Blindsided by Grace

We shuffle back and forth between believing God, questioning His goodness and forgetting His existence.  There is something God wants to do with you but it requires your perfect acceptance of His love for you in a matter and the moment you try to fix things yourself without Him working through you, the work crumbles.  Christ cannot and will not fill you if you slight God's love by complaining about your circumstance or by questioning His goodness.  Job was blindsided by the miracle of grace being worked out in Him and the Lord could not finish His work until Job threw up His hands in faith and accepted his place as creature rather than creator.  Job's friends proved to be of no help to him in this as they kept distracting him from the real development.  They pushed the discussion outside the realm of actuality by questioning Job's morality and integrity when those parts of him were never the issue.  Grace doesn't contend at the point of one's personal goodness  but rather at the spot of the Lord Himself working His own character into you.  Christ did not suffer the cross so that you could make a go at getting yourself straight or gaining some flury of accomplished gilding but rather to completely reconfigure your personality into the dynamic of God worked thoroughly through you.  Like yeast in dough, Christ risen in your heart will recreate all the promise he planted in you at the beginning through the difficulties and trials and mundane tasks of your everyday activities.  Be careless about what you're making of yourself but obsessed by the hand of God everywhere around you.

But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." 2 Corinthians 12:9 NIV

Love vs. the Machine

When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished." With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. John 19:30 NIV

 

 

Now there is something which the other Gospels make clear.  He bellowed, shouted, just before He let death take Him and it is not something to miss.  He hollered while hanging on the cross, “It is finished!”  Why would He yell that?  Why would He want to make sure everyone witnessing His death heard that?  Why did Jesus leave that as His last statement before giving up His Spirit?  Consider carefully what Jesus made clear was His reason in life, His purpose.  “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost.” (Luke 19: 10 NIV)  Jesus came to seek out and save those lost in their sin, those alienated from God and hopeless.  He came in other words to rescue people.  In 1Peter 2:21-25a is the delineation of what this meant.  …Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his steps. "He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth." When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. For you were like sheep going astray… (NIV)

What was finished when Jesus died?  He sought you out.  He found you and all your sin.  He then bore them on the cross and when He died, your sins died with Him.  He suffered the insults of people.  He was beaten by people.  He was nailed to a cross by people.  Then He let people mock Him until He died.  He looked at people and not one time did He call any of them a machine. Not one time did He turn from them like you would turn from a machine.  He looked at you.  He loved you.  He bore your sins and let them die in His body.  When all your rebellion against Him came into His body, when all the shabby ways you have treated people came into His body, when every cruel and selfish and indecent act of yours came into His body, He made it clear you were not a machine only to be used; He gave you His love.  He held onto your eternal life because you are not a machine…He did not let it go when the horror of death came upon Him.  You He loves because you are a person.  Not a person who has done great things.  Not a person who has accomplished great tasks.  Not a  person who has made Him better.  You are a person and that is reason enough for Jesus to bear your sins and love you.

How can you respond to that?  What can you do after that?  We are told to follow in His steps.  Never look at someone again and see a machine...a clump of corpuscles and nerve cords you might use and disregard like a tool in the shed  See a person you love.  Today, see a person before you and love.  See your crazy neighbor and love.  See your father and love.  See your mother and love.  See your boss and love.  See your husband or wife and love.  See your brother and love.  See your sister and love.  See the bitter, angry, frustrated, sarcastic, disturbed, self-serving, gossipy, traitorous, untrustworthy, conceited, negative, immoral, unbelieving, ungrateful person across from you and love.  We love…because He first loved us!