Grace... one year later!

It's hard to believe... but it's been over a year now since a trip to Starbucks literally turned my faith upside-down.

(If you haven't been following my story that long, check out my Nov 2007 archive page.)

Grace is still amazing to me!

That doesn't mean that it's been smooth sailing the whole time. There have been times when I still had twinges of legalistic guilt. But the one thing that I have held onto is the relief of knowing that my salvation is secure, even when I mess up.

Last year, I began to understand that God really truly loved me. In more recent months, I've grown even more in my relationship with God... learning that it really is OK to get close, that He really can "speak" to me without it being a hyped up emotional thing.

I still make mistakes... and I still tend to go pretty hard on myself when I do... yet, I've learned that God loves to show me His grace when I mess up.

There have been a couple of times in the past year when I thought I had totally missed God... and I probably did, at least in some of the details. But instead of "rubbing my nose in it" the way I used to believe a legalistic God would do, God always provided a way for me to get back to where I needed to be and learn from the experience.

I've also been blessed with an amazing group of role models, mentors, and friends -- awesome relationships that have been a tremendous blessing to me. I've been able to share things with them that I never dreamed I'd share with anyone... and they've helped me learn that God gives grace and healing when we're open about our faults.

Last year on Thanksgiving, I couldn't imagine ever being more thankful than I was at that moment. Yet this year, I feel that I have even more to be grateful for.

Thank you God!!!

Cardboard Testimonies

We had a great service yesterday at Christian Challenge. Pastor Nathan shared a video of a neat illustration from another church. He also posted it here on his blog. (Check it out! Really!)

I really like the idea of a short-n-sweet, one-liner testimony. I've spent a lot of time telling my story on my web site. I've gotten a lot of positive feedback, and the process of journaling everything has been helpful to me personally... but it isn't very helpful when you only have a couple of minutes to make an impact on someone.

So I've been thinking about how I could express the things God has been doing in my life in "cardboard testimony" format.

This is what I came up with:

Before - Isolated and lonely
After - Part of a loving church family

Before - God seemed harsh and distant
After - God was closer than I thought

Before - Caught up in legalism
After - Free in Christ

Before - Felt like I could never measure up

After - Secure in God's grace

Grace & Encouragement

God must have a sense of humor.

Yesterday evening, I had yet another opportunity to be frustrated... and to work on my "un-gracefulness" problem! Since I had JUST written the Grace & Forgiveness post earlier that afternoon, I was very much aware of how I was reacting to things. I did a better job of "biting my tongue," but... lets just say there's still a heart issue here that needs some work!

This morning at church we had a celebration for the kids and the workers who participated in our soccer camp this week. Everyone got a little award certificate. The kids were excited! Then Pastor Nathan taught about "Shooting for the Goal" (with a lot of great tie-ins to what the kids were taught during the week).

One of the verses he used was Hebrews 12:1 - "Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us." Pastor Nathan said that he imagined the great cloud of witnesses to be kinda like a big stadium or arena packed full of fans. They're watching... but they're also cheering us on!

(As an aside... I never thought of the "cloud of witnesses" that way. I saw it more like a bunch of judges evaluating our performance here on earth. I kinda imagined them like "big brother" -- watching to make sure we don't mess up! It's neat to see that part of the passage in a more positive light.)

During soccer camp, there were a lot of folks on the sidelines cheering. People were just looking for excuses to praise the kids, and the kids would light up and smile every time. It made them want to work harder and get right back up when they fell down. At one point, one of the kids was trying to make a goal. He kicked the ball, and it hit a post on one side of the goal and bounced back to him. He kicked it again, it hit another post and bounced back. Then it happened a third time! But everyone was encouraging him to keep trying, and he kept his eyes on the goal.

That really hit me.

What if the soccer camp workers had reacted to a missed goal the same way I react sometimes to a missed order a restaurant?

More importantly... what could happen if I reacted to the waitress who missed my order with encouragement instead of criticism?

God really nailed me on that.

When I reserve my praise and encouragement only for those who make the goal, I'm missing an opportunity to help someone else turn a "loss" into a "win." So I'm going to try something this week: I'm going to make a conscious effort to find things to praise... even when it would be much easier to criticize.

Grace & forgiveness

I've been thinking about Matthew 18:21-35 this week. It's the story of a slave who was shown awesome mercy. His master forgave a huge debt that he owed... but then that same slave refused to show any mercy to a fellow slave who owed him much less. I'm beginning to realize just how easy it is for me to be like that unmerciful slave...

