The Eyes of Grace
Thank you, thank you very much. Today I want to make a case. . . for 360 degree grace.
What if you lived your life, what if I lived my life… with 360 degree grace, would it make any difference?
What do you mean, Stan, by 360 degree grace? I am so glad you asked.
By 360 degrees I mean. . .
Grace from above, that is, seeing God for who He really is.
Grace from within, seeing ourselves the way Christ sees us.
Grace from around us, viewing others the way God intended.
And then grace beside us, viewing our circumstances, the situations, the details and even the problems of our lives from God’s perspective.
I truly believe that God actually yearns for us, every one of us, to live in a place of grace. In a land of grace, In GraceLand!
Having pastored here for almost 14 years, having met thousands of South Floridians, there is no subject that I know of that has more potential to revolutionize your life, whether you are a seeker or a believer, whether you are investigating God or whether you’ve been living for Him for years, like understanding and living in the awareness God’s 360 degree amazing grace.
Some of you are here today and you are a student or you are an unmarried adult and you are trying to figure God out, investigating grace, GraceLand is for you.
Some of you have maybe been Christ followers for years and years and yet you have been trying to live the Christian life, doing your best to live up to your full moral potential, and it’s not working, and you feel like a failure, GraceLand is for you.
Some of you are living with guilt and with shame, your past life haunts you on a daily basis, if you are living in guilt, then GraceLand is for you.
Some of you are holding a grudge, you are unwilling to resolve a relational conflict or to extend a hand of forgiveness to someone who has wronged you, and GraceLand is for you.
I will say it again. 360 degree grace!
Grace from above, seeing God for who He really is.
Grace from within, seeing ourselves the way Christ sees us.
Grace from around us, viewing others the way God intended.
And then grace beside us, viewing our circumstances, the situations, the details and even the problems of our lives from God’s perspective.
And to help us with this, throughout this eight-part series, we are going to put on grace glasses, look with me at the front of tonight’s program, these are the glasses of grace, and we are going to begin to view in a 360 degree fashion everything in our lives from God’s amazing grace perspective.
And you will hopefully and prayerfully begin to see that growing in grace, that living in the land of grace is not a matter of our become stronger in and of ourselves, it is not a matter of us trying harder through the holidays to get it just right, but rather it is understanding the secret to the Christian life, the very mystery that Paul the apostle says has been hidden for ages and generations and now has been made clear. We are going to unpack that in this series, in full view for all to see.
Now- Let me tell you what you won’t hear throughout this series. You won’t hear “the eight secrets to spirituality,” you won’t come in here each weekend and find a ladder by which you can climb your way to God in “eight easy steps.”
So often, I think, we approach the Christian life as if it is a subject to be mastered rather than… a life to be lived. So, we are going to be talking about life, real life, and we are going to begin to view grace with our spiritual eyes.
And this is just so critical, it is so important.
In the gospel of Matthew, in the Message Bible, Jesus himself says:
“Your eyes are windows into your body. If you open your eyes wide in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light.” Matthew 6:22
What’s Jesus saying? He’s not talking about your physical eyes. He’s not talking about physical light. He’s talking about spiritual insight. He’s talking about seeing in a new way, opening up in a new way, spiritually.
The New Living Translation says it like this: “Your eye is a lamp for your body. A pure eye lets sunshine into your soul.” Matthew 6:22
When you begin to view your life from God’s perspective it puts sunshine into your soul, friends.
Later on in scripture, Paul the apostle calls it seeing with the eyes of your heart. We used to sing a song “Open the Eyes of my Heart Lord.” In fact, Paul prays this prayer for all of us in Ephesians and this has been our prayer for you throughout Graceland…He says:
“I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and His incomparably great power for us who believe.” Ephesians 1:18-19
Friends, we have to see with our spiritual eyes, see the way God sees. That’s so important because the Bible says, “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.”
If you see yourself as a loser you’re probably going to be a loser in life. If you see yourself as a victim, you’re going to let other people victimize you all your life. If you see yourself as a colossal failure in life, you’re life is probably full of failure. Why is that? Listen. Because what you see is what you get.
What you see…is what you get. The Bible teaches that our beliefs determine our behavior. That the way we think determines the way we act. And what we see comes out in our lifestyle, in our actions. The problem is a lot of stuff you believe is just false. It’s just plain not true. So you’re acting out on false or inaccurate information about yourself, about God, about others, and about your stuff. So you need a 360 degree change.
What keeps us from living in GraceLand?
It’s what I want to call today…
Vandal-Eyes
Vandal-Eyes are those things that keep you, that keep me from experiencing and walking in God’s amazing grace.
