Sunday Sum-Up: Giving Grace

I really never intended to talk about God so much in this blog.  It's not that I ever wanted to purposefully shy away from my relationship with God/Jesus here, but I never purposed for this blog to be so close to my faith.  It's just very hard for me to separate my writing from my beliefs, and vice versa.  I guess it's a good sign that I can't compartmentalize; Christ isn't just a part of my life.  He's everything.  And while sometimes I can blog about something without bringing my faith into it, it's exceptionally difficult (or perhaps impossible) to talk about what's going on in my life without bragging on God.  Because the Lord is the One who is leading me through my life right now, and He's teaching me far more than I deserve to learn.

A theme that keeps popping up right now is grace.  And grace is a weighty term, hard to define, even harder to accept and express.  Maybe it should be simple, but because we're complicated people, we tend to make even the simplest concepts difficult.  The grace of God is free, and yet so many people can't accept it.  People can't even accept the reality of a gracious God, or they can't accept the goodness of a gracious God, or they can't accept that grace is really free apart from human effort, or they can't accept that free grace could be for a sinful person.  And while I could camp out on that for a while, that's really not what I want to focus on here, not because it's not important, but because it's really not what I'm struggling and striving with right now.

I know God is gracious.  I know that His grace is free.  I know that it's His good pleasure to give that grace to sinners--sinners like me.  And it's one thing to sit here and blog about being a sinner saved by grace; it's a totally different thing to live that out.  God's been patiently, graciously teaching me that everything He allows to happen in my life--everything--is a chance to love others and a chance to trust Him.  But once again, it's one thing to blog about that, and another thing to live it out. 

I'm blogging about this as my weekly sum-up because the Lord's been working on this concept of giving grace to others, and this week He's really brought all that to a crux.  I went to one of those preschool teacher workday things, expecting to hear about different ways to help children learn and grow.  I was actually expecting it to be boring and generally not useful to my life.  Instead, our director talked to us about communicating love and grace to one another.  And it went along perfectly with everything the Lord's been teaching me.  ...and it humbled me.

Then I read a blog post entitled "I'm Christian, Unless You're Gay" , and I was floored.  The author isn't a Christian, but he gets something that a lot of Christians seem to miss.  Now, I don't agree with every statement he made, nor do I think that homosexuality is okay (just to clarify, I don't hate gays; in fact, I have some gay friends.  I believe practicing homosexuality is a sin--just like any other sin--which is something that is contrary to the will of God--and I'm definitely a sinner in need of grace just like everyone else), but I admire and respect the guy who wrote this blog.  First off, he was respectful, yet honest.  Second, he stated his main point clearly without allowing himself to be drawn away to any arguments that were secondary to his main point: that no one is perfect and that everyone needs love.  As far as his blog post goes, it doesn't matter if his readers think that homosexuality is a sin or not; the point is, we're all imperfect people, and we all need love.

And I'm not about to go start holding up signs that say "God Hates Fags," but if I were really honest with myself, I'm pretty sure that sometimes I'm holding up an invisible sign that says, "The way you're dressed makes me uncomfortable," or "The fact that you just ran a red light means I have the right to honk my horn and yell at you," or "The language you're using makes me not want to associate with you." 

Where do I get the idea that some sins are worse than others?  Where do I get the idea that I'm more righteous than others?  How can I so easily accept the free grace of God without giving it just as freely to others? 

But I'm not the only one who does it.  I'm not justifying myself.  I'm not trying to judge others.  I'm just stating a fact.  I know I'm not the only one who does it because God/Jesus/The Holy Spirit saw/sees a need to speak again and again to the self-righteousness of humanity.

