I’ve seen love, and I’ve seen its black, bloody demise. And when you’ve seen it die, watched it putrefy and grown nauseated from its stench, powerless to run away, you’re apt to start doubting it was all that great to begin with. Sometimes the people we trust the most do something so selfish it leaves us slack-jawed and shattered. 

Even if you’ve made it this far without any major disappointments in the love department, you are certainly aware that love is imperfect, and that too can eat away at your faith in it. 

I suspect this is a large part in why we have trouble with God's grace.

Grace is all-encompassing forgiveness, based nothing on what we do, but on Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. God longed for connection with his children, and made a way to hold us in his arms again, completely clean and accepted. Don’t take my word for it: 

Romans 8:1 says, “So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus.” (NLT) and Ephesians 2:9 says that salvation is “not by works, so that no one can boast.” (NIV) 

Those are pretty clear statements about the nature of what it means to be saved, and yet we choose to zero in on the verses about God’s standards. When we become New Creations in Christ, by grace alone, our hearts are changed within us. We desire to do God's will more and more. But it doesn't add to our salvation one bit. But we seem to want to make God a monster, always ready to strike his children down. The more dreadful we make God, the holier we feel about our self-righteousness. We’ve clearly adopted a very unhealthy no pain no gain attitude about Christianity that puts our 'good works' at its center.

But, again, I can see why. The love’s too much.

No other experience in the world begins with victory as does the Gospel. That throws us for a loop. We want there to be a catch. We believe that there has to be, because everything in our personal experiences has had catches. Nothing has been free. We can’t accept that we are completely forgiven, so we feel this nebulous guilt and shame

We feel like we must do something to atone. 

One thing we do is make arbitrary rules to hold up as markers of true faith:

True Christians don’t dance, 
 smoke, 
  cuss,
   or watch television. 
    True Christians vote a certain way. 
     True Christians read a certain Bible. 
  
Then we have this tangible thing to feel pride in—something we can brandish as a badge of honor that arrogantly says, “I did this for you, God!

But I get it. 

All the love in the world? Complete forgiveness of sin? Nothing on my part but acceptance? Surely there’s something I must do to earn my keep.

The problem with God's grace is that it’s so big that we can’t wrap our minds around it.We're scared of it. Afraid that it's going to create a bunch of people who take advantage of it.

That's just not true. Once we're Christians, God’s standards do a good job of reminding us what it means to live a loving (or if you prefer, moral) life. But they don't give us any power to do them. I believe that it is His grace—that amazing act of love on the Cross, on our behalf—and His Spirit within us that births desire to reach for those standards. 

It’s not stern sermons, or the end of the moral whip that encourages us to be more like Jesus. It’s seeing His love for us and saying, “That’s who I want to be like.” It’s knowing that no matter how unloving we may sometimes act, or how often we get it wrong, we will never lose God's love and acceptance. God is working in us to make us more like Him. But if we never get to that ideal place, God doesn’t love us any less. 

So, it's okay that it's more than we can imagine--so big you can't wrap your head around it. Fall into it. Dive into God's incomprehensible grace and let it cover you instead.




The Prayer...
I have fallen Lord, once more, I can’t go on. I’ll never succeed. I am ashamed. I don’t dare look at You. And yet I struggled, Lord, for I knew you were right near me, bending over me, watching.

But temptation blew like a hurricane, and instead of looking at You, I turned my head away. I stepped aside while you stood, silent and sorrowful, like the spurned fiancée who sees his loved one carried away by the enemy. When the wind died down as suddenly as it had arisen, when the lightening ceased after proudly streaking the darkness, all of a sudden I found myself alone, ashamed, disgusted, with my sin in my hands… this sin that I selected the way a customer makes his purchase, this sin that I have paid for and cannot return, for the storekeeper is no longer there. This tasteless sins, this odorless sin, this sin that sickens me, that I have wanted but want no more, that I have imagined, sought, played with, fondled for a long time; that I have finally embraced while turning coldly away from you, my arms outstretched, my eyes and heart irresistibly drown; this sin that I have grasped and consumed with gluttony.

