Defining Grace

Some details of my salvation experience are as tangible as the keys beneath my fingertips; others blend into a haze of childhood experiences fusing seamlessly with other memories to where I'm not clear where the distinction lies.  As I remember, I decided to attend a revival with my grandparents shortly after the birth of my youngest sister.  (After having children of my own, I am growing more aware that the decision was probably made for me by a weary mom.)  I think I was eight years old, had attended church my entire life, even on family vacations, small, intense, churches, so I was accustomed to sermons that would make Jonathan Edwards sweat.  Something about this particular sermon gripped my little heart in fear.  Perhaps it was reminding those of us who were lost of the fiery flames of hell that would engulf our worthless souls if we didn't respond to the altar call immediately.  I even remember pulling my feet up into the pew as if the fire could somehow lick my shiny patent leather shoes from beneath the floor.  Whatever it was, I made my way up the aisle to the altar and asked Christ into my heart.  I was baptized in Big Wills Creek a few weeks later, a story which brings untold amusement to my city students.

For most of my childhood, I saw God as big, powerful, and scary, sitting on the edge of his throne waiting for me to fail.  If I'm completely honest, I came to Him in fear rather than overwhelmed by His mercy and love.  I was vaguely aware God loved me, but it never resonated in a way that left me running into His arms with peals of, "Abba."  I understood God as my judge, but as my daddy, I was too unworthy to receive that kind of love from the Creator of the universe.

Without an adequate understanding of grace, I evolved into a self-righteous good girl driven to guilt anytime I disobeyed one of my own arbitrary rules.  Thou shalt not wear a two-piece swimsuit or immodest clothing.  Check.  Thou shalt not drink.  Check.  Thou shalt not be seen with the "unholy."  Check.  Thou shalt not make anything lower than a 95.  Double-check.  I understood faith without works is dead.  That I grasped.  In fact, it was my mantra, etched firmly into my mind, sending me running in circles earning my salvation with gusto.  But grace....  Crickets.  Grace....  Um, yeah, I was absent that day in Sunday school, but I've memorized the 100th and 23rd Psalm.  Anyone want to hear?    Grace....  Johnson?  Johnson?  Anyone seen Johnson?  Grace....  Wild, unabashed, relentless pursuit, untamed love.  That kind of grace I failed to grasp.  Of all the people on earth, I was the one exception to the grace, not by works, law of love.  That couldn't possibly apply to me.

I'm a doer.....an achiever.  I've run marathons..OK, marathon, but five halves. Graduated valedictorian and summ cum laude.  You want work ethic.  I'm your girl.  My identity is so wrapped up in my achievements sometimes that it's no surprise how the concept of grace can elude me.  There's nothing I can do to earn salvation.  Nothing.  Nada.  Zip.  And for someone like me that's oddly unsettling until I don't measure up, until failure inevitably comes knocking on my door.  Then grace sounds wonderful except that I can't seem to convince myself that God meant me, too.  So, recently, I've been on a quest to truly grasp the grace of God and what it must mean to my relationship with Him, if I'm ever to truly grasp how high, how deep, and how wide His love is for me.  I recently finished reading Brennan Manning's The Ragamuffin Gospel and let's just say it is a book that has ruined me, wrecked me, driven me to my knees weeping tears of release and sweet relief.

It also forces me to realize that I must not be alone.  Browse the recent list of best-selling Christian titles: The Christian Atheist, Gods at War, Grace, The Utter Relief of Holiness, The Hole in Our Holiness:  it seems we're either not doing enough or that we don't understand grace.  We're a nation, or at least we were, a nation of do-it-yourselfers, American dreamers.  Our culture tells us to work harder, longer, and more, and I think that attitude has seeped into our churches, as well.  Manning writes, "the bending of the mind by the powers of this world has twisted the gospel of grace into religious bondage and distorted the image of God into an eternal, small-minded bookkeeper.... Love is stifled, freedom shackled, and self-righteousness fastened.  The institutional church has become a wounder of the healers rather than a healer of the wounded.  Put bluntly, the American church today accepts grace in theory but denies it in practice....Too many Christians are living in the house of fear and not in the house of love....Many Christians live as if only personal discipline and self-denial will mold the perfect me.  The emphasis is on what I do rather than on what God is doing."  That's me.  Living in a house of fear rather than residing in the love.

I live with a fear of failure, a fear of being exposed for the fraud that I am, hiding the real me because if anyone knew my real fears and inadequacies they couldn't possibly continue to love me.  And it's exhausting.  The real me is messy.  The real me is sometimes lazy.  The real me tends to be selfish.  The real me likes slapstick comedy.  The real me likes the taste of wine.  The real me likes clothes.  The real me made some bad decisions after college and wasn't always the straight and narrow vision of perfection I like to reflect.  The real me doesn't have it all together, but don't let anyone else know because what would they think if they knew most nights dinner comes out of the freezer and when company comes, I shove all the toys into the closet.  But, I'm growing weary, tired of trying to earn my salvation through "works of righteousness that are like filthy rags."  A life without grace is a life that quickly unravels.