The bottom line?  We're all children.  I work with kids.  What are they like?  They can be sweet and tender.  They're a great joy to me.  But honestly, children are often childish (imagine that).  If I ask a child to clean something up, the #1 response I get is, "But I didn't make the mess!"  And that's a ridiculous attitude, but recently I discovered that grown-ups act the same way.  If I see something out of place in the preschool storage room, instead of simply putting it away, I mentally tell myself, "Whoever took it out should put it away.  It's not my responsibility."  And everyone has that attitude, so as a result, the misplaced item never gets put in its place.  So someone gets upset because the room eventually gets messy.  Then the grumbling starts.  Wouldn't it be easier to just clean up one another's messes?  Wouldn't it be easier to GET OVER OURSELVES and show a little grace?

If I sound preachy, it's because I'm preaching to myself.  I have been given so much grace.  I can't hoard that grace; I need to give it to others.  The thing that keeps me from loving my neighbor: pride.  Selfishness.  Fear that I'll not have enough for myself.  I'd be much better off forgetting myself.  And doing this is impossible in my own power. 

Ironically, the only way I can be gracious is to receive grace.  And, praise the Lord, He is faithful.  He does give more grace.

I could go on and on, but I'm going to leave you with the incredible words of James.  I'm posting the entire chapter of James 4, because it's all pertaining to what I've said here.  We need to get over ourselves and our selfish desires.  We need to rely on the grace of God.  We need to humble ourselves and boast only in the Lord.  It's easy to look down on others for the wicked things they do, but sometimes we're even more guilty because there is good that we can do, there are people we can love, and when we fail to love, we sin.

"What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?  You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God.  When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:
'God opposes the proud
but gives grace to the humble.'
Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. Brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor? Now listen, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.' Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, 'If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.' As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins." --James 4

I'm going to say just one thing more.  I've had several conversations about my new blog project this week.  I'm still working on it, still praying about it, still planning and getting excited.  The thing is, all this stuff that the Lord is graciously teaching me is really applicable to my blog.  That's just really neat to me, how the Lord is working and bringing things together, just at the right time.  God is so good.

War and Peace

I've never read any Tolstoy, and I have a pretty good idea that I just won't be reading "War and Peace" unless I get really bored someday.  The Final Jeopardy "answer" from yesterday was about "War and Peace"...and that was the first time I learned the book had multiple epilogues.  If a book is so long that it needs more than one epilogue, I'm probably not going to have the attention span to read it.

But over the past few months, I've been learning a lot about peace.  And just when I think I've finally gotten the gist of what God has been trying to teach me, He teaches me something that gives me all sorts of new questions. 

This past Sunday I was subbing for one of the people on the praise team at my church.  Since I was subbing, I didn't figure out what songs we were singing until I showed up for the sound check that Sunday morning.  To my surprise, I discovered we weren't just singing that morning, but all members of the praise team were participating in a responsive reading sort of thing.  That's when the leader (or, in our case, leaders) reads Scripture or perhaps something based on Scripture, and the congregation responds by reading another Scripture (or something based on Scripture) in unison. 

I don't do public speaking.  If I had known that I would be expected to do "solo reading" in front of people, I would have told them "NO WAY" when they asked me to be on praise team.  But as it was, I was stuck.  So I did the reading...and just like with singing, the reading wasn't about me anyway.  But it was interesting.  I had to read two Scriptures from Psalms.  Both of them dealt with preparing for war.

And I was thinking about it as we were rehearsing.  I was thinking, "God, why are You teaching me so much about peace, and then giving me these Scriptures about how You strengthen my arms for war?"

I kept thinking about this as I went to Sunday School Adult Bible Study.  We've been reading through 1 and 2 Kings.  We're almost done.  But the passage was about Athaliah, the mother of Ahaziah.  Now Ahaziah had been the king of Judah until he was killed, and when Athaliah found out he was dead, she killed off the entire royal family so that she could be queen.  But Ahaziah's son, Joash, was rescued and hidden for seven years. 

Then Jehoiada, the priest, took action by hiring hundreds of guards to protect Joash.  He crowned Joash as king publicly, which caught Athaliah's attention.  When she came out, they seized her and she was put to death.

