Transforming Grace

You know what I find disturbing about us Christians?

We have a holier-than-thou attitude.

interesting title no?

I would not have said this ten years ago. But a lot has happened in ten years, the most important being this: I have seen the darkness in my soul. Yes, I have come to the place where I understand that when Paul called himself the chief of sinners, it wasn't hyperbole. We all rank first place when it comes to harbouring demons in the dark alleys of our souls.

Yelling at kids?
Thinking of divorce?
Entertaining hurtful thoughts?
Fantasizing?
Blaming?
Ego trips?
Seized by discontent?
Poor stewardship?
Lack of love?
What if i try out...?

Been there, been that.

This reckoning has in turn done two things. One, I am much less shocked by confessions. Second, I have begun to strip away at the notion of 'the other'. I identify with others more than I differentiate from them.

Thomas Cole, Voyage of life

If you have ever met a personal darkness, sensed a shadow, wrestled with a demon, chances are you want to either reach for HyperGrace - it's no big deal, or we collapse into UnderGrace - we are wrecked with guilt and try our best to cover it all up.

I use these monikers to represent the two common ways we respond to glimpses of what lurks beneath our respectable, put-together selves. In HyperGrace, we may -

. brush it off as not really so serious compared with...
. create a spiritual scorecard by pumping up more rigour for spiritual activities (from dancing to Bible studies).

On the other end, some of us veer towards UnderGrace where we -

. smile and act nice, totally inconsistent with what's tugging at our hearts
. blame others or beat up ourselves for not measuring up
. endlessly analyse what went wrong

This happens to the individual, and even to groups and entire churches.

The problem is that both of these take us away from Transforming Grace, which the Bible says is given to the 'humble'.

You younger men, likewise, be subject to your elders; and all of you, clothe  with humility toward one another, for God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety upon Him, because he cares for you. ~ 1 Peter 5v5-7

Peter wrote this. I dare say no one knows about Grace and humility the way Peter does.

He was the blustering disciple who boasted of his loyalty only to find it crumble when faced with the threat of persecution. He is the one Jesus re-creates a memory of his calling {read this John 21} so that he could be restored. He tasted Grace that morning when his professional fishing efforts yielded no gains. He tasted Grace in the fish on live coals and the poignant words of restoration Jesus spoke into the depths of his being.

He humbled himself in admission of his shadows and failures and was reunited with His Lord in love and mission. Still, he would have moments of weakness, but those are moments and not definitions.


Being humble is connected with casting our anxieties on God. 

We are anxious whenever we don't know the outcomes to things or when we anticipate a negative result. But Peter, he has learnt that. All his bravado cannot gainsay the truth that he has limits and he cannot really fix some things, even if he can swing a sword the way he can throw a net.

Transforming Grace - that flows downward to the bowed and receptive heart - happens when we humbly agree with God that we don't have the answer but we know God does.


I love Danielle Strickland's* definition of humility: agreeing with God about who you are.

Mind you, God does not think small of us. No, he thinks wonderful thoughts beyond our wildest dreams. Yet, he remembers and knows we are dust. We are finite. We do well to remember that of ourselves and others. That's when Grace happens. Peter tells us that God's intent is to exalt us. God knows we cannot reach the heights of who we truly are unless He raises us up.


The verses has another dimension:

You younger men, likewise, be subject to your elders; and all of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, for God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety upon Him, because he cares for you.  

I admit that this is the bit most of us don't really like. After all, whether it's our families or work or churches, we all know elders and leaders who we struggle to respect and follow. But here, Peter reminds us that there is the basic posture of being submissive that counts if we want to experience Grace. To be fair, he speaks here of an environment where there is the effort to honour one another.

Being humble creates a flow of God's Grace into our lives and situations.

We will meet, experience and share Grace when we are willing to kneel with the broken, sobbing alongside, hurting with them, remembering this could just as well be us. This is when Grace creates community.