The past few weeks the God who's always been there, but I've never trusted enough to allow to truly reveal Himself to me has whispered.  Grace.  My grace is sufficient.  Quit pretending.  Quit trying.  He is saying I accept you....just as you are.  Flaws, warts, bad decisions, and all.  Grace through the blood of Christ has covered all that.  You can't earn My love, sweet girl.  There's nothing on this earth you can do to make me love you less.  I've come to a painful realization; one that is wrecking me.  Until I allow myself to accept grace and to see God as love, not just judge, then I'll never completely surrender all of myself to Him because as hard as it is to admit, it's hard to trust the transforming power of the gospel of grace when I don't see how wildly He loves and pursues me.  How that must hurt Him?  Imagine if my children came to me and asked, "Mommy, do you love me?"  To which I'd respond with a heartfelt, overwhelming, "Of course.  More than the very breath of life itself."  Then they came to me the next day and asked, "Mommy, do you really love me?"  That would be crushing to think my children somehow doubted my love, but that's exactly how I treat the one who bled and died for my transgression.  Oh, how that tears my heart!

I love how Manning puts the reality of God's love through grace.  "What a stunning truth!  Justification by grace through faith is the theologian's learned phrase for what Chesterton once called "the furious love of God."  He is not moody or capricious; He has a single restless stance toward us:  He loves us.  But of course, this is almost too incredible for us to accept....Through no merit of ours, by His mercy, we have been restored to a right relationship with God through the life, death, and resurrection of His beloved son.  This is the Good News, the gospel of grace."  and later "Grace is the active expression of his love.  The Christian lives by grace as Abba's child, utterly rejecting the God who catches people by surprise in a moment of weakness- the God incapable of smiling at our awkward mistakes, the God who does not accept a seat at our human festivities, the God who says, "You will pay for that," the God incapable of understanding that children will always get dirty and be forgetful, the God always snooping around after sinners.  At the same time, the child of the Father rejects the pastel-colored pasty God who promises never to rain on our parade."    This is the father of the prodigal extending his arms in love not demanding an apology and explanation from his wayward son.  It's also the God who "disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness." Hebrews 12:10. Grace frees us from looking down our noses at others in self-righteous condemnation and demand them to get it all together, to think like us, to ship up or shape out.  It allows us to embrace a hurting world and declare that Jesus died for you, too.

I've always related to the disciple Paul, the spitfire, impulsive disciple who, in his mind, let God down.  I've lived a life of "letting God down."  He spent years with Jesus in the flesh, broke bread with the Savior, had his feet washed by His king, yet when it came time to stand up for Jesus, he didn't just deny him once.  Peter denied him three times.  I can't imagine how that must have haunted Peter in the hours following the crucifixion.  I can be at a neighborhood party, speaking with non-Christian friend when the conversation turns toward faith, yet rather than embracing the opportunity I stutter, "I love your new curtains," hearing the echo of the rooster in the distance then beat myself up for days over a missed opportunity.  Yet, when Jesus encountered Peter, he didn't scold him or berate him.  Instead, our Savior asked this impulsive betrayer to feed his lambs. He gently gave Peter the responsibility of building the church.  And so moved by this grace, Peter became the rock upon which the foundation of the church was laid.  Grace overlooks our flaws and allows us to be part of the team.  "Grace means that God is on our side and thus we are victors regardless of how well we have played the game."  It's time I loosen my perceived halo, admit my powerlessness, and embrace the love of God.

Does grace mean a license to sin?  "Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?  By no means! We are those who died to sin.  How can we live in it any longer?" Romans 6:1.  What I believe God is teaching me is that by understanding His love and surrendering to His grace, I then allow the power of his Holy Spirit to transform me.  I cease depending on my own power and rest freely in His.  I will fail, but He will not.  Gripped firmly in the grasp of His love, I am free to be me.  I'm free to embrace my brokenness and lay it at His feet as an offering of all I am then joyously serve in the true freedom of knowing that I am loved.  It is fully engulfed in this truth that I am able to share more freely and honestly who He is and what He has done in my life.  "While Jesus calls us all to a more perfect life, we cannot achieve it on our own.  To be alive is to be broken; to be broken is to stand in need of grace.  It is only through grace that any of us could dare to hope that we could become more like Christ.  The saved sinner with the tilted halo has been converted from mistrust to trust, has arrived at an inner poverty of spirit, and lives as best as she can in rigorous honesty with self, others, and God."  Never have I been happier to tilt my halo, fall at the feet of Jesus, and allow Him to pick me up, cradle me in His arms, and love me.  Under the gospel of grace, I am compelled to live my life in response to Christ's goodness.  Duty is exchanged for sheer delight.  After years of misunderstanding what grace means of trying to earn God's love of living condemned by the guilt of letting Him down, I'm finally ready to run into the arms of my Abba then share that love with the rest of the world!