the divine life. The participation in the divine life is the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.
Sanctifying grace is a permanent part of our soul as long as we cooperate with its beatific effects. When we have sanctifying grace in our soul we are said to be in the state of grace. When we commit a mortal sin, the Holy Spirit departs from us and we lose our sanctifying grace. Sanctifying grace is sometimes called habitual grace or justifying grace. There is a whole lot more at their web site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_grace t

What does this picture mean to you?

Does this picture bring to mind any ideas or thoughts of Grace?

Check out the Grace for Life Blog!

"Slaying the Dragon of Legalism. Because Grace Didn't End With Salvation." This is the tag line off the Grace for Life Blog. I like it. If you have the time and inclination Terry has some interesting thoughts. http://www.graceforlife.com/

Grace in the classroom

OK, here's a simple story of a teacher learning grace in the classroom.
http://missmark.stlouisblogs.org/archives/000986.html

How can grace be scandalous?

How can grace be scandalous - isn't it sort of a religious word?

Simple story about Grace

OK in addition to picutes of Jesus on the cross, does anyone have any suggestions of contemporary pictures that would express the idea of grace?

Grace

OK, as we plan for this conference the 2 questions that keep going through my head:
How do you teach grace to teen agers? And...
Do you have to teach the law before you teach grace?

Anyone have any thoughts?

tom

What does it mean to be Scandelized by Grace?

Is it only the heavy boot of “godless culture” that does harm to the cross?

How about the boot of selfishness?
How about the boot of greed?
How about the boot of self justification?
How about the boot of hate?
How about the boot of selfish love?
How about the boot of self preservation?

Can any of these boots do damage to a cross of death? The death of Jesus?

You have not tasted the grace of God unless you have been offended by that grace.
As you experience God’s grace, God wants others to experience that grace through you.

“For the grace of God that saves us is experienced by everyone. It teaches us to deny selfishness and lust so that we might live righteously in this present world, looking forward to the time when Christ will appear and establish His Kingdom forever.”

The cross looks like weakness and death yet is the source of Glory and Hope for us all.It is the power of God.

Cure Winter Conference 2006

December 27-30, 2006
Clarion Hotel, Davenport, Iowa

www.cureconsulting.org