The Presence of Grace

Where would you be without God’s grace in your life?

Our pastor, Justin Curtis, asked us this question a few weeks ago.  I imagine a majority of us would say we would be without our eternal inheritance in Heaven, we would lose some of our spiritual blessings such as joy in sufferings, and we lose our forgiveness for our sins.  But how many would continue on?

Most of us tend to look at non-Christians and assume that whatever they have would be what would we have without God’s grace.  What we do not realize is that they, too, are inheritors of God’s grace and mercy in their lives.  Everything in this world, from our possessions to the very air we breathe belongs to the Creator.  It does not just become His once we trust in Him. 

I used to read the story of Job and feel like he was getting the shaft when the Lord allowed Satan to take stuff away.  Whether it was his health, his livestock, or his family, it seemed as though Job did nothing to deserve this punishment.  Yet, in reality, Job never did anything to deserve those gifts in the first place, they were merely a gift of God through His grace to Job.  In fact, Job, though he was considered a righteous man, still did more by his sinful nature to deserve the punishments more than the gifts.  He should have never had anything to take away in the first place.  Neither should we.

It is with this perspective then, that I have reflective on Justin’s question.  As I reflected on this question, the only answer I was able to keep coming back to was simply this: Hell. 

Without the Lord’s grace forgiving my sins daily, without Christ’s graceful death on the cross to forgive those sins, without the graceful presence of the Holy Spirit in my life turning me towards my need for God, I would be in Hell.  My sinfulness has deserved that and so much worse. 

Yet, offer us grace through Jesus is just what our Father did.  He sent His beloved, cherished, beautiful, perfect Son into a world to be rejected, humiliated, tortured, beaten, mocked, and crucified.  He allowed Him to be whipped, stricken, stripped, and pierced.  Then, in Christ’s greatest moment of need, God the Father abandoned him, turning away his face and removing his love, not because of what Jesus did, but because of what we did.  He experienced the absence of God’s everlasting love, so we would never have to.

He didn’t have to, but he did.

Ask most any Christian if they deserve life in prison or the electric chair and they will say no.  They would be right.  We deserve much worse.

We deserve what our Savior endured, but not just for three days.  We deserve it for eternity.  Any argument for the contrary derives from a significant lack of understanding of either God’s holiness or the depth of our sinfulness.  We deserve hell.  Anything else is grace.

It is easy to understand grace in terms of heaven, forgiveness, and mercy. These are things we want and desire, but often feel we are undeserving of. 

It is a bit harder to understand grace in terms of a house, job promotion, and food.  These are things we believe to some extent we have earned.  Yet, from time to time, the Lord humbles us to the point where we realize it is only through Him we have these possessions.

It is extremely hard to understand grace in terms of sickness, suffering, and death.  Surely if the Lord were “good” He would prevent us from experiencing these.  Yet he had Jesus endure all of these for our good.  His sacrifice made grace possible for us.  However, taking it a step further, considering we deserve hell, the fact that we should even be allowed instead to suffer in this world should be counted as a significant blessing. 

Every moment it is His grace that sustains us.  It is His grace that provides the patience to deal with our sin and the forgiveness once we repent.  It is His grace that gives and His grace that takes away.  It is His grace that loves us when we are sinful and His grace that loves us when we are faithful.  It convicts, it humbles, it loves, it hopes, it redeems.

By grace, through grace, and in grace we live.  Our circumstances do not determine whether grace is present or not.  Grace determines our circumstances. 

It is when we rest in this grace that we will be the greatest asset to His kingdom.  When we recognize our sinfulness, we will offer more grace to those who are sinful.  When we realize we have had nothing taken away that was not gracefully given to us, we will more freely give to those in need.  When we witness how Christ served us, we will gracefully serve those around us. 

Therefore, the question I leave you with is this:

What will you do with God’s grace?

Treasure Hunt

In Tales of the Hasidim, Martin Burber recounts the story of Rabbi Eisik.  Rabbi Eisik was a pious man living in the Polish town of Cracow.  He had a dream telling him to go to Prague and there under a great bridge he would find a hidden treasure.  Three nights the same dream visited Rabbi Eisik as he slept.  Finally the third morning, the rabbi determined he would make the long trip to Prague.  

