A Voice Of Hope Series

Jesus is trying to say, there is grace for you. My love for you did not stop, it doesn’t have conditions.

C.S. Lewis said, “The gospel means we can stop lying to ourselves. The sweet sound of amazing grace saves us from the necessity of self-deception. It keeps us from denying that though Christ was victorious, the battle with lust, greed, and pride still rages within us. As a sinner who has been redeemed, I can acknowledge that I am often unloving, irritable, angry and resentful with those closest to me. When I go to church I can leave my white hat at home and admit I have failed. God not only loves me as I am, but also knows me as I am. Because of this I don’t need to apply spiritual cosmetics to make myself presentable to Him. I can accept ownership of my poverty and powerlessness and neediness.”

So what is the church supposed to look like, if that is how we should live with the knowledge of grace? Morton Kelsey said, “The church is not a museum for saints but a hospital for sinners.”

But we are so used to putting faces on. We are so used to knowing that there is something better out there, but settling for something else. This past week, I was feeding Ava breakfast, or trying to. She had fresh blueberries and eggs with cheese on them. There was also some mac and cheese left on her highchair from the night before. The mac and cheese wasn’t warm, it was probably a little crusty. What do you think she ate? The mac and cheese.

We do the same with God. As C.S. Lewis says, “We are content to play in the mud, when God wants to spend the day at the beach with us.” When we short sell the grace of God in our lives, we miss all that life could be. We miss what Jesus says in John 10 he came to give us, life to the fullest.

Here is how I think this works, when we become Christians we come to God and say, I need you, I need your grace, your love, I need you in my life. That doesn’t change, no matter how long you have been a Christian. It is easy to think it does.

I remember when I first became a Christian, I became friends with a guy who was in his 70’s, had been a Christian for more then 60 years. When I would talk with him, he would say things like, I am still amazed at how much God loves me.

When we accept that we are powerless and helpless, when we acknowledge that we are broken and in need of God’s mercy, then God can make something beautiful out of us.

In his book Mortal Lessons, Dr. Richard Selzer, writes, “I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face postoperative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth, has been severed. She will be like this from now on. The surgeon had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh; I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had to cut the little nerve.

“Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private. Who are they, I ask myself, he and this wry mouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously, greedily? The young woman speaks.