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HIS GRACE IS [ENOUGH; AS MUCH AS IS NEEDED]

22 Saturday Mar 2014

Posted by carolyncam1 in Uncategorized

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faith, gift, God, grace, Jesus, mercy, Pharisees, salvation, works

What was going on during the 400 years between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament?  I don’t know a lot about that period of history, but I do know that the Jewish religious leaders spent a lot of their time adding details to the ten laws God had given them to insure everyone was following them in the strictest sense.  “Don’t pick up your mat on the Sabbath” – they decided that was work.  “Don’t pick one piece of grain from the field on the Sabbath” – they decided that was harvesting, thus it was work.”  By the time they were done adding minute details to insure compliance, there were thousands of laws the Jewish people had to keep track of.  There must have been a shared belief that it was possible to be in complete obedience to God’s Laws if they could list all the behaviors they considered to be in violation and punish those who did not comply.  Without considering all of the theological and historical facts of what was actually going on, that’s my simplistic take on what they were trying to do.  They just kept burdening the people by adding more and more details to the Law. 

Mark 3:2-6 ESV – “And they watched Jesus, to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. And he said to the man with the withered hand, “Come here.” And he said to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.”

It is easy for us to see the error of the religious leaders.  But adding rules and requirements to God’s gift of salvation is something most of us regularly do, though it is generally less obvious to us.  We accept Christ’s payment of our sin debt as a gift initially, but as we live out our faith, we unwittingly add “details” and expect ourselves and others to comply with our ideas of Godly behavior.  I often find myself calculating the hours I spend reading my Bible or praying to insure I am devoting enough time to my relationship with God – what “enough time” is I’m not sure.  I worry that I haven’t found a meaningful way to serve others: proof that I am not yet worthy of being His child.  Grace IS amazing and I have to remind myself every day that I don’t have to add anything to it.  Of course, I need to be doing – but living out the love I have for God is not the same as the misguided notion that what I am doing is earning my salvation.  

Ephesians 2:8-10 – “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

Almost every day I read something about things we must include in our Christian walk to assure us of our salvation.  A Pentecostal friend doubts my salvation because I don’t speak in tongues.  I ran across a website that says being baptized isn’t simply an act of obedience but a requirement for salvation.  Churches often adopt a written statement of how its members will conduct themselves, listing behaviors that they will and will not engage in.  For grace to be free, and His Word assures us that it is, there can be no signs or behaviors required, except this one:  to believe that Jesus is God in human form and that His death is the only way we can be made righteous before God and thereby be reconciled to Him.  Period. 

Romans 11:6 – “But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.”

It’s easy to tell others all of the things we stopped or started doing as a result of our relationship with Christ.  But when non-believers, new Christians or unlearned believers hear these things, they conclude that God loves us based on the things we do or do not do.  They cannot separate these things from the concept of grace that we try to explain.  Just as the Pharisees kept the Jewish people accountable for every detail of the Law, those we are trying to help find Christ believe they must be “in compliance” with the “laws” we hold about following Christ and know they will fail, so they choose not to take part.  How much better if Christians talked as much about free grace as we do about acceptable behavior – or better yet, provide examples of God’s grace through our own lives. 

Psalm 14:2-3 – “The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.”

In order to appreciate this amazing free gift of grace, we need to understand how God views Sin.  Once we understand how vile it is to Him, we begin to understand what is so amazing about His grace.  Think about forgiving a murderer for killing an innocent child, then take it to the next level – pay his debt to society for him; serve his prison sentence even when it means you will be executed for the crime. We murder our relationship with God when we choose Sin over Him.  We are the murderer taking from God what He loves.  Our sentence was death but God paid it, not simply by forgiving us but actively paying the debt required.

Once we comprehend God’s grace to us, there is another challenge:  extending God’s grace to others, again, not as a requirement of salvation but as a way to show others the extent of God’s love for us.  While we may find extending mercy – the opposite side of the grace/mercy coin – a bit easier because it is deciding NOT to do what we feel we have a right to do, grace modeled on God’s example requires action most often in direct opposition to what our human nature wants to do. God’s grace isn’t merely a decision to forgive us when we don’t deserve it.  He DID something – He left His glorious home and came to earth where He suffered rejection, humiliation, and a painful death.  God’s example of grace is the model for our treatment of those who have wronged us – to do the unexpected, something non-believers would deem “over-the-top” – forgive the murderer, sure, but how about developing a relationship with him because he doesn’t know Christ; forgive the woman at work who stole your idea and, as a result, got that promotion, but also send her a card or a gift congratulating her, knowing God is in control of your life and your rewards are eternal.  Once we grasp the extent of God’s grace to us and stand in genuine awe of it, over-the-top behavior can become our new normal.  What a difference that would make in our world!