Life has been pretty busy lately. I moved here just in time to get involved in a couple of really interesting (but pretty intense) projects. Any time you start something new, there's a bit of a learning curve... and always a chance that you'll make a mistake while you're coming up to speed. I've made a few of those already! It's embarrassing! Thankfully, there's plenty of grace for that sort of thing here. It's a great place to be. There's a kind of security and safety here that I'm only beginning to understand.

So you might think that such an awesome, grace-and-mercy-filled atmosphere would have an impact on my attitude towards others. I wish I could say that it has! But the truth is, I've caught myself being completely un-graceful towards a lot of folks here. I've had no patience for waitresses who got my order wrong. I've snapped at some folks who didn't know the "right" answer at the "right" time. Little things -- stuff that is insignificant compared to some of the mistakes I've made -- still have a way of getting under my skin and generating a reaction within me that is out of proportion to the offense... and the exact opposite of the grace/mercy that I have personally received from God and from others.

It's not like I set out to be that way... I'm not out there looking for opportunities to *not* show grace to others. Many times, I'm not even aware that I've done it until after the fact. That's frustrating!

Things didn't turn out so well for the unmerciful slave in Matthew 18. When his master found out what he had done, he threw him in jail to be tortured. Verse 35 kinda bothers me: "My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart."

I tend to think of forgiveness as applying to the really big things. But I guess forgiveness would apply in any situation where you've been wronged, no matter how small. If I truly forgave the incompetent folks at the drive through who never get my order right... well, I suppose I wouldn't feel quite so passionate about calling them incompetent! And the truth is, regardless of how competent or incompetent they are, God still loves them. Jesus died for them. When I react to them in a way that doesn't honor God, what message does that send? What will they think if they visit my church or see me during a water outreach wearing my church tee shirt?

Amazing Grace

I spent this weekend with a wonderful group of people -- a bunch of other recovering Pentecostals, folks who have all been a part of the United Pentecostal Church at some point in their past. We shared testimonies, meals, lots of laughs, and a few tears. Before this weekend, many of them were perfect strangers to me... but it's funny how a shared struggle can make perfect strangers feel like extended family in no time!

It was interesting (though sometimes difficult) to hear others share their experiences in the UPC. It brought back a lot of memories: some good, and some not so good. It was encouraging to hear how so many different people had made the journey from legalism to grace in many different ways.

But one of the things that struck me the most was the fact that the hosts of this meeting -- Bro Buddy & Betty Martin from Christian Challenge -- were celebrating the 32nd anniversary of their church this weekend. Of all weekends, this one should have been all about them... yet they opened their church, their home, and their hearts to a group of virtual strangers and ministered to them instead. They invited us into their home, let us keep them up late (even though they needed to be up early in the morning), and shared a lot of encouragement and wisdom. They demonstrated great grace (which also happened to be the subject of the of the service this morning) towards all of us!

I used to live in Louisiana, not far from Christian Challenge... but I had some bad / painful memories from my time there. I hadn't been back since I left many years ago, so I was a little apprehensive about going. Just thinking about the trip was bringing up some things I would have rather not stirred up... but I had to face it / deal with it / get it out. I was able to do that here in a "safe" place with folks who understood and could help me. I thought that if I just ignored this wound and avoided talking about it, it would go away on its own... but after 7+ years, that didn't happen. Now, after all that time, it's finally starting to heal. I finally have a "peace" about the whole thing... and if I hadn't confronted it, I don't think that would have happened.

This morning during the worship service, I sang Chris Tomlin's version of Amazing Grace. It's basically the familiar hymn with an added chorus... but that chorus is powerful. As I sung it this morning, those words were especially meaningful to me:

My chains are gone, I've been set free
My God, my savior has ransomed me
And like a flood, His mercy rains
Unending love, amazing grace...

In many ways, that old wound was a chain holding me down... and now it's gone. It's still a little sore, but now that the wound has been cleaned out, it can heal properly.

More later!

(Re)Defining the relationship

I used to wonder if it was really possible to have a "friendship" relationship with God. I used to wonder what that even meant. I was afraid of losing my salvation. I was afraid that God was punishing me when things didn't go right. I read books about having a relationship with God... even if I didn't completely understand them.

That was reality for me for a long time... but it all seems like ancient history now.