What are the top three vandals? The three greatest enemies of grace…
The first one would be the Evil One himself.
Satan does not want you to know the incredible plan of God’s amazing grace, the mystery that has been hidden and is now unfolded. Because it is the truth… and Satan is the great deceiver, he wants you to believe the lies. Beyond that, the bible is a myth buster, it teaches that the truth will set you free, and Satan’s goal is to blind you and to bind you. That’s the first vandal, the evil one himself.
The second enemy, the second vandal of grace would be religion.
Stan, Religion is the enemy of grace? Absolutely. Because religion is our attempt to get to God. Religion is our attempt to clean ourselves up, to do enough right things for God…to have the good outweigh the bad, and so man-made religion is diametrically opposed to God’s grace.
Listen to this from R.C. Sproul:
“Perhaps the most difficult task for us to perform is to rely on God’s grace and God’s grace alone for our salvation. It is difficult for our pride to rest on grace. Grace is for other people—for beggars. We don’t want to live by a heavenly welfare system. We want to earn our own way and atone for our own sins. We like to think that we will go to heaven because we deserve to be there.”
Religion vandalizes grace. The evil one vandalizes grace.
Third, vandal-eyes…is our culture.
Our culture, if you think about it, is really not a grace culture. I could talk about that in so many ways, but look at this one way.
Our culture says…it’s all about you. If it’s to be it’s up to me. Our culture says…Your grades determine your education, your job performance determines your raise, your athletic ability determines your score, and what happens is that we have so bought into the culture of competition, of keeping up with whomever we are keeping up with, we have in essence brought this performance based stuff into the church, into Christianity, into our spirituality- trying by your own good deeds to measure up to God’s holy standard.
Now the reasoning, at least for a Christ follower, might go something like this. When you first become a believer, you understand your need for God’s grace. You say “Man, this is some deal. God has forgiven me for every sin I’ve ever committed, am committing or ever will commit. All I do is simply trust Christ for what He did for me on the cross, I apply that to my life as a free gift, I don’t have to earn my way to heaven, work my way to heaven, beg or barter my way to heaven. It’s just a free gift.”
But then… some time goes by, and you start thinking “Hey, this is too good to be true. I mean really, I ought to help God out a bit. Surely he expects something more of me, surely if I do certain things for him, then He’ll smile at me more and I can gain His approval.”
And what happens is that people fall into one of two traps.
One of the traps is known as legalism. Legalism is trying to earn God’s approval through keeping rules.
We are going to talk about that some next week in Heartbreak Hotel.
The other trap is perfectionism. Perfectionism is trying to prove my worth by trying to be perfect.
Vandal-Eyes…
Now, often we provide resources throughout our series. Here is your best resource for this series. There is an entire book of the Bible written to combat these vandal-eyes – it’s known as the New Testament book of Galatians. Now- in the book of Galatians, God is basically saying, “When you try to earn my smile in your life, my special pat on your back, my approval by ANYTHING other than what Jesus Christ did for you on the cross, that’s not very smart.
Listen to what Paul says in Galatians 3:3 "You began your life in Christ by the Spirit. Now are you trying to make it complete by your own power. This is foolish."
Did you catch that? You began by grace, you started in GraceLand, but something has happened, and now you’re trying to keep up by the sweat of your own spiritual and religious performance.
Then he uses probably the strongest word in the Greek language, as close as you can get in the bible to a major four letter curse word. He says those who do this are FOOLS, they are acting foolishly.
So we have vandal-eyes.
Now that we are aware of the vandal-eyes, we must begin to put on. . .
Real-Eyes.
The most popular shows on TV these days are what? Reality shows. People want real, they want authentic. We should be that way at church as well. We should yearn for what is real, for what is authentic, we should real-eyes, when it comes to grace these things. God says…I will give you four things and these will get some air time throughout our series. Four real-Eyes…God says, first…
I see you as acceptable.
The #1 hurt in life is…rejection. #1. When you’re rejected by a parent, a spouse, a former spouse, a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a teacher, nothing hurts you more than rejection. So as a result we spend most of our lives doing everything we can to avoid rejection. We want acceptance more than anything else in life. We want acceptance from our parents. We want acceptance from our peers. We want acceptance from our neighbors. We want acceptance from people we respect, people we envy. We want acceptance from people we don’t even like!
Real-Eyes what God says in Titus 3, verse 7:
“Jesus treated us much better than we deserve. He made us acceptable to God and gave us the hope of eternal life.” Titus 3:7
You are acceptable to God, I am acceptable to God, because Jesus made it so. #2.
I see you as lovable.