“Amazing grace, …  saved a wretch like me.”

LOVE BEYOND COMPREHENSION

25 Friday Oct 2013

Posted by carolyncam1 in Uncategorized

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forgiveness, God, grace, Jesus, love, prayer, prodigal, relationship, salvation, steadfast, trust

You know how you can be skipping along through life and one day realize you never fully understood something you thought you had figured out a long time ago?   That happened to me the other night.  I was praying, asking God to help me through a struggle I am experiencing.  As is my habit, my prayer consisted of expressing my trust that He will work it out for good while questioning what I needed to do to correct the situation and asking Him to forgive me for getting in His way.  My prayer brought on more frustration than peace. 

Psalm 46:10 – “Be still, and know that I am God”

Then God’s still, small voice came to me and I felt His presence. It was as if God was physically beside me, cradling me in His arms as He whispered into my ear “My child, you do not yet understand my love for you.”  It literally took my breath away.  I started to respond but immediately understood that this was a time to listen; to be still.  I lay there thinking about what I have experienced and what I have learned over the past four years, and what I know to be true about God.   He brought to my mind how I keep struggling to insure I live up to the love He has for me, even though I know in my mind He requires nothing from me.  I recalled how I constantly try not to disappoint Him and He reminded me that even when I do it doesn’t change His love for me one bit.

Psalm 139: 7-10:  “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.  If I take the wings of the morning, And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, Even there Your hand shall lead me”

I am not good at relationships.  Too often in my family people handled conflicts with others by putting them out of their lives.  I’ve done the same thing over and over in my life.  Ending a relationship was easier than changing my behavior or an attitude, easier than admitting I’m wrong or putting forth extra effort to show love when I wasn’t feeling it.  We tend to manage our relationship with God the same way we handle our relationships with people and I realized that’s what I was doing.  I was constantly struggling to make sure I held up my end of the relationship but I had no idea how to do that.  I feared I would mess up or quit trying out of frustration.  God is literally a part of me, He dwells in me, and walking away from this relationship is not an option!    

Hosea 14:4 – “…I will love them freely.”

I knew God’s grace is free; it’s not possible to pay my debt so, in my mind, God came up with a plan to save us but that didn’t mean He necessarily had to love us (clear as mud, huh?).  Somehow I separated His grace from His love.  Love in this world is work and we are taught explicitly and implicitly that we must earn it.  It’s hard to change our thinking about that because that’s the only kind of love we have ever experienced.  But we have to get past that and truly accept that His love is different, it really is free.  God is not waiting for me to do certain things to “earn” it.

Funny, but my granddaughter just happened to be spending the night with me the night of my prayer and was asleep in the bed next to me (God’s timing is impeccable!).  As I looked at her I thought about how much I love her and how much my love for her surprises me sometimes – the depth of it, the tenderness of it; there is nothing she does that makes my love for her grow stronger each day, yet it does.  There is nothing she can do that would diminish my love for her; nothing she can do that would make me not want to be around her; I would do anything to protect her.  Even when she does things that I don’t like, my love for her isn’t diminished at all.  God showed me in that moment that while I can compare His love to what I feel for my granddaughter, His is greater.  It finally sunk in and I wept. 

Psalm 103:11 “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;”

 I walked an aisle and accepted Jesus’s gift of salvation when I was about 11 years old.  But I gave in to worldly pressures and lived my life apart from God for the next 10 or 11 years.  I returned to Him after my daughter was born but again yielded to the temptations of the world after about 6 years.  I lived the following 24 years much like Solomon, running after every desire I had:  money, men, material possessions, worldly “wisdom.”  Granted, I did not have near the resources Solomon did to satisfy his desires, but I acquired what I could with the little I had by any (legal!) means I could manage.  In 2009 the burden of my sinful life became too much to bear and I begged God to take over.  Over the past four years I’ve come to know Him.  As I looked back at the 39 years since I first accepted what Jesus did for me on that cross, I saw all that He had done for me even as I lived in total disobedience.  It was God who had taken care of me.  He had never allowed anything in my life that I couldn’t handle.  He had, in fact, kept every promise He makes to us in His Word.  The night of my prayer I saw how He has cared for me, how patient He has been.  I have done so many things that no doubt grieve Him mightily and in spite of it all, He took me back.  

Isaiah 41:13: “For I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, “Fear not, I am the one who helps you.”

As I lay there that night I realized I am the prodigal Jesus talks about in His parable in the 15th chapter of Luke:

Luke 15:17-24 – “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.  I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’  So he got up and went to his father. “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.  “The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.  Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate.  For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.”

