restored to grace

Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we’ve been given a brand-new life and have everything to live for, including a future in heaven—and the future starts now! God is keeping careful watch over us and the future. The Day is coming when you’ll have it all—life healed and whole.

I know how great this makes you feel, even though you have to put up with every kind of aggravation in the meantime. Pure gold put in the fire comes out of it proved pure; genuine faith put through this suffering comes out proved genuine. When Jesus wraps this all up, it’s your faith, not your gold, that God will have on display as evidence of his victory.

You never saw him, yet you love him. You still don’t see him, yet you trust him—with laughter and singing. Because you kept on believing, you’ll get what you’re looking forward to: total salvation.

I read passages like these, and during a normal season of my life, it fills me with hope and excitement. But there are dark times that make reading something like this difficult and frustrating. “A day is coming” sounds cheap, almost like “It’s gonna be okay” when you know better.

And it’s easy to feel that way. It’s almost like there’s no way out of a rut you’ve been in for too long. It’s easy to give in because it’s been like this for what feels like an eternity. There’s no direction to life, no purpose anymore, no real fulfillment where there once was pure joy.

But maybe this is for the better. As dark as today may seem, there is a tomorrow. And through the trials we become better, stronger, more resilient. We may not see the completion of our salvation now, but take heart. God has promised to complete it. Like Paul wrote to the church in Philippi, “I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.”

In 627 BCE a man named Jeremiah began his ministry in ancient Israel. He wasn’t exactly a popular fellow because he promised his country that they would be taken captive and hauled away to a foreign land. Obviously people didn’t want to hear that their great nation was going to be defeated and carried off.

But Jeremiah spoke the truth.

In 586 BCE the Babylonian Empire swept through Israel and hauled the population off to Babylon.

But in the middle of all of Jeremiah’s predictions of destruction was a word of hope.

This is what the Lord says: “You will be in Babylon for seventy years. But then I will come and do for you all the good things I have promised, and I will bring you home again. For I know the plans I have for you. They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. In those days when you pray, I will listen. If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me. I will be found by you. I will end your captivity and restore your fortunes. I will gather you out of the nations where I sent you and will bring you home again to your own land” (emphasis added).

In the middle of our pain and suffering,

in the middle of our distress and anxiety,

in the middle of our frustration and hopelessness,

God promises a future.

And because of Jesus, that future starts now.

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I’ve been reading a book by Craig Gross and Jason Harper called Jesus Loves You. . . This I Know, and in the chapter titled “Jesus Loves the Forgotten,” Craig recounts the story of a boy who died alone for no other reason than this: everyone forgot about him.

Some kids in a youth group were encouraged to include even the outcast when inviting other kids to a big lakeside party. A socially awkward boy was invited, and gradually made friends. He pensively swam, with some help, (he was a very inexperience swimmer) to a floating island where the other kids were playing.

Eventually the kids went back to the shore to enjoy cake inside the lakehouse.

But the boy was still on the island.

Everyone went home, but no one remembered the boy alone on the island.

After he was reported missing, a diving search team found his body at the bottom of the lake. It was presumed that he had tried at some point to swim back to shore, but an asthma attack prevented him from reaching.

I’m going to be very honest. There are many times I feel like that boy. I often feel alone and forgotten.

Israel Houghton sang these words: “I am not forgotten.”

We may feel like no one remembers us, but if we consider Jesus’ love for us, we’ll remember that he can’t forget us.

Jesus loves us. I know this because he’s made that promise.

And Jesus never breaks a promise.

This I know.

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I was reading through Revelation 1 yesterday when I stumbled on a passage that had a very intriguing setup.

John describes a powerful, majestic, and terrifying incarnation of Christ. But immediately following this description, Christ says, “Do not be afraid.”

It’s almost as if he’s saying, “Look at what I did for you. I am the Eternal One, and yet I stooped down to experience death for you. But I didn’t stop there. I destroyed death so that you wouldn’t have to taste it. I control Hell so you won’t have to go there. So yeah, there’s no reason to be afraid.”

