Читать книгу Walking in God's Grace - Inc World Prayr - Страница 5

Introduction

Perhaps you have just accepted Christ as your Savior or maybe you have been saved for a while and just have some questions or are looking for answers to some questions. We may not have covered all your questions in our book, nor all the answers. It is only our intention to help you grow further in your journey.

In 1964 a rock and roll band, The Animals, recorded a narrative song that would be a number one hit and become a cult classic, The House of the Rising Sun. In the song, the soloist speaks of life wasted in sin and misery. As he pleads with mothers to not let their children go down to The House of the Rising Sun, he points out “many a poor boy” has lost his life there and he sadly admits, “I’m one.”

In 1895 William Newell, a Bible teacher at Moody Bible Institute, also reflected on a troubled youth. Newell penned his testimony to prose and that prose became the beautiful hymn we know today as At Calvary. Two songs describing the two aspects of grace. Without understanding the first song and accepting we are indeed “one wasted in sin and misery,” we cannot appreciate the beauty of the hope in the second song.

This is where confusion lies, discourse occurs, mistakes happen, and lives falter. We do not have the vocabulary to express the reality of our condition without God’s atoning grace. As a result we fail to see the gospel as good enough.

It is not that we are just broken. Rather it is as if all the kings’ horses and all the kings’ men were to look upon us, and decide to rescue Humpty Dumpty first! If we look upon our good deeds, those works we think we do so well, through the eyes of God (after all, His opinion is what matters, right?) we would surely rather handle a live skunk.

We are not OK. In fact we are in need of a desperate heart transplant. The only problem is, the hearts available are all dead in sin, like ours.

We are condemned to spend eternity with our own vices, thoughts, interests, senses and inspections. C. S. Lewis in his great book The Great Divorce said, “I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road.”

This is our fate, our destiny. Because one of us screwed up, the rest are forever tied to the railroad tracks of condemnation with the train of eternity just seconds away. Not to mention we are hopeless, and absolutely powerless, to do anything to rescue ourselves. No, we are indeed in desperate need of a rescue, of a Savior.

Hell is indeed real. It is a place of torment and separation from our Creator. We wander with unquenchable thirst, completely lost in our own devices. Unless mercy is given, pardon is multiplied and grace is free, we will be forever lost.

Dante, in his Inferno, pens the following quotes to describe Hell:

“Through me you go into a city of weeping; through me you go into eternal pain; through me you go amongst the lost people” and

“Ye who enter, abandon all hope.”

Jesus, the perfect God-man, had a vision as He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. He saw what we humans face on our own. Without Jesus’ perfect sacrifice, our self-formed destiny leads straight to the wrath of God, and that scene shook Him to the core. For the first time He knew fear, He knew emotional torment to such a degree His sweat became like drops of blood. The sin that exists in all of us demanded that because of God’s justice we suffer hell. Instead, Christ suffered on the cross what we deserved, not because He deserved it but because we did.

That is why the cross exists and is the greatest sign of God’s passionate love towards His creation. The cross does not exist because there was any value in us, or we have, or could ever have something to offer.

We do not get, keep, sustain, maintain or receive this gift because we have confessed all of our sins and somehow became worthy of this gift. We never will and never could. The psalmist said in Psalm 130:3, “If you O LORD, should mark iniquities, LORD, who could stand?” (ESV) The writer of the psalm realizes he also could never atone for his sins. God’s great love, and only His love for us, creates the way to Jesus and redeems us from deserved punishment.

If this was a fairy tale, we are not the heroine like Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, or even Belle. We are something even more despicable than the evil queen.

No! We are indeed the Beast! Our only value is the value instilled by the Creator. Yet, the Creator does not just place and find value in us. He desires us, runs after us, chooses us and redeems us unto Himself so we might be His chosen bride.

We have been wallowing in the pigsty, while He has been preparing for the ultimate party, the most lavish of weddings – ours! Now He has called us in, awaits to eagerly lavish abounding, everlasting grace to us and give us freedom to love Him back.

He is shouting as He offers His grace to us, not “How To’s” or “Steps To” but an “It is finished.” Yet we refuse to accept it, believing in our arrogance and pride that God must allow us do something.

This is not our story, but God’s. A love story and a story of redemption. As God chases His beloved, US, to redeem them to Himself. Not because of what we do, could do or will do but because of what He did.

The record books have been closed as a result of Christ saying “It Is Finished.” Christ gave the ultimate performance, the one we could never give and there are no further applications being accepted by God for the performance of a lifetime. God promised before the foundations of the world that He had a plan; Christ was the fulfillment of that plan. The perfect one became our sin because only He could and as a result God has promised life eternally to all those who now place their faith in that perfect sacrifice.

Now God is not calling us to a life of greater performance, to pick ourselves up so we can do more, be more or accomplish more. For all that needed to be done has been done, and what needed to be accomplished was. He has freed those He calls His own to be able to become what they were originally designed to be.

It really is a worthwhile question to ponder, reflect on and answer, “What are you going to do with your new found freedom?” Knowing our deep need for the ugliness of the cross and God’s great love towards us should compel us to worship God and serve others, which was Paul’s reasoning behind his plea in his letter to the Romans:

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. (Romans 12:1-2, The Message)

Through our obedience we no longer say, “Please approve of me” but “I love You” to the One who calls us in spite of ourselves, His beloved. Then when we abuse, misuse, waste, and trash His grace, as well as rebel, disobey and just flat out blow it, He responds with “I understand you’re human, but I am the I AM. Remember you love Me because I am absolutely crazy about you.” That is the message of God’s love, called grace and where our journey begins as we learn “how to walk in that grace” through the questions and answers of this book.

It was not our intention to provide theological discourse, but practical, Biblical answers. Imagine yourself having a chat with a friend over a cup of coffee or tea at a table about what it means to”Live in Grace.” We may even repeat ourselves, Heaven forbid, in some of our answers. Each question was treated as a completely separate question, apart from the rest, so that if someone is asking a particular question, they have a complete answer available. Our hope is that this serves as a valuable resource, providing to the point answers to some tough questions.

The answers may even seem incomplete; perhaps we have done that for a reason. Remember these are table top answers and often one in a table top conversation only has enough time to give a quick answer.

There may be questions that should have been included, so some would feel. Volumes have been written on most of these questions. We recognize we just barely skim the surface because “we are foolish half-hearted creatures, much more content to play with mud pies” (paraphrased from The Weight of Glory by C. S. Lewis).

Our answers may be attacked by greater minds than ours for not being critical enough, deep enough, thoughtful enough, correct enough or even scriptural enough. Yet, these are the answers we often give when asked these very questions. At the end of the booklet, we include a resource section with a list of books, blogs, podcasts and authors that we recommend. We encourage you to dig deeper into these resources as you move further on your journey.

We pray that this would not serve as the be all and end all, but rather the beginning of discourse, thought, discussion and inspiration to seek out deeper, better, more qualified answers as you walk this journey. For it is God’s desire that you not only help increase your own personal faith but also be prepared to have an answer for every man that asks you about the hope you have in Christ (1 Peter 3:15).

Do not be surprised to find that our answers do not suffice or contradict what you see in Scripture. We are OK with that. Author Brennan Manning once said we are “only pilgrims who may or may not have answers to give and who may or may not be further ahead, for we are only pilgrims, just like you.”

We close this introduction with a refrain from William Newell’s beautiful hymn. And if you find you have further questions, please feel free to contact us at info@worldprayr.org.

Mercy there was great, and grace was free;

Pardon there was multiplied to me;

There my burdened soul found liberty, at Calvary.