FULL OF GRACE AND TRUTH

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth… For from His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”  (John 1:14,16,17 ESV)

There is more nonsense per square inch about worldliness than perhaps any other subject in the Christian life.  Usually, worldliness is reduced to a laundry list of taboos -- the nasty nine, the terrible ten, or the dirty dozen, depending on whose list you go by.

The do's and don'ts sound like they come straight from Sinai, but the truth of the matter is, they originate from our own parochial prejudices.

We want to watch out for worldliness, but we also want to watch out for the legalistic labels that some condescending Christians stick on many areas of life where God has granted us freedom.

The key to an abundant life under the lordship of Christ is not trying to impress Him with the check marks on our laundry list but trying to live like He lived -- full of grace and truth, not full of legalism and pious platitudes. 

-- Charles R. Swindoll in “The Practical Life of Faith” [1990] 

#6211

EMBRACING GENTLENESS

"Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near."  (Philippians 4:5 NIV) 

Pastor and author John Vawter once noted, “If we want to demonstrate the uncommon grace of Jesus to a world that worships power, we must set aside our combativeness to embrace gentleness.”

In a world that prizes dominance, assertiveness, and the last word, gentleness often feels like weakness. But Jesus flipped that narrative. He rode into Jerusalem not on a warhorse, but on a donkey. He washed the feet of those who would betray Him. He spoke truth not with thunder, but with tenderness.

Gentleness is not passivity. It is strength under control. It is power under purposeful direction. It is the Spirit-led choice to respond with grace when provoked, to listen when others shout, and to love when the world demands retaliation.

Jesus’ grace is uncommon because it doesn’t play by the world’s rules. It doesn’t seek to win arguments -- it seeks to win hearts. And that kind of grace is only visible when we lay down our need to be right, to be loud, to be first and take up the Jesus way. 

-- SOUND BITES Ministry™, compiled from a variety of sources

#6210

IN THE END, THE EXCLAMATION POINT

“Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”  (1 Corinthians 15:55,57 NIV)

Several years ago, I received a phone call from a young woman in my congregation, asking if I could go to the hospital to see her… For several months she had experienced upsetting symptoms, but had charged them off as related to pregnancy and delivery… She was a victim, her doctors reported, of multiple sclerosis…

There are times when it is very difficult to be a parish pastor. If you care about people and want to help them, you dread those moments when almost anything you say will seem trivial. If you’re a medical doctor, you can begin outlining a series of treatment or medication, even if both of you know that it’s only a stopgap. But when you’re a pastor, you deal only in words and in the intangibles of faith; and you’re afraid that any words you speak at such a moment will be inane, and that if you try to convey faith, your words won’t be heard. You wish, often, that faith could be bottled or packaged in some physical form, so you could hand it to a person, and they in turn could grasp it, then perhaps take it like a capsule, three times a day, with a glass of water.

But suddenly -- I shall always credit it to the Holy Spirit – a sentence came to me, and I spoke it. “Multiple sclerosis isn’t the last word,” I said. “It isn’t even the next-to-last word. The next-to-last word is faith, and the last word is God.” We talked a while longer, and we prayed. But most of all we remembered that the last word, always and always, is God. The devil will seek to push any number of counterfeits upon us, to persuade us that we have come to an end. But it is never the end until we have said God. And after God comes the exclamation point…

Because that’s the way it ends if you place yourself in Jesus Christ, because He has made an ultimate end to death. No comma or semicolon, no poor period, no fumbling ellipsis, and surely no question mark. An exclamation point! Thanks be to God, an exclamation point! 

-- J. Ellsworth Kalas, excerpted from a sermon entitled “In the End, the Exclamation Point”, February 28, 1990

MOVING BEYOND THE ENTRANCE

“[Christ’s] divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence, by which He has granted to us His precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire… For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”  (2 Peter 1:3,4,11 ESV)

We come to Jesus Christ and He does for us what He promised; and the thing works out. To our amazement, it works out. And then we settle down. We have had our own first-hand and irrefutable experience. But, instead of opening the windows to the glory of the sunshine so evidently there, instead of being incited to a hugeness of faith by what Christ has already done for us, we can't believe that there can be anything more, or that even He can work, for us, anything better. That first foretaste satisfies us. And so we camp for life out on the confines of the Kingdom, and never press on to inherit what is there and meant for us. 

-- A. J. Gossip (1873-1954) in “Experience Worketh Hope” [1944] 

#6208

REAL PEOPLE

Jesus said to His disciples, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another.”  (John 13:34-35 NIV)

Christians in their relationships should be the most human people you will ever see.  This speaks for God in an age of inhumanity and impersonality and facelessness.  When people look at us, their reaction should be, "These are human people" -- human, because we know that we differ from the animal, the plant, and the machine; and that personality is native to what has always been [human].  If they cannot look upon us and say, "They are real people", nothing else is enough. 

Far too often, young people become Christians and then search among the Church's ranks for real people, and have a hard task finding them.  All too often, [Christians] are paper people.  If we do not preach these things, talk about them to each other, and teach them carefully from the pulpit and in the Christian classroom, we cannot expect Christians so to act.  This has always been important, but it is especially so today because we are surrounded by a world in which personality is increasingly eroded.  If we, who have become God's children, do not show Him to be personal in our lives, then in practice we are denying His existence, and He cannot be anything but grieved. 

-- Francis A. Schaeffer in “The God Who Is There”  [1968]

#6207