"Privilege"

    Yesterday Frances and I began our thirteenth year of conducting services at a local retirement community.  This brings to mind thousands  of people we have been blessed to meet and know.  I am tempted to name some of them, and have previously done so in these devotionals.  Today, however, I would rather simply recall a bellwether moment that defines in my mind what our time at the community has meant to us, and an awareness I think every calling in life should involve.

    One morning during the first years of conducting the services, I shared with Frances my itinerary for the day.  I mentioned several morning responsibilities, and then remembered, "Oh yes, we have to go to Gordon Oaks this afternoon."  Immediately a more appropriate thought occurred to me.  "Let me rephrase that, honey," I said.  "Actually, we get to go to Gordon Oaks this afternoon!"

    "I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making request with joy, for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now" (Philippians 1:3-5).

    Frances and I consider our ministry at Gordon Oaks a responsibility.  We conduct four services a week there, and believe we should show up on time with hearts and minds prepared to fulfill our God-called duties.  However, the dominant sensibility and feeling in our hearts involves the awareness of how privileged we are to be given such an opportunity.  Our Lord has met us through the hearts, lives, and faces of so many of His people at Gordon Oaks.  He has blessed us over and over and over again, to the degree that we hope to minister to people when we go there.  We know, however, that the people of Gordon Oaks will minister to us.  We will see Christ in people who seek and trust Him in challenging situations, and who come to our services as the expression of their devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ.  In countless services, I have looked out at congregations of people, many in wheelchairs, and have been keenly aware of  the overwhelming truth of my complete unworthiness to be in the presence of hearts so much more faithful, devoted, and trusting than my own.  Oh yes, privilege…

    God gave to us a gift twelve years ago, a gift that, as the saying goes, keeps on giving.  He gave to us Himself, as revealed through so many of His trusting sons and daughters in Christ.  I feel this way about all our ministries.  "I get to."  I suspect that if such a sensibility is not resident within our hearts and minds regarding the callings of life, well, they may not be callings.  May our Lord lead us all to realize the grace of our responsibilities that transforms duty into privilege…

"I was glad when they said unto me, "Let us go into the house of the Lord!"

(Psalm 122:1)

Weekly Memory Verse

    Now our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God, even our Father, which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts, and stablish you in every good word and work."

(II Thessalonians 2:16-17)

    

   

"Grace Works!" Conclusion

    "There are two religions in the world, grace and works.  But only grace works!"

   

      

    Grace works because it delivers us from ritual to reality.  "The law, having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of those things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect… The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ" (Hebrews 10:1; John 1:17).

    God bestows His living presence into our hearts when we believe in the Lord Jesus.  "God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying Abba Father" (Galatians 4:6).  The ritual religion that foreshadowed reality becomes superfluous for those who "walk by faith, not by sight" (II Corinthians 5:7).  Indeed, the fact of God increasingly renders obsolete the need for facsimilies of God.  Grace comes with truth, and with truth comes spiritual substance rather than earthly shadow.  As the Apostle Paul declared, believers partake "the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth" (I Corinthians 5:8).  Christ is real to us, spiritually real in a manner no earthly shadow of form or ritual could ever create in our hearts.  This is the inheritance of God's trusting sons and daughters, the tangible gift of grace given by the Lord Jesus who partook of our humanity in order that we might partake the living reality of His Divine presence and involvement in our lives.

     Any approach to God apart from the grace and truth of the Lord Jesus leaves us in the shadows.  Our Heavenly Father offers to us the Object, as it were, that casts those shadows.  He offers to us Himself.  This is grace, the grace that works because God works.  We must settle for nothing less in our walk with the Lord.  We must expect nothing less, and we must experience nothing less if our Lord's purposes are to be fulfilled in our lives.  Reality alone satisfies the heart of God.  Reality alone fulfills the heart of humanity.  Grace works because it births reality, perpetuates reality, and infuses reality into the moments of our lives as the Truth that always accompanies grace illuminates our heart and way.  

"God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

(II Corinthians 4:6)

Weekly Memory Verse

    Now our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God, even our Father, which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts, and stablish you in every good word and work."

(II Thessalonians 2:16-17)

   

"Grace Works!" Part 6

    "There are two religions in the world, grace and works.  But only grace works!"

   

    Grace begets the inner beauty and sweetness of a grateful heart devoted to the praise of the One who sacrificed Himself to redeem us from our sins.

     "Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate… by Him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name" (Hebrews 13:12; 15).

     A.W. Tozer wrote that thanksgiving serves as "the sweetener of the soul."  In pleasant times, the gratitude fostered by grace completes our blessedness as we rightly acknowledge God's abundant generosity.  "He giveth to all life and breath and all things" (Acts 17:25).  In difficult times, giving thanks expresses trusting awareness and affirmation of our Heavenly Father's promised presence and enabling in all things.  "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble" (Psalm 46:1).  In everyday, mundane times, praise and thanksgiving infuse routine with the reality of the Lord who is with us always, and who works most often behind the scenes and under the surface of our lives.  "Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment" (John 7:24).  In every aspect of our experience, the fact of God's freely given favor in Christ, coupled with our realization thereof, leads to the praise and thanksgiving that sweetens the soul with the recognition of our Lord's boundless and undeserved bestowal of goodness unto, upon, and within us.

    Grace received, grace realized, and grace remembered bestows the atmosphere of heart, as it were, wherein grateful appreciation fosters a prevailing attitude of wonder, peace, and joy.  "Let the beauty of the Lord be upon us" prayed the Psalmist, who then continued, "and establish Thou the work of our hands" (Psalm 90:14).  Indeed, when beauty is upon us, the beauty of God's grace through Christ, and when we consistently realize such completely undeserved blessedness, the inner glory inevitably leads to the outward expression of a life lived well for the One who makes such sweetness of soul possible.  Grace works.  It beautifies the heart with God's presence, resulting in genuine motivation to honor the Giver and corresponding actions of Christ-enabled faithfulness that reveal the presence of grace received, and grace realized.

"And the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus."

(I Timothy 1:14)

Weekly Memory Verse

    Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God, even our Father, which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts, and stablish you in every good word and work."

(II Thessalonians 2:16-17)