A little side note: God is ready to forgive!

My daily reading today was from Psalm 86. You can imagine my excitement when I came across verse 5, which is in almost perfect alignment with yesterday's post.

"For you, Lord, are good and ready to forgive,
And abundant in lovingkindness to all who call upon you." Psalm 86:5 (NASB)

There it is again! God is waiting to show grace, longing to show compassion, ready to forgive and save all those who call on him. God doesn't forgive us unwillingly; he does it eagerly!

As the Scripture says, "Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame." For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." Romans 10:11-13 (NIV)

The Lord's name is Jesus.

"For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God." 1 Peter 3:18 (NIV)

God sent his only Son, Jesus, to die so that we might see just how much he longs to forgive us and be reconciled to us. Aaaaah! There is no one like God! Let's call on His name and keep calling on his name!

Grace Part 2: Through Faith

What is the key that unlocks God's grace in our lives? In my last post I talked about how God's grace is the way to both salvation and sanctification. It is not the means to one and not the other, but to both. In this post, I want to look at how God's grace works.

Isaiah 30 might be one of my favorite chapters in the whole Bible because it gives such a clear picture of how God's grace works. (And by grace I am referring to God's saving grace.)

The whole first part of the chapter is basically "woe to My children (Judah)" for being rebellious. And in verses 15-16 God sums up their rebellion.

"For thus the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel has said, 'In repentance and rest you will be saved, In quietness and trust is your strength.' But you were not willing, And you said, 'No, for we will flee on horses,' Therefore you shall flee! 'And we will ride on swift horses,' Therefore, those who pursue you shall be swift."

Summary? God tells Judah to turn back to Him and trust Him, and that if they do, He will save them (from their enemy, Syria). But they didn't want to be saved; they wanted to save themselves. Judah didn't want to return to God; they wanted to remain independent of Him. They tried to take refuge in Egypt (vs 2), instead of in God. And therefore, God said he would frustrate their plans, and when Judah's enemies pursue them, instead of being victorious, they will flee.

Then look at verse 18.

"Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you, And therefore He waits on high to have compassion on you. For the Lord is a God of justice; How blessed are all those who wait for him."

I love what was just said. God is up in Heaven longingly waiting to show grace and compassion to Judah. He really wants to show them grace and save them from their enemies, but he's not doing it yet. Why not? Why is he waiting to show them grace?

The answer is that He is a God of justice. And His justice permits him to show grace to those who trust and wait for Him. But Judah is not trusting God. As long as they try with their own strength to save themselves, God's saving grace is going to be restrained. He wants to do it, but he won't.

The key to unlock God's saving grace will be for Judah to put their faith in Him and cry out to Him for salvation. Just as God longingly waits to show grace to them, he wants them to longingly wait for Him to save them.

"He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry; when He hears it, He will answer you." (Verse 19b)

I think I will talk about the implications of this in our lives in the next post.

Grace

Who doesn't love grace? We love love love grace. And how can you not? If it were not for God's grace we could not have a relationship with him!

"If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared." Psalm 130:3-4

I love grace. Without God's grace, I am screwed (to put it nicely).

But God's grace isn't only forgiveness of sins. It is forgiveness, but it is so much more.

God's grace is also the way to a holy life - a blameless life lived before God and set apart for God's purposes. Grace makes it possible to do what we are supposed to do.

"The things that are impossible with people are possible with God." Luke 18:27

This is great news, too, because most of Jesus' demands are impossible in our own strength. I could list a slew of them, but let's just start with this one: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your mind, and all your strength."

Yeah. I'm going to go ahead and say that without God, this is impossible.

We go wrong when we don't see grace as being BOTH the means for forgiveness and the means for holiness.

If we only see God's grace as a means for forgiveness and forget that his grace intends to perfect us, then we will continue to operate in the weakness of our flesh, continue to love things more than we love God, and live in disobedience.

But if we forget that God's grace is the means for our forgiveness and only expect it to perfect us, then when we fail to trust and love God as we ought to, we will enter the darkness of self-condemnation and fear.

As you would expect, a line from the hymn "Amazing Grace" says it much better:

"Twas Grace that taught my heart to fear and Grace, my fears relieved."

Grace teaches us to fear God (so that we can obey) and Grace relieves our fears (because we know that Jesus paid our debt on the cross).

godly sorrow

If you have time, you should listen to this sermon, by Matt Chandler, pastor of The Village Church in Dallas. It is called "Repentance: Good Guilt." In the sermon, Chandler teaches about 2 Corinthians 7:10, the difference between godly guilt and worldly guilt. This sermon struck a chord with me, and I highly recommend listening to it.

When I first really began to understand the gospel, I was about 18 years old. One of the first things I remember learning was the difference between what the Bible calls "godly sorrow" and "worldly sorrow."

Up until I was 18, I think I had only experienced worldly sorrow. In other words, if I screwed up, I just felt bad because the things I had done were hurtful to me. This led to an endless and hopeless effort to try harder and be better, and it led to a fear of being found out.

But my life changed when I realized that ALL of my shortcomings and sins were actually offenses against God. This is the difference between worldly sorrow and godly sorrow. If I have worldly sorrow, I am sorry because I hurt myself. If I have godly sorrow, I am sorry because I hurt God.

And the Bible says that godly sorrow leads to repentance (returning to God in your thoughts and your actions) without regret, but worldly sorrow leads to death.

I still sometimes struggle to remember that ALL of my actions are related to God. All of my sin is first and foremost an offense against him. I still sometimes care more about how I look on the outside to others than I do about how my actions might grieve God.

I realize that this post is super-vague. I promise to be more detailed and personal in the future! In the meantime, listen to the sermon!

where "let your light shine" goes wrong

I grew up in good old Baptist church, where I was taught the importance of living a life that is above reproach so that when people who do not follow Jesus see my life, they would realize that I have something they don't have and they'd want to follow Jesus, too.

This concept is actually a good one. Matthew 5:16 says, "In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven." But it's the application of the concept where I usually go wrong.

I tend to forget that being a Christian is not about being perfect, but about being forgiven. It's about having your sins paid for by the blood of God's only Son, Jesus. I forget that God loved me while I was actively opposed to Him, and while I was literally unable to please Him.

The result of this forgetfulness is that I try to hide my sin from the world. Instead of displaying the good news that God is forgiving sins through Jesus, I start to think that if I am not perfectly behaved, people will think that Jesus is a hoax.

How much more prideful could someone get? The problem with this is that the picture I paint of myself is hardly ever a real one. And instead of walking in the freedom of faith that I am loved unconditionally, I walk on eggshells, in fear of being found out.

The ironic part about all of this is that when we finally do just trust and receive the unmerited love of God just as we are, then we will, as C.S. Lewis put it, be freed to "take off the silly, ugly, fancy-dress in which we have all got ourselves up" and to actually start shining the light of Christ.

I have to remember that I can never get fancy enough on the outside to earn God's love. God's love could never be earned, and therefore, it can never be lost. There is no need to hide the dark places of my heart from others or from Him; if I let His light shine on my heinous sin, he will heal it.