Grace is Where My Song Begins

                                                                       

Sometimes, Switchfoot says it best. 

"Economy of Mercy"

Sometimes, I like to think I have it all together. Sometimes I like to think that I can become a stronger Christian by pulling myself up by my boot straps and growing through sheer discipline. Sometimes, I like to think that I am where I am in my faith because of me. Sometimes, I like to think just maybe I can do it. Just maybe I can be strong enough. Just maybe I can deal with my own sin. Just maybe I can be independent. Just maybe I can be adequate enough for the next task ahead. 

Then, my sweet Jesus bends down and reminds me in my pride that it is through GRACE that I am saved. It is His GRACE that rescues me. It is only by His sweet GRACE that my life can be renovated and sweetly and radically transformed. 

I grew up often thinking I was pretty good, knowing I needed Jesus, but not living like it. 

If you are anything like me, you grew up in churches that taught we were commanded to share the gospel. If we didn't obey, then we were sinning. There is some truth to this. We are commanded to share the gospel, but the way it is taught in most churches is something to be done out of duty. One of the most life-changing things I have ever heard is something that my pastor, Rodney, shares with us almost every Sunday. He shares the grace of God with us. He often says,  "When grace becomes capital letters in our life, missional living becomes natural." Wait a second, you mean sharing the gospel can be NATURAL? It had always been a little scary....until now. When we realize God's great grace on our lives, it produces a great desire to tell your friends. When grace brings us to our knees and shows us just how much Jesus has done for us, how can we possibly not tell people out of our joy and thankfulness. 

If grace was currency, I would be the first one to use it. 

Why do we make Christianity into some kind of 10 step process to becoming a better Christian? We see blogs flooding facebook with titles with some number of things you need to do in your faith. A number of ways to become a stronger Christian. A number of ways to get a better prayer life or something like that. I think we do this, because it makes it easier. It's easier to write down a few steps and cross them off. It makes it easier to have a list of things we can do. It makes it easier to feel good about ourselves. Why is it so hard to just see His perfect grace and just love Jesus? I think it's because it's harder to just give up trying to DO things. It's harder to live by the Spirit because then, we can't be in control. But, when we became a Christian, we gave up every right to try to be in control. We gave up our life. We gave up trying to earn God's approval. But, we gained an abundant life. My mentor just posted a wonderful blog about our self-reliance in our Christian walk. If you are feeling challenged, read it here.

You see, after we give up our pride in trying to do things ourselves, things become so much simpler, as His yoke is light.  "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." Matthew 11: 28-30 His yoke is easy because Christianity isn't a list of things you have to do, you simply get to love Jesus deeply. 

Growing in our faith no longer becomes this list of 25 things to do, but crying out to God to show us His grace and to help us to love Him more deeply. 

My two favorite words in the Bible are "But God."

"But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ-by GRACE you have been saved and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly placed in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His GRACE in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus." Ephesians 2:4-7

Out of everyone I know, I am the most unsavable. If there's one thing I have learned this year about my sweet Jesus, is that He loves to save the most unsavable and redeem the most broken. I get to be a broken mess, saved by a perfect and redemptive God. I am the most undeserving of the gospel out of all the people I know. I am the most inadequate...But I serve a God who isn't.

Why my New Year's resolution is different this year

As I was thinking about what I wanted to have as my resolution this year, things like eating better, getting back into the habit of running, being more intentional with friends, and several other things popped up in my head. I'm definitely a visionary but I like to set goals that I know I can accomplish  but that are also challenging.

I sat there thinking, what will make this year different? If you are anything like me, you set these great goals but don't end up staying with it the whole year. Then, you screw up one time and get down on yourself. The Lord graciously challenged me not to make these surface level things my resolutions but to look at the core of the motives behind the them.

Then it hit me, the core is to know Jesus better.

"For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith-that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and may share His sufferings..." -Philippians 3:8-10

The more I know Jesus, the more I will love Him.

The more I learn about His character, the more I am in absolute awe of the God we serve. I couldn't think of
anything else worth giving my life to. I want to learn more and more about His character this year. I want to dive into the Bible and not only read about Him, but study some of His character traits. We often throw around these traits like sovereign, omniscient, pure, holy, and others but do we truly know the depths of these meanings and not just a surface definition? The more I have learned about Him the more I have loved Him throughout my life.

"And He said to him, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'"

                     Matthew 22:37

This verse gets quoted a lot but this year I want to study it and really understand the depths of this kind of love in this verse.

The more I love Him, the more I will want to take care of my body and treasure the people I am around.

For me personally, the more I love Him the more I will appreciate the body He has given me and will treat it like a temple. Instead of dreading going for a run, it will be a way I can show appreciation for what the Lord has given me and show appreciation for the fact that I have the ability to get up and go run. The more I love Him, the more I will want to eat the foods He created for us to eat. Eating very healthy will become more of a joy because it will be a way for me to show appreciation for what He has given us to eat. How often are we truly thankful for the beautiful natural foods He has prepared for us? I don't know about you, but I'm not nearly as thankful and appreciative as I should be. Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's bad to eat a good chunk of brownie (If this was true then I would have been struck by lighting way too many times.....). God created sugar and wants us to enjoy it, but I believe it is to be enjoyed in moderation.

The more I love God, the more I want to treasure the wonderful friends He has placed in my life. The more I treasure them, the more gospel-based our friendships are and the deeper the conversations. I would love to be better about writing letters to friends this year so that it shows I treasure them enough to go out of my way to write something and send it through the mail to them. That's one thing I would love to bring back from childhood. Also, the more I love God the more I want to serve my roommates and friends and serve them without expecting anything in return. I want to serve them as a picture of how Christ serves us. We worship a God who was worthy of praise but came to earth not to be served, but to serve (Matt 20:28).

Please don't get me wrong, I am not saying it's wrong to have great resolutions like losing weight, eating better, and working out. This is just something the Lord was challenging me with and I wanted to use it to encourage you all and also to have accountability on my part. I would love for you to ask throughout the year what I have learned about God and how I know him more. Even if you aren't close friends with me it would mean the world to have people around asking me that question. Not only would I love the accountability, but I would love to share what I'm learning about Him.

Here's the funny thing...I am so incredibly broken and sinful that I can't even know and love Him on my own. I have to humbly ask for the desire to truly know Him. I have to ask for the diligence to not only be in the word, but to study it. I have to ask the Lord to graciously open my eyes and remove my self-love. This righteousness does not come from myself or my resolutions, it comes from faith in Jesus and His power.

After all of this had been going through my head, I went to church this morning to hear a phenomenal sermon about numbering our days. My pastor, Rodney, mentioned that according to Psalm 90 we will not be able to number our days until we truly understand the nature of God, the nature of man, and the problem of sin. I want to remember how fleeting my life is and realize I am but a vapor. Why? Because at the end of my life I don't want to look back at all the things I accomplished for nothing. I want to deeply know Jesus. I want to deeply know Jesus so I can passionately love Him and love others.

"Your sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning: in the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers."   

Psalm 90:5-6

"The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever."

                                                                        Isaiah 40:8