Grace

More Than We Deserve, Greater Than We Imagine

By Max Lucado

Grace is God as a heart surgeon, cracking open your chest, removing your heart-poisoned as it is with pride and pain—and replacing it with his own. Rather than tell you to change, he creates the change. Do you clean up so he can accept you? No, he accepts you and begins cleaning you up. His dream isn’t just to get you into heaven but to get heaven into you. What a difference this makes! Can’t forgive your enemy? Can’t face tomorrow? Can’t forgive your past? Christ can, and he is on the move, aggressively budging you from graceless to grace-shaped living. The gift-given giving gifts. Forgiven people forgiving people. Deep sighs of relief. Stumbles aplenty but despair seldom.

(Lucado 2014, 10)

Not all guilt is bad. God uses appropriate doses of guilt to awaken us to sin. We know guilt is God-given when it causes “indignation … alarm … longing … concern … readiness to see justice done” (2 Cor. 7:11 NIV). God’s guilt brings enough regret to change us.

Satan’s guilt, on the other hand, brings enough regret to enslave us. Don’t let him lock his shackles on you.

Remember, “your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3). When he looks at you, he sees Jesus first. In the Chinese language the word for righteousness is a combination of two characters, the figure of a lamb and a person. The lamb is on top, covering the person. Whenever God looks down at you, this is what he sees: the perfect Lamb of God covering you. It boils down to this choice: Do you trust your Advocate or your Accuser?

(Lucado 2014, 23)

… Most people embrace the assumption that God saves good people. So be good! Be moral. Be honest. Be decent. Pray the rosary. Keep the Sabbath. Keep your promises. Pray five times a day facing east. Stay sober. Pay taxes. Earn merit badges.

Yet for all the talk about being good, still no one can answer the fundamental question: What level of good is good enough? Bizarre. At stake is our eternal destination, yet we are more confident about lasagna recipes than the entrance requirements for heaven.

God has a better idea: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8). We contribute nothing. Zilch. As opposed to the merit badge of the Scout, salvation of the soul is unearned. A gift. Our merits merit nothing. God’s work merits everything.

(Lucado 2014, 47)

Confession. The word conjures up many images, not all of which are positive. Backroom interrogations. Chinese water torture. Admitting dalliances to a priest who sits on the other side of a black curtain. Walking down the church aisle and filling out a card. Is this what John had in mind?

Confession is not telling God what he doesn’t know. Impossible.

Confession is not complaining. If I merely recite my problems and rehash my woes, I’m whining.

Confession is not blaming. Pointing fingers at others without pointing any at me feels good, but it doesn’t promote healing.

Confession is so much more. Confession is a radical reliance on grace. A proclamation of our trust in God’s goodness. “What I did was bad,” we acknowledge, “but your grace is greater than my sin, so I confess it.” If our understanding of grace is small, our confession will be small: reluctant, hesitant, hedged with excuses and qualifications, full of fear of punishment. But great grace creates an honest confession.

(Lucado 2014, 83)

Where there is no assurance of salvation, there is no peace.No peace means no joy. No joy results in fear-based lives. Is this the life God creates? No. Grace creates a confident soul who declares, “I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day” (2 Tim. 1:12 NIV).

Of all we don’t know in life, we know this: we hold a boarding pass. “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5:13). Trust God’s hold on you more than your hold on God. His faithfulness does not depend on yours.His performance is not predicated on yours. His love is not contingent on your own. Your candle may flicker, but it will not expire.