Upon arriving in the capital city, Rabbi Eisik found the bridge from his dream leading to the royal castle.  Night and day it was guarded by sentries, so there was no way for him to dig.  Eventually his prowling around the bridge attracted the attention of the Captain of the Guard who went down to inquire of the good rabbi.  Rabbi Eisik told the man of the recurring dream and the treasure he was to find under that very bridge.  The Captain burst into laughter.  "You haven't worn out all that shoe leather on account of a dream, have you?


"Why, I too had a dream," he began.  "In it I was told to go to Cracow and seek out a Rabbi Eisik.  There I would find a great treasure hidden in a niche in his hearth.  But I am a practical man and put no stock in dreams."  The rabbi bowed and thanked the man.  And hurried back to Cracow.  There in his hearth he found the treasure, and it ended his poverty.  


I love this story.  It seems each time I hear it and the more I think on it, the more it has to reveal.  Doesn't it seem as though Rabbi Eisik is awfully foolish?  He takes this long trek to Prague only to find a treasure that's already right under his nose.  But then I think, would he have found the treasure without talking to the Captain?  Wasn't the dream true?  Didn't he find the treasure under the bridge in Prague?  


All are compelling questions, but perhaps not as compelling as when I turn them on myself.  What treasures am I seeking that are already in my midst?  What about you?  Are you seeking hidden treasure?  


That's the crux of it.  We are all treasure hunters in some small way.  Maybe none of us are looking to dig up a chest full of gold(though that would be a welcome surprise), but the pursuit of career success may be how you spend your resources.  Perhaps your life would be a little better if your kids were just a little better behaved.  Or the perfect spouse, better friends, a great car, a house,  an Xbox, or a million other things would make life so much more livable, right?  


What does Jesus have to say about hunting treasures?  

"Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.  Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Luke 12:32-34

The Father has given us the Kingdom.  In fact, Jesus says in Luke 17:21 "... the Kingdom of God is within you."  And yet, I rarely walk around feeling the embodiment of God's kingdom within me.  I'm willing to bet that for a lot of us the Kingdom feels a lot further away than the beating of our own hearts.  Like Rabbi Eisik, we live in the midst of an incredible treasure but fail to access it.

Earlier today, I read a post entitled Stars, Planets and the Meaningless Life by astrophysicist Adam Frank over at NPR's 13.7 blog.  In it Mr. Frank discusses finding a moment of peace and perspective at a recent astronomy conference.  When presented with the vast scale of the galaxy and the fraction of it we are able to survey, his worldly cares melted away.  Adam Frank may not use these words but I believe that he had an encounter with eternity in that conference room.

The difference is we can call this cosmic encompassing eternity by name.  We call him Jesus Christ.  Colossians 1:17 talks about Christ in this way, "He is before all things, and in him all things hold together."  Later in the letter, Paul ties Jesus to those great treasures on which we are to set our hearts.

My purpose is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.  Colossians 2:2-3 

Throughout the Bible, wisdom, knowledge, understanding, peace, joy, hope, faith, and love are lauded as worthy pursuits.  These values are described as more precious than rubies of more value than choice gold.  And Paul makes it clear that these things are hidden in Christ.  The mystery is that as we seek out him, we grow in these qualities.  Then the troubles and treasures of this world "grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace."

Seeking first the kingdom means nothing more or less than seeking out Christ himself.  Meditating on his teaching, studying the Word, living and interacting in community with other believers will manifest the Kingdom in your own heart as He is given place there.  Then you will see, the map to hidden treasure isn't marked with an X, but with a cross. 

A Call to...?

Who calls you a Christian?

I pondered this question for quite awhile as I was driving around Omaha.  I took quite a bit of time to analyze the different areas of my life and the various people I spend my time around.  The thought that kept coming up was whether these individuals would recognize me as a Christian if they only observed my actions? 

Interestingly, later on that evening I had a lady come back into Verizon with whom I had worked with previously.  She found out I was leaving the company in a little over a month to attend seminary and mentioned she was not surprised.  She “knew something was different about me”. 

The question begs, is this common in my interactions, or a rarity?  In other words, would I have to tell most people I’m a Christian for them to know, or would my actions speak for themselves.

