(The Journey of Grace)
Draw me nearer, nearer, blessed Lord,
to the cross where Thou hast died.
Draw me nearer, nearer, blessed Lord,
to Thy precious bleeding side.
That hymn has been echoing in my heart all week. And it leads me to a question:
When is close—close enough?
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1. The Journey, Not the Point
We’re not talking about a trip from Point A to Point B.
This is the journey of the soul—a journey that keeps shaping us as we walk.
A journey is more than a dot on a chart.
Yet many Christians are tempted to think of the life of faith as a single point: “I found the truth. I’m safe. I’ve arrived.”
But Jesus never invited us to settle at a point. He invites us into a journey—growing, stretching, lifelong.
There’s an old word for getting stuck on the point: punctilious.
It literally means “point.” And a punctilious religion camps on a moment—conversion, a doctrine, a high experience—and forgets that God is always moving us forward.
Why must it be a journey?
Because our potential in Christ is huge.
There are minds to stretch, feelings to discover, songs to sing, and new things to create.
No single point can hold all of that.
Jesus told a parable about this (Luke 11:5–8).
A man and his wife have settled in for the night when a knock sounds. A friend has arrived from a long journey—hungry and tired.
“Come in,” they say, “you must be exhausted!”
But the pantry is bare.
So the husband pounds on his neighbor’s door.
“Please, we’ve got friends on a journey and nothing to give them.”
The neighbor grumbles from bed, but the man keeps knocking until bread is given.
It’s a simple picture with a deep reminder: people are on a journey, and they need something we can give.
If we think faith is just a point, we start demanding that everyone stand exactly where we stand.
“Why aren’t you at my point yet? Why don’t you believe exactly the way I do?”
But if we see life as a journey, we begin to say,
“I can see God is still working in you. I can see Jesus drawing you nearer, nearer to His precious bleeding side.
You’ll grow. You’ll discover. You’ll do it in God’s timing.”
Faith is a journey—tailor-made by God for every one of us.
Different scenery, different pace, same loving Guide.
Sooner or later, every pilgrim comes to a hard place…a wall.
A moment when you ask, How do I go on? Where do I turn now?
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2. The Wall We Meet
Every long journey eventually runs into a wall.
Not a wall of brick or stone, but the kind you feel inside:
a place where the road seems to end, where questions get heavy, where you wonder, Can I really keep going?
A scene from the film The Mission captures this vividly.
Rodrigo Mendoza was a slave trader who had killed his own brother and carried crushing guilt.
A Jesuit priest led him on a hard climb up a jungle waterfall while he dragged a heavy net of weapons and armor—his past—behind him.
Exhausted, he finally reached the top, where the very tribe he had once enslaved met him.
One of them stepped forward, cut the rope, and let the burden fall away.
In that instant Mendoza knew forgiveness:
the one he had wronged most had set him free.
Sooner or later we all meet a wall like that.
It’s not a place we would ever schedule.
God brings us there.
It can be excruciating—but also wonderful.
At the wall we face our dark side—anger, manipulation, envy, fear.
Often the things we despise most in others are mirrors of what lives in us.
And at the wall we hear God’s invitation:
Will you let go of the weight? Will you trust Me to forgive and reshape you?
It’s where we accept our acceptance—where “God loves me” stops being a slogan and becomes a living reality.
Where the Spirit whispers,
“I know every corner of your heart. I know the darkness you see today. And I still call you beloved.”
You may come through the wall one brick at a time.
But every brick removed is another layer of fear gone and another layer of love revealed.
The world may tell you, in the words of that old Pink Floyd line,
> “All in all you’re just another brick in the wall.”
But the gospel says something far better:
You are a living stone, chosen and precious, built into a spiritual house (1 Peter 2:5).
Unconditional love—just saying the words is beautiful and frightening.
It means loving whoever walks around the next corner—no matter their race, their smell, their story.
It means giving yourself to people who may never thank you or even like you.
That’s the kind of love Jesus calls us to.
And it’s the love that begins to grow when we face the wall and trust His grace.
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3. Peter’s Dark Night
The Gospels give us a living portrait of someone who hit the wall in public—Simon Peter.
He once confessed, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” only to pull Jesus aside moments later and rebuke Him for predicting His death.
Jesus’ response was sharp: “Get behind Me, Satan. You do not have in mind the things of God but the things of men.”
Later, in the Upper Room, Peter promised to die for Jesus.
But before dawn he denied Him three times—once to a servant girl, once by a fire, and once to a relative of the man whose ear he had cut off.
Then a rooster crowed and Jesus turned and looked at him.
Peter fled into the night weeping bitterly.
This was Peter’s wall, his dark night of the soul.
After the resurrection he went fishing, perhaps thinking the story was over.
But Jesus met him on the beach with a fire, a meal, and three questions:
“Do you love Me?”
Three denials met with three restorations.
Grace matched failure, brick for brick.
Peter’s story shows us that the wall is not the end.
Failure, even spectacular failure, can become the doorway to deeper love and calling.
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4. Love and Acceptance on the Other Side
The wall is never final.
On the other side is something more beautiful and more demanding than we first imagined.
One of the deepest gifts is learning to accept our acceptance—to move beyond merely saying “God loves me” and begin living from that love.
Every brick removed is another layer of fear gone and another layer of love revealed.
And on the far side we begin to taste unconditional love:
not the safe love that chooses who deserves it,
but the kind of love that says,
Whoever comes next—regardless of race, background, smell, or story—I will love that person as Christ loves me.
That idea is beautiful and frightening.
It is also the very heart of Jesus.
He loved His enemies, washed the feet of the one who would betray Him, and prayed for those who nailed Him to the cross.
This is what Peter discovered.
The man who once denied Jesus became the man who fed His sheep.
He still wasn’t flawless.
But he knew he was loved, and he knew he could love.
There’s a hymn written by Annie Johnson Flint that captures this growth of the soul:
> First I prayed for light that I might see the way.
Then I prayed for strength that I might stand upright.
Then I asked for things—wisdom, success, healing.
But at last I prayed for love—deep love for God and for man.
That is the prayer of someone who has walked through the wall and found the heart of God.
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Closing Invitation
Draw me nearer, nearer, blessed Lord,
to Thy precious bleeding side.
That’s not just a line to sing.
It’s a life to live.
So where are you on the journey?
At a comfortable point where you’ve pitched your tent?
Facing a wall that feels too hard to climb?
Or standing on the far side, hearing Jesus say, “Feed My sheep”?
Wherever you are, the invitation is the same: keep walking, keep trusting, keep loving.
Because the journey isn’t about how perfectly you perform.
It’s about how deeply you are loved—and how fully that love can flow through you.
The world may try to tell you, “All in all, you’re just another brick in the wall.”
But Jesus calls you a living stone in the house He is building, chosen and precious in His sight.
May we all have the courage to keep moving with Christ,
to face the wall without fear,
and to find on the other side the joy of being fully accepted and fully alive in His love.
Amen.
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This version keeps the heart of the Mendoza illustration but trims it to about half the length, so the story remains vivid and memorable without slowing the sermon’s overall pace.
