Joy

I've been thinking more about that "my" vs "Thy" salvation devotional.

When it was "my" salvation, my joy wasn't really in salvation at all -- it was in human accomplishments. I was happy because I believed that, at least for the moment, the scales were tipped in my favor. My joy came from a temporary assurance.

I certainly have a lot more joy in my life now that I'm secure in my salvation--not the ecstatic laughter stuff that I used to call "the joy of the Lord," but a deep (and still deepening) sense of gratitude and awe that still makes me smile every time I think about it. This joy isn't a passing emotion that I need to "work up" and attempt to maintain on my own strength; instead, it is more of a silent, steady undercurrent that is always there. I can draw from it at church, at work, in the car, anywhere...

Before, "joy" was a stream that I had to feed. Now, it's a stream that feeds me.

That's a huge contrast...

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?