When I was trying so hard to be a good Pentecostal, I believed that having a close relationship with God meant living a powerful, supernatural, happy, healthy, and successful life. It would mean having that "direct line" to God that my pastors, leaders, and other spiritual superstars seemed to have. It meant never ever having any doubts. I thought that I could get there by living a certain way, memorizing lists of verses then repeating them, saying certain things, and avoiding other things. If I could experience a little bit of the supernatural or get a warm fuzzy emotional buzz during a worship service, then I could convince myself that I was "still saved"! But the real goal was to get to the point where every moment of every day was that same kind of emotional / spiritual high.

Needless to say, I never got there! Instead, I've found myself with a radically different understanding of what a relationship with God really is.

I'm not chasing a high anymore. I'm secure in my salvation, whether I feel anything at that moment or not. Of course, there's been a lot of emotion involved in what I've learned over the last few weeks--a lot of relief, joy, peace, and just plain excitement--but emotion fades, and that's OK. My relationship with God isn't any more or less real because of my mood.

I'm not afraid of circumstances anymore. Bad things will happen, and have happened even in the last few days. I still have obstacles to overcome... but now I can overcome them without feeling ashamed that I didn't have enough faith to just make them go away. Difficult times are even more difficult when faced alone--and I used to believe that if I was facing a difficult time it was because I had done something that prevented God from helping me. There is tremendous freedom and encouragement in knowing that God will be with me no matter what I go through, and He is just as close in the tears as He is in the laughter.

I'm not afraid of messing up anymore. I'm not talking about abusing grace, the attitude that you can do anything because God will always forgive--in fact, I want to please God more now than ever before. I'm learning what it means to really be motivated by love rather than fear. I'm learning what it means to receive His grace when I do mess up.

But the best part is knowing that this is just the beginning!

Starting Over

It's been about two weeks now since the beginning of my "grace awakening." In so many ways, I feel like I'm starting over with God... although "starting over" implies that I've been here before, and I really haven't. I'm entering brand-new territory!

Before, I was afraid of God -- intimidated -- scared that He'd reject me whenever I messed up. I wanted to have a relationship with Him, but most of the time I thought the best I could do was keep a respectful distance.

At times, I wondered if the stories of people's "intimate" relationships with God were just that -- stories. I wondered if what I had experienced at times in the Pentecostal church was genuine or just a manipulated experience or emotionalism. I longed for something real, but had no idea if that sort of thing was even possible. Every once in a while I'd get a glimpse of something more than what I was living... but not consistently.

I thought I was pretty spiritual. I read the Bible. I had quiet times. I went to church. I served. I gave. But in some key areas, I still managed to miss it completely.

I didn't understand grace. If you had asked me about it, I would have confidently answered that I did. But if you watched me, my pride would have demonstrated that I was not familiar with giving or receiving grace. What I knew was legalism -- but I wasn't just a passive victim of legalism, I was an active practitioner of it. I judged others the way I didn't want to be judged. I had my own set of unreasonable standards for other people... and I felt superior to the ones who didn't measure up.

I didn't understand God's power. If you had asked me about it, I would have sworn that I believed in His omnipotence. But my insecurity betrayed my true belief that His power was no match for my mistakes. It wasn't just a false belief, it was a sin. I never would have stated it this way, but essentially I believed that I was more powerful than God. I believed that my ability to obey was more important to my salvation than Christ's sacrifice on the cross. That's arrogance in the highest degree.

I couldn't even begin to understand God's love, except in the most general of terms. The idea that God truly and unconditionally loved me wasn't compatible with the idea that He would reject me if I made too many mistakes. And I was even worse than what I imagined God to be: I don't know if I ever offered love or acceptance without strings. If someone offended me, I could stew over it for a long long time. It took me a while to get really annoyed with someone... but once I reached that point, I had a very difficult time forgiving, and an even more difficult time putting it behind me.

Thankfully, that's all starting change now. I'm learning how to accept God's grace towards me, and now I'm starting to learn how to extend it to others. It's been painful to see the truth about myself in these areas -- but it's a good pain. And I know that I'm making progress.

Today, the idea that I could lose my salvation sounds just as ridiculous to me as the idea that I could have earned it in the first place. I have a new understanding of grace... and that has brought with it an amazing freedom.