But if we’re honest, we’ll admit that fear is what drives our lives.

If you’ve followed my blog for any length of time, you’ve seen that I’m obsessed with the concept of love. It’s fascinating to me because it’s probably one of the greatest mysteries of our humanity, yet it’s the most common aspect of our lives. It’s also (supposed to be) the defining point of Christians. (I’ll refrain from my rant about Christians’ failure to exhibit this feature.)

So here’s an interesting thought about love and fear. . .

Love, in its purest form, is completely fearless.

Odd, isn’t it? I mean, fear and love seem to go hand-in-hand. We’re afraid to love because we might get burned.

Or the love won’t be reciprocated.

Or we might be taken advantage of.

All legitimate fears. But none have any place near love.

Check this out.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
~1 John 4.18

Um. Ouch.

I strive to love perfectly, flawlessly, purely. Yet I’m held back by fear. And I think it’s this fear that is crippling me and keeping me from becoming the man that God is calling me to be.

Fear destroys love. The most common command in the Bible is “Do not be afraid” or some variation of it. I think it’s time I start obeying this command.

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My friend Beth posted a fantastic entry on this passage, and as I read it, I couldn’t help but be struck by the inclusiveness of the language.

God pours out his blessings on everyone. No matter what.

All we have to do is ask him.

What’s sad is that we often assume that we have to live a certain way or do certain things before God is willing to share his love with us.

So we slave to earn God’s favor, and hope that he’s happy with the work we’re doing.

But Paul wrote a different story about God.

“If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us?”
~Romans 8.32

It’s interesting to see how much our lives change through a simple change in perspective. You can look at your life one way, believing God to be an angry judge waiting to see us screw up, seeing every difficult or painful situation as a way for him to find fault in what we’re doing. Or you can look at life another way, seeing God as a benevolent king who wants nothing more than to watch you grow and mature, embracing every trial as an opportunity to become stronger and wiser.

And God wants this for us. He’s longing to give us great things. He wants our lives to be fulfilled and joyful. The letter writer James put it this way:

“Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures.”
~James 1.17-18

We mean a lot to God. Isn’t there comfort in knowing this? Maybe a simple shift in perspective is all we need.

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I’m pissed off about the impotence of today’s Christian culture.

We’re a powerless lot, with no agenda beyond that of finding fault in everything our society is doing.

But we’ve been given so much more.

Uncle Ben said it best: “With great power comes great responsibility.”

We’ve been given an enormous amount of power with which we’ve been charged to change the world. Christ left us this promise:

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

But what exactly is this power?

Christ did all kinds of powerful things while he was on earth. He healed the sick, he raised the dead, he multiplied food. But all of these acts were but a reflection of the immensely powerful act he would perform at the end of his life.

He would put an end to death.

And that power resides within us.

And with that power comes a charge: to unite the world and reconcile everything back to God.

But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it.
~Ephesians 2.13-16

It’s somewhat depressing to see that Christians don’t take this charge seriously. But what depresses me even more is seeing Christians who think they’re taking it seriously, but are doing more harm than good, and are actually doing everything they can to turn people away. If something isn’t working, get rid of it! It’s not bad to look at numbers; numbers can be a good way to judge whether your work is effective. If it’s not, try something new. This calling is too important to be wasted on clinging to tradition or what worked twenty years ago.

God calls us to something much bigger than ourselves. He wants to use us as vehicles for his message to the world.

If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.
2 Corinthians 5.17-20

Yes, it’s thrilling to think that “the same power that conquered the grave lives in me,” but if that power isn’t doing anything through us, maybe it’s time to take a long, hard look at ourselves and reevaluate what we’re doing with that power.

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Have you ever been alone with God?

It’s funny how for much of my life I talked a lot about how awesome God is, how amazing Jesus’ work was, blah blah blah.

But when I came face to face with my Creator today, all of that changed.

For two hours my entire world was wrapped up in every facet of his being.

Majesty.

Splendor.

Glory.