It’s mine now, but it possesses me as the spider web holds captive the gnat. It is mine. It sticks to me, it flows in my veins, it fills my heart. It has slipped in everywhere, as darkness slips into the forest at dusk and fills all the patches of light. I can’t get rid of it. I run from it the way one tries to lose a stray dog, but it catches up with me and bounds joyfully against my legs.

Everyone must notice it. I’m so ashamed that I feel like crawling to avoid being seen. I’m ashamed of being seen by my friends. I’m ashamed of being seen by You, Lord, for You loved me, and I forgot You. I forgot You because I was thinking of myself and one can’t think of several persons at once. One must choose, and I chose… And Your voice and Your look, and Your love hurt me, they weigh me down more than my sin.

Lord, don’t look at me like that. I am naked. I am dirty. I am down, shattered, with no strength left. I dare make no more promises. I can only lie bowed before You.

And the Father’s Response…
Come, child, look up. Isn’t it mainly your vanity that is wounded? Do you think there is a limit to My love? Do you think that for a moment I stopped loving You? But you still rely on yourself. You must rely only on Me. Ask my pardon and get up quickly. It isn’t falling in the mud that is the worst… but staying there.

There’s something special about children. Now, don’t get me wrong—children are often sassy, entitled, arrogant, superficial, mean, and smell vaguely of sweaty cookies. But God points them out as extraordinary.

In Luke 18:16, Jesus “called for the children and said, 'Let the little children come to me, and stop keeping them away, because the kingdom of God belongs to people like these'" (ISV).

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that statement. If kids are the type of people that the kingdom of God belongs to, I want to be like them. But how?

Trust

Whenever I don’t understand something God is doing, I’m sometimes reminded of a child not understanding why they cannot do a thing which is clearly, to a grownup, not beneficial to them:

In a child's mind, it makes perfect sense that they should get jellybeans on their nachos. I mean we, as adults, have the capacity to give them what they want. We’ve shown them in the past that we love them, and that we’re willing to grant their desires and provide for their needs. So, why, when this so very important jelly-bean related need comes, are we unwilling to provide? It boggles the two-and-a-half-pound mind.

It’s in my own moments of frustration that I completely empathize with how maddening that kind of thing must be for a kid. It makes me want to come up with a better way to explain my no to a child. But, many times, even when we do try to clarify our sincere reasons, it falls on ears unwilling to hear, or minds unable to comprehend—or both.

Beginners

We think we have a solid, basic understanding of how the world works.

We think we’re so smart.

But I have discovered in life that no matter how smart I think I am in a given area, there is always someone so dramatically better at that thing, grasping it so intuitively, that I’m made to feel like a beginner again.

It’s humbling.

I think that’s how it is with us and God. We were children, but now we are fully grown men and women, often clawing our way through life just to make relationships work and ends meet. We would be hard-pressed to admit that we are any longer child-like in our understanding. But, compared to God, we are. God calls us to embrace that fact. But we are unwilling to hear or unable to comprehend.

We need to remember that thing done simply to protect a child is seen as being cruel. When we hold back what seems harmless and good to them, they can’t comprehend any reason that we might do so. So, perhaps, to become like a child, in one sense, is to recall that helplessness and need and to realize that things haven’t changed much where our relationship with God is concerned. Being all-knowing and all-powerful, it stands to reason that God knows best. Whereas we know comparatively little, and have an infuriatingly small amount of control.

It makes sense then that we should become like little children in this area—reliant and trusting of our loving Parent; wise in the fact that we are in need of His guidance in a life we have to admit we do not fully understand. 

It may frustrate us that God does not immediately answer our plea for a job, or stop our pain. But “we are confident that he hears us whenever we ask for anything that pleases him.” (1 John 5:14, NLT). Like a child, I want those things I believe I need now. As a child of God, I need to trust that in my Father’s infinite love, his perfect will is being accomplished. I’m not saying that’s going to be easy, but it will certainly make life a lot less stressful when we accept that God is in control and we don’t have to be.




Photo by Montecruz Foto used under CC