Sunday, January 5, 2014

Grateful for God's Grace

I have been weathering a real storm lately, but the wind and the waves are of my own making.  Just as with Peter, taking my eyes off Him and focusing on other things left me sinking fast.  As I struggled to figure out how to keep my own head above water, the gentle voice of Our Savior whispered, "I'm right here when you decide to let me lift you up again."

Pastors and missionaries aren't immune to failing.  Failing to live as we should, failing to believe as we should, failing to trust as we should and failing to focus on what we should are all too frequent occurrences.  Most of the time they are just momentary lapses that we quickly recognize and recover from, but occasionally, at least speaking for myself, I can become so entrenched in what "isn't", that I lose sight of the most important thing: Who "IS".  Namely this means "Who is my Lord?", "Who is Jesus?", "Who is the One who saved me?", and "Who is the perfecter and finisher of my faith?"

I am grateful to Pastor Greg Mathis of Mud Creek Baptist Church in Hendersonville, NC where I fellowshipped this morning.  His message cut through the cloud of funk I had found myself in the last few weeks (or longer depending on when one started counting the downward spiral) and brought my focus back on a few things.

1) I deserve hell, but I don't have to go there.  This has absolutely nothing to do with anything special or any entitlement on my part to anything other than damnation, but it has everything to do with the grace of God.  I didn't do anything to earn God's favor, He chose by His sovereign will to shed His grace upon me that I might be saved.  If we focus on that for just a moment, we can't help but have an adjusted attitude of humility, gratefulness and joy.  This IS the good news of the gospel.  I have been given the unmerited favor of God.  How can one focus on the insignificant ups and downs of life in light of this amazing truth?  I hope you all take some time and meditated today on this and all the implications.  You will find your pride slipping away like water off a duck as you realize everything you have is only because the God of all has chosen to give it to you.  Be grateful for that grace.

2) I was saved to serve.  Ephesians 2:8-9 is one of the favorite Protestant memory verses, but why do we stop halfway through Paul's thought there?  Continuing on to verse 10 gives us the FULL picture of salvation, that it is BY grace, THROUGH faith, but FOR works.

Ephesians 2:8 "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them." (NASB)

Don't leave out verse 10.  We have not been saved so we can be placed like a precious ornament to set on a shelf and be admired.  We have been saved because Christ has work for us to accomplish.  He didn't create us to be idle and he didn't save us to sit around in self-satisfaction while the world is dying in its sin.  We were saved so that we could become a servant to others.  Jesus modeled that for us, so why are so few willing to follow His example?  When you recognize that God poured out His grace abundantly upon you, much more than you can use, you begin to realize that all the excess is not to go to waste, but it was given to you to share with others.  Give to the needy, teach the unlearned, help the helpless, encourage the downhearted, hug the mourning or lonely, support the unsupported, love the unloved and the unloveable, lift up the downtrodden, pray for those in need, minister to the hurting, share with the lost, answer the seeking, hold hands with the ill, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give drink to the thirsty...serve them all as you would serve Him who has given you His grace.  Serve others with a heart filled with gratitude for the grace you have been given.

3) Be a Christian model.  Note, I did not say "be a model Christian".  That idea so often leads to the attitude of self-righteousness and judgment, because it puts the emphasis on "Christian" as if that is some standard to hold up.  May a CHRISTIAN NEVER BE A MODEL to hold up.  It would be like holding up a shadow puppet as an example of how to make a man.  No CHRIST is to be our model, not Christians.  But when I say be a Christian model, I don't mean hold yourself up as some standard to be emulated, I mean live in a way, by how you interact with others, that will show you as set apart.  By being a Christian who is not being held up as a model, but rather is modeling themselves after Christ, THEN we can point people to the perfect rather than to merely the shadow.  Christians are sinners saved by grace.  Christ is the model to which we should point others.  If we are so busy with an attitude of "look at me", then we are just asking for a fall.  So don't seek to be a "model Christian", but rather be a "Christian model", which is a believer whose life points to Christ and encourages others to point to Him with their lives.

By modeling only who we point to and emulate, rather than holding ourselves up as a model, we constantly keep that humility of heart that knows we are only, always, one step from a fall ourselves.  When instead we are Christian models of walking day by day with Christ and resting never in our own goodness but always resting in a state of gratefulness for the grace of God in our lives, then we will cease to fit the mold of the "hypocrite" so often associated with "model Christians" and will instead be humble, fallible, faithful servants of others and of our Lord who can be seen not in some light of self-righteousness one claims to have, but instead as mere reflectors of the One True Light, Jesus Christ, whose very lives shout every day how grateful we are for God's grace upon us.

I hope by sharing these lessons God drove home to me these last couple of days any of you who have similarly found yourselves focused on the wind and the waves of life rather than focused on the truly amazing grace of God will be drawn back to that first love, that igniting spark of our faith.  I further hope that by dwelling not on our circumstances but on the grace of God that you will be moved toward humility, service, and being a Christian model of what it means to be a sinner saved by grace.

Grateful for His grace,

Rev. David G. Johnson

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