And I was left speechless, dumbfounded, and in awe. I fell to the ground, my knees jolting with the impact. The trees above me seemed to whisper as the wind whistled through their branches: “Hallelujah,” they hissed.

As I pulled myself from the ground and began walking again, images of those whom God had used in my life flashed through my mind. And he began to reveal more of himself to me.

Love.

Grace.

Excitement.

I thought of the deeper friendships that I’ve cultivated over the past few years. The men who mentored and discipled me. The friends I shared my love and companionship with. The children I taught and cared for. And once again, I was left humbled and confounded.

This God who spoke breath into my life, who raised up and destroyed nations, who whispered entire galaxies into existence. . . this God is my Daddy, and he loves me.

That’s what I found in my secret place.

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I’m tired of seeing other people through the eyes of a Christian. Sometimes I’m sickened by my own perspective.

But yesterday I saw through different eyes.

Let me tell you a story.

I was working late yesterday trying to finish up some stuff before the start of the weekend. Around 7:30 the door buzzed. I couldn’t see anyone through the office security monitor, so I walked over to the door. I figured it’d probably be one or more of my coworkers coming back from the Verizon 5K.

As I got to the door, a young girl—no older than 17 years—was standing outside. She had dyed black hair and freckles and was wearing a pink camisole and black leggings. A large tattoo stretched from her shoulder to her elbow, and she was clutching some papers in her hand. One of those was our brochure.

I began to sense a barrier building up inside me. Tread carefully, Nate, I heard in the back of my mind. She might be after something.

“Can I help you?” I asked as I cracked the door.

“Someone over at First Choice told me about you guys. Is there someone I can talk to? I’m going through a rough time right now.”

First Choice, huh. Nate, just look at her. Put the two and two together. She’s not the kind of person you want to be talking to. The voice in my mind seemed to be growing louder.

Suddenly the girl vanished in my mind’s eye, and I saw an old friend standing in front of me. “Nate, this girl is me.”

“Have you forgotten where I came from? Have you forgotten what I’ve been through? You say I’m becoming a world-changer. So is she, Nate. I’ve just been on that road longer than she has.”

The girl walked in, and we sat in the lobby/foyer for about five minutes.

After a short chat, I let her out. “I’m sorry there was no one here to help you, but look for us on Sunday.”

As she walked away from my office, I paused. I could almost hear God’s voice whispering to me, “She’s my daughter too, Nate. I’ve given her the same potential to shape the world as I’ve given you. She has so much potential. Can you see it? My Son can. He died for her because he believes in her.”

The band was practicing in the basement. Through the floor I heard Dave singing these words:

There is no guilt here
There is no shame
No pointing fingers
There is no blame
What happened yesterday has disappeared
The dirt has washed away
And now it’s clear

There’s only grace
There’s only love
There’s only mercy
And believe me it’s enough
Your sins are gone
Without a trace
And there’s nothing left now
There’s only grace

And in that moment I realized that God’s story is too big for Christians to get in the way of it.

God’s Kingdom is infiltrating our lives and cutting each one of us through his unparalleled love and grace.

If we’ll look at her through Christ’s eyes, we’ll find that this girl’s story is going to be more beautiful than any we could possibly imagine.

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(continued from this post)

Somewhere along the way, Christians decided that an effective evangelism technique would be to talk about the end of the world.

I apologize for the tone, but really?

As if we had any idea what the end of the world is going to look like anyway.

Have you ever thought that perhaps Revelation was revealing to us something different? That perhaps we were supposed to read beyond the metaphor and allow our eyes to be opened to something deeper than our own world?

What if Revelation were something different from what we initially perceived it to be?
I won’t go into exegetical detail (I’m no theologian, so you don’t want me writing that kind of stuff), but I want to give you an idea of what happened as I read this book with new eyes.

The book of Revelation is one of those books that is often run away from because of its daunting nature and weird metaphoric and apocalyptic language. So naturally, it’s not a book you want to be going to if you don’t know anything about the Bible.

But here’s what I noticed about much of the imagery in Revelation: the stories seemed oddly familiar. They were different somehow.