It is nothing short of amazing that God welcomed me back with open arms.  He doesn’t hold anything back.  He doesn’t treat those of us who go astray any differently from those who have been obedient to Him. Now, get this:  each time one of His wayward children come back, there is great rejoicing in heaven.  He rejoiced when I came back! 

Luke 15:10 – “…I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

That night I finally gave control of my heart to God.  Knowing the truth about God’s love fills me with a desperate desire to please Him in everything I do.  It’s no longer a struggle of my will.  As I deal with the situation I prayed about that night, I have a new peace and love towards the people involved.  Since that night, I see others through God’s eyes – the ones that watched as I did things that broke His heart.  Through it all, He watched with unwavering love for me, knowing I would return.  I must pass His love on and I now have the power and the understanding to do it.  I can do no less. 

Jeremiah 31:3 – “The Lord has appeared of old to me, saying: “Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you.”

The Importance of Consistent Faith

16 Friday Aug 2013

Posted by carolyncam1 in Uncategorized

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Christians, faith, God, harvest, Jesus, mission, salvation, witness

I often get discouraged when I don’t seem to be helping people move forward in making a commitment to Christ.  I know I can only do the work, plant the seeds and then wait for God to “win them over,” but I am always looking for indications that some progress is being made, that something I’ve said or done has awakened that need to know Him that is built into all of us.  It’s a bad habit and I need to learn that God’s timetable is very different than mine.  I know if anyone was looking for some indication from me that my heart was changing, they would not have seen much, if anything.  I yielded to God in the space of about 5 minutes and I don’t think there were any signs before that.  The changes took some time, but anyone anxiously waiting for signals from me was probably frustrated with my lack of progress.

 “The Lord says, “My thoughts are not like your thoughts.  Your ways are not like my ways.  Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.”  Isaiah 55:8-9

 This verse is true about God’s working in our life in many areas, but I have to remind myself of it a lot when I think about loved ones who don’t know Jesus.  Too often I allow my concern for them to take away my joy.  It’s a vicious circle because I want them to see the peace and joy I have found so they will want what I have.  Too often, they see the sadness and frustration and I’m sure they want no part of that kind of life!  I have to remember that God will find a way to soften their hearts and open their eyes and ears.  Only He knows what it will take to accomplish this.  Nothing is too big for God, even as I consider how far away from Him some of my loved ones are.  As I try to devise plans on how to help them discover the truth, God thumps my noggin and reminds me that I can not imagine how He might be working.  The most important thing I do is consistently show others Jesus by how I live my life.

 Sometimes I grow weary and I think perhaps I will just leave people alone about Jesus.  But doing nothing won’t ease my concern and certainly doesn’t rid me of my responsibility to lead others to Him.  I know how God used others to reach me and I’m thankful they didn’t decide to leave me alone.  More often than not, their actions spoke louder than their words, but I did have to learn God’s plan of salvation by listening to those who were trying to explain it to me and I struggled with that for a long time.

 I can remember conversations with Christians that didn’t sit right with me.  I wish I could say they just left me feeling a bit unsettled, even convicted about my attitude toward God, but that wasn’t the case.  I was irritated by them, sometimes angry.  Sometimes I felt offended and wondered where in the world they were getting their information.  My conclusion was that they were self-righteous and they were somehow putting me down.  I believed they were talking about their experience and they couldn’t accept the fact that my experience with God was different from theirs.  Of course, my “experience” with God wasn’t really an experience.  It was merely a list of ideas and beliefs I had decided on.  Very little was based on anything I had actually learned about God and I certainly wasn’t connecting with Him.  I didn’t want anyone telling me what to believe; I was going to hold on to my beliefs, thank you very much! 

 In order to move forward, I had to take an honest look at myself and figure out why I was so unwilling to listen to what was being said.  What I realized was that I didn’t want to be wrong about something as personal as my spirituality.  I didn’t want anyone else to know more than I did.  Pride was keeping me from knowing God.  I had to make a conscious decision that it was OK if I actually learned something from somebody about God.  Not knowing something didn’t make me stupid or inferior.  It just meant I had missed something or misinterpreted something along the way.  I had to quit bending the truth to make it fit my life choices, most of which horrify me now.  What I needed most was a sincere believer who I knew truly cared about me.  I needed to know I could trust the person I would have to open up to.  I needed to know they would love me in spite of all I had done and that they wouldn’t share my sordid story with anyone. My general distrust of people left that field of possibilities limited to, oh, about ONE.