I still can't claim to understand God's love, but now I believe that it is truly unconditional and unfathomable. God's love for me is far beyond anything that I'll ever be able to comprehend. I deserve nothing -- in fact, I deserve less than nothing. I've broken God's laws, I've broken His heart, and nothing I could ever do on my own would even begin to bridge the gap that existed between myself and Him. Even if I devoted myself fully and perfectly to the task, it would be absolutely impossible for me to make things right.

That's why the cross only had room on it for one person. That's why Jesus gave Himself as a sacrifice. "I do not consider the grace of God as meaningless. For if keeping the law could make us right with God, there was no reason for Christ to die." (Gal 2:21)

I still have a long way to go, but for the first time in a long time -- if not the first time ever -- I'm not scared of losing my salvation. I'm not scared that God would punish me or let something bad happen to me so He could teach me a lesson. I'm not scared that I'm vulnerable to attack because I'm not following a formula and I've removed myself from "divine protection."

For the first time in a long time -- if not the first time ever -- I can accept that God loves me, and that He actually wants me to have a relationship with Him. I'm just starting to get to know Him. I'm just starting to trust Him, rather than worry that my efforts are falling short.

I'm learning to appreciate the depth of the grace and love that God has extended toward me... and as that grows, so does my desire to show the same grace and love towards others... only I'm not motivated by guilt or rules this time.

I'm absolutely certain that I can never go back to the way things were...

This is such a significant change for me that I've decided to get baptized on Saturday evening (after the Saturday service at my church). I'm really looking forward to it. I've been baptized before -- but at that time, it was more about formulas and requirements than anything else. This time, I have an entirely different understanding of what I'm doing and why.

Freedom

The last few days have been nothing short of amazing. I feel like I'm starting all over again. Even worship songs that I've sung a thousand times are alive with new meaning.

I was feeling a little sick Friday and Saturday (probably at least in part because of all that I ate on Thursday!!) I used to look at sickness as a sign of weak faith -- and even though I had moved on from churches that held that belief, it was still a nagging doubt and a fear that I had to fight whenever I felt ill. It went like this: If your faith isn't strong enough to ward off a stomach bug, how can it be strong enough to be saved? Out of habit, I had started to think along those lines again... but then I realized something.

I had the equation backwards -- it doesn't say that you're saved by faith through grace, it says that you're saved by grace through faith. For years I believed that if my faith was strong enough, God would be gracious enough to save me. Now I'm learning that the strength is in God's grace -- and I couldn't even have faith without Him first extending His grace.

There's tremendous freedom in that realization. It was hard for me to believe that God really loved me when I also believed that I could lose my salvation at the drop of a hat. I respected God, I feared God, and I loved Him from a (hopefully safe) distance... but the thought that He loved me? Maybe He would someday, when I was closer to perfect... but for now, I figured He just tolerated me (and there were times when I even wondered about that).

I've finally begun to find what I've been looking for ever since I left the Pentecostal church. I wrote it on the RP homepage back when I started this project in July: "I just wanted to get back to basics, to rediscover a genuine relationship with God that wasn't based on performance, emotion, ritual, or pretending."

An Epiphany

This is one of the definitions of "epiphany" in Webster's dictionary:

(1): a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something (2): an intuitive grasp of reality through something (as an event) usually simple and striking (3): an illuminating discovery, realization, or disclosure b: a revealing scene or moment

Several years ago there was a movie that dramatically illustrated an epiphany: it was called The Sixth Sense. The climax of the movie comes when the central character realizes, in a moment of stunning revelation, that things were not at all the way he thought they were. The neat thing about this movie is that the audience (at least the first time they see it) also experiences the epiphany for themselves. Up until that point, they were assuming the same things that the character was. At the moment of revelation, the audience (like the character) starts replaying previous scenes in their minds, and now the signs are plain to see, the hints jump out from the background, and the puzzle comes together in a most unexpected way.

I feel like I'm in the middle of an epiphany right now.

After I wrote my post on Monday, I emailed it to one of the associate pastors at my church -- the one who had recommended that I read Stanley's book. I wanted to know if he thought someone could lose their salvation, and if so, how? I've always believed that you could lose your salvation (and lose it quite easily), so the idea that you couldn't lose it was almost inconceivable to me. Surely there had to be a line somewhere, and when you crossed it, you were out... maybe the line wasn't where I thought it was, but it was still there SOMEWHERE... wasn't it? Grace without strings--come on, how could that be true? It was too easy. It was too extravagant.