Check out Chapter 12. Look familiar? Do you see it? It’s the Christmas story.

Different though.

It’s being told, not from our perspective (which you’d find in the writings of Matthew and Luke), but from heaven’s perspective.

The Advent of the Christ was so much more than the birth of a child.

It was a war of universal proportions.

That’s just one example, but it got me asking the question, “What if that’s what Revelation is really about?”

What if Revelation isn’t revealing to us the end of the world and how it will play out? What if it’s revealing to us the history of our world from heaven’s perspective and playing out the most important events throughout that history through the eyes of the Author?

I’ve discovered a deeper richness to the book since allowing my mind to grasp a thought that didn’t come from something I had been taught.

It’s more alive to me now; it’s more exciting, more real.

And suddenly the Bible means something to me.

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There are times in our lives that we have to learn to embrace a truth for ourselves. Not because it’s what our parents taught us or because it’s what we learned in school or church. Because it’s what we know to be true from our own experiences and our own journey.

I discovered that my “beliefs” were being challenged by everything that came by. Ironically enough, they were being challenged internally. . . by the very people who claimed to hold to these truths.

At first, it was in practice. I found myself wrestling with this concept of love. Love was great in theory. It was easy to say, “I’m doing this to you in love.” But did Christians really think about what was in the best interest of the person whom they said they loved?

Love appeared to be a concept Christians hid behind in order to justify how they treated nonbelievers. But the “love” that Christians claimed to have for people, and the love that I saw Christ exude in Scripture were two different things entirely.
I read a blog post about what church shouldn’t look like, and this paragraph stood out to me.

Some of the church environments I experienced maintained that the church was a haven of peace and hope in a horrible, broken world. We were the sheep. They were the wolves. We had to protect our sheep by keeping the wolves out. We were “in the world but not of it,” remember? While there are many churches who consciously or sub-consciously adhere to the idea of being a place to hide from the evils of the world, I remind you the type of company Jesus kept when he walked this earth. He could have adopted the Pharisee’s method of separating himself entirely from everything “unclean.” Instead, he was known as a “friend of sinners.” Can our church say that?

Coupled with a rather distorted view of love was a dogmatic approach to debatable Scripture passages. There was a tightening grip on issues that could be debated. It was as if the stability of the Christian faith was founded on all the minutiae embedded within.

If, for example, someone held a differing view on what the book of Revelation means, Christians would scramble to ensure that their viewpoint was the one most commonly reported.

I remember all the Fundamentalists jumping for joy when the Left Behind series of novels came out (and yes, I was part of that number).

But could it be that all of this eschatalogical banter is, at best, tangential to the Christian faith, and at worst, a rabbit trail that actually detracts from what God intended when he planted these thoughts into John’s mind?

(post continued here)

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I’ve been mulling over the book of Revelation lately. There are all sorts of differing views on the topic, so I’ll avoid going into detail. I do, however, want to take you on a journey of sorts through my own battle with the Bible.

The journey began during a class I was taking that explored the Bible as a piece of classic literature, not simply as a “handbook for life.” (Let’s face it, reading an instruction manual wasn’t exactly the most exhilarating experience ever.)

I discovered something fairly quickly as I studied Scripture—the Bible cannot be taken as one giant piece of literature. Each portion must be viewed as its own piece. For starters, the Bible was not written by one man. It was penned by hundreds of people over thousands of years.

There are portions of the Bible that were written with the purpose of literal interpretation. For example, “After the uproar ceased, Paul sent for the disciples, and after encouraging them, he said farewell and departed for Macedonia.” It’s straightforward and comes from a book that discusses a historically accurate account of the formation of the Church. So we can justifiably infer that there was a real uproar, that Paul actually encouraged the disciples, and that he left for Macedonia.

However, not all of Scripture is to be interpreted in such a way. For instance, “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame,” probably should not be taken to mean that we will not be embarrassed if we believe in a building’s foundation.

So it’s with this premise that I began my journey. And what I discovered shook the world I’d known for almost my whole life.

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