The most famous verse in all the Bible talks about this. John 3:16 “For God so loved the world He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” God so loved the world – it doesn’t say, God so loved people who are beautiful. God so loved people who are intelligent. It doesn’t say, God so loved people who are cool. It doesn’t say, God so loved people who are religious. It doesn’t say, God so loved people who are perfect – because there aren’t any. It says, God so loved the world. That means me, you and everybody that the world considers unlovable. God so loved the world – everybody in it because He made them all. #3. God says:
I see you as forgiven.
We are in church Stan, of course, you talk about forgiveness. And it is just so easy to pass right by that one. We do not realize how forgiven we really are. Ephesians 1:4 “Long ago, even before He made the world, God chose us to be His very own through what Christ would do for us. He decided then to make us holy in His eyes, without a single fault. We who stand before Him covered by His love.”
What an incredible verse that tells us how forgiven we are by God’s love and what Christ was willing to do for us.
Listen, before God made you He knew everything you were going to do in your life. He knew all the mistakes, all the sins. He knew the worst thing you were going to do. There is one thing you will never hear God say, “I didn’t see that one coming.” You’ll never hear that. He sees it all. And God who sees it all says in advance “I forgive you, no matter what. No matter what I forgive you.” That is good news. If I receive Christ, if I accept that forgiveness for my sins, if I invite Christ to come into my life… That is what God’s grace – the good news of God’s grace, His gift is all about. And it is such a great gift. We have a tough time receiving it. We have a tough time believing it. #4, God says…
I see you as capable.
There is an epidemic in our culture of low self-esteem. One study shows that it is the number one problem among women in America. And even in our area where many of you are very, very successful, the truth of the matter is that deep down in your heart of hearts in your quiet moments there is still a gnawing sense of insecurity. Why is that?
You’re continuing to replay those old podcasts in your memory of what people said a long time ago about you. You’re still living by what somebody said 10-20 years ago. Studies show that the younger you were when you were rejected, the greater an impact it has on your life. And in a sense for some of you, you had people in your life that cursed you. They cursed you with words like, “You don’t matter. You’re a failure. You’ll never amount to anything. You can’t do anything right.”
So here’s the question. How do you release a curse? You don’t do it by focusing on the curse. You don’t do it by thinking about what they said over and over again. And you don’t even do it by thinking, “I’m going to prove them wrong.” You’re still tying to build your life on a negative.
You do it by building your life on a positive. You begin to focus instead on the truth. You start affirming the truth. You start believing what God says about you and God says you’re capable. I don’t care what anybody else says. I don’t care what you think. God says you are capable. He has created you for a purpose.
This is another amazing verse, Philippians 4:13:
“I have strength for all things in Christ who empowers me. I am ready for anything and equal to anything though Him who infuses inner strength into me. That is I am self sufficient through Christ’s sufficiency.”
Psychologists tell us that your self concept, your self worth, the way you see yourself is largely determined by what you think the most important person in your life thinks about you. If that’s true I want to highly recommend to you that today and throughout this series that you make Jesus Christ the most important person in your life. Because in Christ He says you are acceptable, you are forgivable, you are lovable and you are capable.
We have vandal-eyes, we come to real-eyes, and finally we have to…
Mobil-Eyes.
We have to take it home with us…and I was tempted to tell you that you needed to commit to be here for all eight weeks of GraceLand. I was tempted to encourage you to calendar for November the “What’s So Amazing About Grace” study we are going to do on Thursdays.
But the reality is that here is what we want the focus to be throughout this series. Be amazed by this…
VIDEO HERE
I am still amazed by God’s grace in my life. In fact, exactly 364 days ago I fell 14 feet from the roof of our house onto our concrete driveway. Tomorrow actually marks the one year anniversary of that fall.
The first few days I was in ICU at the Delray Beach Trauma Center. Because of the remnants of Hurricane Wilma, the nurses, the doctors said to Terrisa you can either let him die here or you can take him home, your choice. So I was moved straight out of ICU and taken home.
2 Corinthians 12:9:
My grace is enough; it’s all you need.
My strength comes into its own in your weakness. Once I heard that, I was glad to let it happen. I quit focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ’s strength moving in on my weakness.
My grace is sufficient for you…even if you are here and feeling far away from the heart of God.
My grace is sufficient for you…even if you are feeling rejected, devalued and belittled.
My grace is sufficient for you…even if you are caught up in the trap of religious performance.
My grace is sufficient for you…even if you are going through a heart-wrenching, mind-blowing free fall from a roof…
My grace is sufficient for you…my grace is enough…
360 degree grace. Above us, within us, around us and beside us…
Prayer