The early followers of Jesus were identified as Christians because their actions mirrored those of Christ.  They were not self-proclaimed Christians.  They had learned the way of their Rabbi, were living it out, and were identified as such by outsiders.  In fact, the term “Christian” did not come into play until AFTER Jesus had ascended into Heaven (Acts 11 was the first mention of the term). 

Over the last few centuries we have made the mistake of trying to separate believers from disciples.  We have developed the theology that a person can be a Christian believer, but only the dedicated Christians become disciples.  In fact, many of our personal testimonies involve a phrase that goes “I trusted in Christ when I was (insert age here), but I did not start following Christ till I was (insert later age here). 

In calling this thinking a mistake, I am not trying to add works to salvation.  It is true that a woman on her deathbed who trusts in Christ moments before she passes away ends up in Heaven with no righteous acts, just as the criminal did who hung next to Jesus on the cross.  Jesus promises that those individuals will truly see him in Paradise.

The point I am trying to make is that to Jesus and his early followers there was no distinction between believers and disciples.  If you believed in Christ, you desired to live like Him.  If you desired to live like Him, it is because you believed in Him.  Sheep believe the shepherd will guide them to green pastures and protect them, so they follow him.  If they do not follow the shepherd, then it is because they do not trust the one they have.  Jesus put it this way, “If you love me, you will obey my commands.”  He did not say “Some who love me will obey my commands” or “I would like those who love me to obey my commands”.  He said those that believe in me WILL follow me.

Therefore, the invitation from our Father to live in the next life is also a command to die in this one.  Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.”  Just as Jesus does not command us to place our trust in Him, He does not invite us to die.  Jesus tells us in Mark if we accept the invitation to live, we must obey the command to follow.  To think we can believe but not follow is adding a stipulation that our Father never intended to exist.

To borrow an analogy from sports, I read an article by a Red Sox fan saying during the MLB season Red Sox fans root for the Red Sox and root against the Yankees.  They would tell you that any Red Sox fan who does not hate the Yankees is not a Red Sox fan.  Note he did not say they are not as passionate of fans, he said they ARE NOT Red Sox fans.  Love for the Red Sox is inseparable from their hate for the Yankees.  There is no middle ground.

A Christian author once told a story of sharing the gospel with his seven year old daughter.  Upon hearing this, she told her dad she believed Jesus died on the cross for her sins.  However, as he was tucking her in that night, she told him she did not want to be a Christian anymore.  When he asked why, she replied by saying that living like a Christian killed Jesus and caused his friends to hate him.  The thought of dying and having others hate her was too scary.

I pray that someday that girl will realize the promise of eternal life and the joy of knowing Christ intimately far outweighs the struggle in this life to die to Christ.  However, unlike most of us, she gets it.  She realized at age seven that Jesus invites into eternal life by calling us into the same struggles, persecution, and death he suffered from. 

The invitation and the call are one in the same.  When we understand this, we will not ask ourselves the same question I pondered a few days ago.  Just as many outsiders saw the early church have fellowship with another, share the gospel in temple courts, sell what they had to give to the poor, and pray together and identified them a Christ followers, those outside the body of Christ will witness and recognize the same in us if we embrace this call to die. 

Therefore, the question I leave you with is not “Who calls you a Christan?”, but rather,

“Are you willing to die so that you might live?”

Note: I want to re-emphasize that this is not an article about the theology of salvation.  The temptation is to read this and judge by one’s actions whether they have inherited salvation or not.  My pastor preached one Sunday about this flaw in justification.  To paraphrase:

In recognizing we are sinful creatures who have fallen short of a holy God, we realize there is no possible way we could stand justified before our Father in heaven without His help.  We need someone to step in and save us, someone who is not us, Jesus.

However, when we are struggling with assurance of our salvation, we often look back to our own sinful selves and our actions to try to justify whether we are saved are not.  In essence, we are making the same mistake as an unbeliever who tries to justify himself by good works. 

Just as we are made right before God only through the saving work of Jesus on the cross, so we are also daily being redeemed through Christ ALONE.  Our assurance does not come from our good works.  Rather, just like our salvation, our assurance comes through His good work: Christ’s death on the cross.

Jesus calls us to show our acceptance of the gospel by living it out.  In doing so, He is point out how we should live, not how we should justify ourselves.

One stone laid upon another...