Tuesday evening that pastor and I met at a coffee shop and he shared some of his story with me. He comes from a pentecostal background too, so he grew up believing that he could lose his salvation. He was afraid of God. Then he shared some things that helped him understand what grace really meant, and what impact that had on his relationship with God.

This pastor had a child who went through a very difficult rebellious phase. It hurt him very deeply, and even tho that child had walked away from the family, the pastor never stopped loving his child. He never lost his place in the family. In that experience, he recognized that if an earthly father was capable of loving his child through a situation like that, surely God's capacity to love His kids was even greater.

Anyone can love a person who loves you back and behaves correctly. It's harder to love someone who turns away from you... harder still to love someone who wrongs you. But that's exactly what God does.

When God adopted me into His family, it was forever -- warts and all. My capacity to walk away from Him will never exceed His capacity to hold on to me. I don't have to be afraid of losing my salvation on some silly technicality. God's not looking for an excuse to get rid of me.

In the course of one conversation it was as if my world was turned upside-down. Grace without the strings? Salvation that I couldn't lose? Could this really be true?

It seemed like there were a lot of verses in the Bible that supported the idea of losing your salvation... so that night I started looking for them. But even as I began to write out my questions, I could see some answers that hadn't been obvious to me before. Something inside "clicked," and I started to see everything differently. The clues had always been there. They were in plain view, I had just been oblivious to them. I had missed it... but now, in a way I had never anticipated, the puzzle was coming together.

Within a matter of hours, I had done a complete 180 on something I had strongly believed for ~15 years. And if felt really good.

Two days later, it's all still sinking in. I can't even completely put it into words yet, but I know that I can never look at things the same way. I've never known peace like I've known in the last two days. I can have a relationship with God now that isn't based on fear.

It seems especially appropriate that today is Thanksgiving. I've never understood grace or salvation more clearly than I do today, and I just can't help but thank Him for such an extravagant gift.

Grace

I read a very short but interesting book on Friday. It was called How Good Is Good Enough by Andy Stanley. It was really written for nonbelievers, but as I read it I realized that much of it applied to me as well.

Stanley says that most Americans believe in an afterlife, and if you ask those Americans what it takes to get to heaven, most of them will give some variation of the same answer: be good and you'll get in. He spends the rest of the book showing why that is a bad answer -- not just theologically, but logically.

Even though I might not have been in the target audience, I saw myself very clearly in the pages of that book. I've been living on a variation of the "good enough" belief system for a very long time. I don't believe that doing good things can earn me a place in heaven--I have always understood that only Jesus' sacrifice could do that. But once I was saved, I believed that salvation was basically mine to lose. If the Baptist view of salvation could be summed up as "once saved, always saved," then the Pentecostal belief could be stated as "once saved, barely saved." You could lose your salvation for any number of infractions.

Early on, when I attended churches with "Holiness Standards," the line was very clear: you dressed a certain way, no jewelry, women never cut their hair, men always had short hair, etc. Baptism (and baptism by a certain formula) was essential for salvation, as was speaking in tongues. Leadership was to be respected. Tithes were to be paid. Of course, they also had the more traditional list of terrible sins from which one was not likely to recover, but any violation of the rules could disqualify you from salvation. Essentially, works were still a part of the salvation equation.

I've moved on from that church -- and I've been in a couple of churches now since then -- but somehow, that belief has stuck with me. The list of salvation-losing mistakes has gotten shorter, but it was always there.

Salvation by grace? To me, grace meant getting another chance to get it right. Grace was like a chance to re-take a test that I had performed badly on at school. Grace was an extra few days to get a bill paid. Grace was getting a do-over when I really should have struck out. It was undeserved, it was very welcome, it was still amazing... but even after receiving grace, I still had to do something. Grace was the thought that Jesus died to give me a chance to know God... a chance to repent, get baptized, and live by the rules.

If you blew it, then the grace didn't matter. If I got just as bad a score on the test when I took it the second time, where was the benefit? What if I didn't get the bill paid in the grace period? What if I struck out again on the do-over? What if I violated the rules and lost my salvation?

But if I'm understanding Stanley correctly, that's not grace at all. Grace is failing the test, but being given an 'A' that someone else earned on my behalf. Grace is someone else paying the bill. Grace is not dependent on what I do.

Is salvation really that kind of grace--a grace without the strings?

Is the idea that I could do something bad enough to lose my salvation just as absurd as the idea that I could do something good enough to earn it?