 My daughter had the biggest impact on leading me to Christ (in second and third place are Alistair Begg and the K-Love radio station).  My daughter and I are very close and, as a result of my trust in her and love for her I could hear what she was saying about God through my anger, resentment, pride and shame because I knew she loved me, I knew she truly cared about me.  I could let my defenses down with her.  She had no ulterior motives.  She didn’t think she was better than me, never criticized me for my worldly ways.  She just talked to me about what she learned, what she knew to be true, shared her experiences.  She lived life based on principles God laid out for us.  She just spoke truth and shared with me what the Bible said through words and actions.  We had some doctrinal debates but there was never one where she walked off angry with me for not agreeing with her.  When we hit an impasse, she would just kind of shrug her shoulders and move on.  She never knew how closely I was watching her, but I noticed her quiet confidence, her willingness to look inside herself and change, her eagerness to please God by doing a lot of things she really didn’t want to do.  I did see her struggle through some of these things but her decisions were ultimately based on how God wanted her to live her life and I knew I wanted my life to be more like hers than anyone else I had ever known.

 I had to warn her about this blog because she does not like attention drawn to herself and wants the glory to be given to God alone, rightfully so.  Her response, predictably, was “Don’t give me too much credit, Mom.”  But I told her that God used her to lead me to Him and we need to tell people how He has worked in our lives; how He used her even when she was unaware of it.  While it’s a testament to her, it is also a testament to God and the subtle ways He moves around in our lives.  The strongest statement she makes is her consistent efforts to be faithful to God.  Sure, she wavers from time to time, but even that helped me because I knew she wasn’t perfect and I knew she knew she wasn’t perfect.  During these times, I watched as she worked herself back to where she needed to be.

 “And he said to them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”  Matthew 4:19

 My daughter worked with youth at church and many came to admire and depend on her.  She also talks to me about her concern for friends who don’t have a relationship with God and how difficult it is to “be bold” sometimes.  I can’t be sure how many people God has reached using her, I’m sure there are many.  But I know for sure He used her to reach me.  Even if our mission field consists of only 1 or 2 people, that’s important.  Those 1 or 2 folks will be eternally grateful for our efforts someday: they will spend eternity with God because we didn’t give up!  I know God would have reached me somehow if my daughter had not been in my life, a possibility that came close to being a reality, but I’m glad He decided He needed her in my plan.  You see, when I found out I was pregnant with her, I scheduled an abortion.  Through a miraculous chain of events, her life was spared. 

 I could only see how a baby was going to make my life difficult.  I wasn’t going to give her the chance to be born yet God used her to give me a chance to be re-born!  I can’t begin to name the many ways in which she has blessed me, but I certainly never would have guessed that my child would play this role in my life!  There are no other Christians that I remained close enough to for God to use to reach me.  By saving her, He saved me.  He knew exactly what it would take to lead me back to Him and He made it happen.  It certainly didn’t seem like a plan from God: I was single, still in college.  I couldn’t even take care of myself, let alone a baby.  But God used the situation for my good.  Years later I would destroy all the good He had done in my life, but in spite of me, He managed to use that little girl to save me. 

Each one of us is an important part of God’s plan.  No matter how small we might feel our role is God does not view it as small.  When things are tough, our words and actions have to demonstrate to others that we are trusting Him.  If He is using us to save just one person, we must understand how important that is and we have to realize we may not even know when He’s using us or with whom.  I sometimes get frustrated because I think if I wasn’t so shy or if I was smarter or knew more Bible verses or got more involved, God could use me to reach more people.  As I learn more and get more involved, He will use me in different ways.  But I need to keep doing what God is leading me to do right now and He will use it for whomever needs the things I can give right now, whether that’s 1 person or 1,000 people.  When Jesus died on the cross, He didn’t think about saving a lot of people in a very general sense.  He thought about me and you individually.  If I was the only person on earth, He would have died on the cross to save me.  Each day we must strive to live each moment in a way that reflects Christ because we never know how closely someone is watching us.  My daughter is right when she says we can’t take the credit.  God gets the glory, but we can rejoice that He found us worthy to be part of His plan to save someone from eternal separation from Him.

 Every now and then, my daughter apologizes for giving me advice or pointing out a weakness, feeling like she may have crossed a line with me, her mother.  But in spiritual things we are sisters in Christ. I often feel ashamed because it’s supposed to be my job to guide and advise her, not the other way around.  For many years I failed her in that but we are a team now, helping and supporting one another in our walks and in our efforts to lead others to Jesus.  She is my model for my witness for Him and just as she never gave up on me, I will not give up on those God puts in my mission field! Every minute of every day I am acutely aware of how closely I watched my daughter and how her consistent faith helped me see Jesus. 

 “Then He said to His disciples, The harvest is great, but the labourers are few;…” Matthew 9:3

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