You can find a lot of interesting things on the walls of public restrooms.  Most of it is less than savory, but every once in awhile you may find something of value, some nugget of wisdom.  Today's header picture is one such example.  It's a portion of a poster titled "How to Build a Community".   

Community building is a fundamental aspect of the Christian life.  From the very beginning God places importance on relationships, "it is not good for the man to be alone" was the only thing that God found "not good" in the Garden of Eden.  Throughout the Old Testament, families, tribes, and covenants are themes. The New Testament takes this further, Paul refers to the group of believers as a single body in 1 Corinthians 12:12-13:

"The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ.  For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body - whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free - and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. "

This is radical thinking.  In Paul's writing, all believers are equal and knitted together, through the Spirit, into a single Body of Christ.  Segregations of race, class, religion, economy, are swept away for Christ is "all in all".  We can see this mindset begin with the founding of the Church.  Immediately after Pentecost, the believers in Jerusalem begin acting like a unique community.

Acts 2:42:47 - "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.  Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved."

Acts in Motion is born out of these verses.  A few of us began asking questions about the nature of church and community, about what it might look like to do church this way in the 21st Century in the midst of our current culture.  Questions that we realized weren't going to be answered by theological debate but by lives lived in community, love, kindness, and Spirit for Christ's sake.  

These ideas are central to Acts in Motion and a major aspect of what we will try to explore here at Acts in Motion: The Blog.  Our hope isn't to bring back the Acts church, but to continue to advance the Kingdom of God as Christ works through us.  To that end, it is not enough to merely duplicate the behavior of the early church.  We have to ask and act on all sorts of questions about the Christian life that relate specifically to the world we live in.  

How do we meet in the "temple courts" when we have trouble agreeing what it means to be Christian?  

Who is our neighbor when video conferencing with a church in Sudan is as easy as visiting one across town?  

What does it mean to enjoy the favor of all people?  In a global community?  

How are you a "peacemaker" in a culture with bitter divides on political, religious, and social issues?  

Do you still devote yourself to teaching and fellowship by listening to sermon podcasts and engaging in online forums?   

Do we give to anyone who appears to have need or just those who have their paperwork signed, initialed and collated?  

Can we devote ourselves and our possessions to a community of believers when the economy is weak and the future of Social Security is in doubt?  

These are only a few of the dozens of question we should be processing as we move forward as the church of God.  Our world is very different from the one of the apostles.  Information moves at the speed of light, and the world as a whole is a much smaller place.  The Digital Age is changing the way we learn, socialize and work.  It will or has affected the way we worship, serve, and love.  

As Christians, we should be leading these cultural shifts not on the periphery, trying to catch up.  We have been built on the Rock.  God is the "same yesterday, today, and forever"; the same Spirit that caught fire among those first believers stirs our own souls.  We alone have sure footing among the cultural upheavals of our day.  We are being built together into the "holy temple of the living God" to display the glory of the most awesome and creative entity in the Universe.  

In 1 Peter 2:4-5, the apostle Peter is addressing the young church as it goes through growing pains:

"As you come to him, the living Stone--rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him-- you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ."

He reminds them of their foundation as the church tries to find its place in the ancient Roman culture.  We too are living stones built upon Jesus Christ the precious cornerstone.  God the Father, the Creator and Architect of human history, is placing each of us one stone laid upon another to build His holy house.  

But here's the deal.  Ancient stone walls and temples weren't stuck together with brick and mortar like modern buildings.  A stone wall in the time of Jesus and the Apostles would have been built of hewn stone stacked together with only friction and pressure to hold them together.  God is building us into His temple, but the process won't be a gentle one.  Corners and rough edges will be knocked off.  Once in awhile we may even grate against one another, but that is all part of growing into a community.

I feel like I'm closing this blog post with more questions left unanswered than definitive solutions to the Christian life.  And that's okay.  We, all of us in the various factions of the global church, have a long way to go in understanding what it means to live as the Body of Christ.  One thing we have a history of is not disagreeing well.  But, God's grace is sufficient even for all our prejudices and foibles.  Just keep Philippians 1:6 in mind: 

"being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Jesus Christ."  

What do you think some of the key issues the Church faces today?  What does it look like for us to be "one body" with Christ as head?