And as the class' teacher was reading this, he stopped and asked us about Jehoiada's actions.  I'm not entirely sure what point he was making (though he probably made a really good one--he usually does) because I was too busy thinking about what I was getting out of it.  Because I realized that while Jehoiada was not perfect, he absolutely did the right thing by hiring men to protect the true king and to dispose of the false queen.  And as a side note, I just have to say that I love it when Scripture has more suspense and intrigue than any novel you could find on a shelf today.

But I think I'm learning even more about peace.  See, when I was a kid, I really loved the Beattitude: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God."  It was my favorite Beattitude, and I guess it was because I figured peace was something I could handle.  And I liked the idea of being a child of God. 

But peace isn't easy.  And peace isn't what I thought it was when I was a kid.  Peace doesn't always mean you back down when there is conflict.  Sometimes that is what it means.  And after also reading some passages in James last week (a very convicting book of the Bible), I was reminded that most of our conflict in life comes when we don't get our own way. 

When a conflict arises just because I'm not getting what I want when I want it how I want it, then the path to peace is as simple and as complex as surrendering to whatever it is I think I want.  If someone offends me over something trivial, peace means overlooking that offense.  If there's only enough coffee in the pot for one person, and both I and another person want it, then peace means letting that other person have the coffee (or compromising and both having half a cup).  If someone is arguing with me over something that doesn't matter, then peace means dropping the argument (sometimes by swallowing pride) and finding something more pure, noble, and praiseworthy to talk about. 

But then there are times when peace means something more than surrender.  Sometimes the only way to get true peace is to fight for it.  The difference is that when peace is something worth fighting for, it usually has something more to do than just me and what I want.  Now, there are times when personal conflicts arise and ignoring them isn't an option.  I like to avoid conflict, but I also sometimes let things bother me, and then they fester.  So I've learned that sometimes I have to confront a situation so that a minor offense doesn't turn into a major grudge.  It's hard to know the difference sometimes, which is why I need a lot of wisdom and a LOT of grace (again--James is a very convicting book).

But usually, when peace is something worth fighting for, it's not about me.  As a depraved human, I often see injustice in terms of myself.  If I can't have something the way I want it when I want it, then I tend to see that particular situation as unfair.  The truth is, injustice goes a lot deeper than the silly things I desire.

What Jehoiada did was not for himself.  He was fighting injustice.  He was fighting for peace by restoring the proper king to the throne. 

And I don't have anything like that to fight for.  Even if I were in a position where I could return a king to power while ridding the government of a corrupt ruler, I have absolutely no brain for politics.  But injustice is all around us in different forms.

Injustice is when a mother watches her baby starve to death because she can't afford to feed him.

Injustice is when a four year old dies from a disease that could have been easily treated with simple medication.

Injustice is when a homeless person has to sleep out on the streets, hungry and cold.

Injustice is when a kid can't sleep at night because she's afraid of bullies at school.

Injustice is when a 12 year old is sold into prostitution.

Injustice is when we fail to meet the needs of orphans and widows. 

So I'm still learning.  I'm still trying to figure out exactly what peace means.  Every time I think I've figured something out, I'm bombarded with more questions about a concept that is far too lofty for me to understand.  All I know is that peace is definitely something worth pursuing.

And sometimes it's something worth fighting for.

Sometimes Christians like to sit around and just pretend everything is okay, and we easily forget that there is a Spiritual battle RAGING around us at all times.  And I know I forget to put on my armor.  I forget to prepare for battle.  It's because I've believed the lie--the lie that there is no battle, that we're at peace as long as we don't open our eyes.

It's easy to pretend that we have peace if we ignore that injustice exists.  My question for myself and for my readers is: Are we brave enough to face reality and fight for peace?

I don't know that I am yet...at least not on a higher level than the little things I'm already doing.  But I'm learning....