We will know, be touched and grow in Grace is when we are willing to face our need for it in an authentic and vulnerable fashion. This is when Grace creates courage.

We will stand upon and lead stronger out of Grace when we will call out our tendency to hide, gloss over and conceal. This is when Grace creates maturity. 


These three are good indicators of the present workings of Grace in our lives: community, courage and maturity.

To have reckless self disclosure without regard for others lacks maturity.
To have endless discussions without actions shows a lack of courage.
To be part of unending gatherings where our deepest concerns are never shared or heard means there isn't real community.



Perhaps try this: you may well notice that from the American elections, to ISIS, to the latest local news about things gone wrong, our standard way is to point out what's wrong, in clear denial that we could go so wrong ourselves (and it's a miracle we didn't). This stance has rarely helped us get anything right in the end.


It is a peculiar thing. The knowledge that we are saved by Grace and sustained and sanctified by Grace's operations in our lives should be grateful, joyful and humble. Yet so often, we the chosen, the elect, the faithful - saved by Grace - have a way of turning Pharisaical.

We start to distance ourselves from 'the others' and become a holy huddle of sorts.
We have our share of doing good and pitching in to improve things, but in our hearts there is a line that says 'we' and 'them'.
We go on a religious treadmill seeking out new and amazing ways for spiritual experiences.
We complicate matters. The Pharisees churned out 613 checklist items to keep the law....how many have we generated while regularly refusing to encourage the formation of lives through basic disciplines of prayer and Scripture and a commitment to community?

Nicodemus was a Pharisee. But he was different. He was at least humble enough to seek out Jesus and considered fresh possibilities. On the other hand, we have the thief that hung next to Jesus. His was not the robe of religiosity but the rags of crime. But he too experienced Grace when he humbled himself to admit that he deserved his sentence.

Go down with a name like Nicodemus or go down without a name like that lowly once-thief. Just be known by God and be touched by His transforming Grace.


Some of my best record of Grace's tracks:
Grace in the story of the woman in John 8. She got it, they didn't
Take that small step, Grace is coming
The wide mercies of God's cradling Grace
Failure isn't final. Grace is.
I married a non-believer, is God mad at me?
How do you see your life?


references:

1. If you want to know the 613 laws

*as heard on Global Leadership Summit 2016

God does not want us sick. Really? What does it mean?

Humbling.

I got called out.

So burdened I was about some of my friend's struggles with chronic physical pain (to which I am no stranger during those years when I was healing from fine fractures in my spine), I grabbed screenshots off the seminar and blasted it to the group chat. In my enthusiasm to share some hope, I shared information about a seminar that began with "God does not want any of us to be sick."

She replied promptly with this: I just read a review..I think that can be a dangerous view because then you can't explain why Christians who take healthy diet and live good, spiritually above reproach lives get cancer or die young (read Job). In fact I think God's perfect will is for all to come to the knowledge of Him and his sovereignty."

Gobsmacked.

In this day of information flying all over us and coming at us from us at so many directions, slowing down and taking the effort to check and think is truly needed.

You see, I was right, but not enough.

God indeed does not desire sickness for any of us. But we see that only in Genesis 1-2 (from deduction), and then in Revelation. Right now between Genesis 3-Jude, things are very different and this is where we live.

Where we set our assumptions determine the path we go.

If we begin with God not wanting us to be sick, we will resent it when we are. We will dig endlessly around for reasons why we may be sick.

Did we sin?
Are we being punished?
Do we lack faith?

However, if we understand that God does not want us to be sick and has provided for that day through Jesus Christ, but we are not yet in that place, the conversation changes.

I do not welcome sickness and resign myself to it. Of course not. We have a new lease of life in Christ. Yet we do live in a broken world and are figuring out how our new lease of life is to be experienced and shared in an environment hostile to it.


So we have hope. Miracles happen. We can lay hands and command diseases to flee. Fevers leave, joints are set right, pains subside and stop.

But we also begin with our reality. Germs exist, accidents happen, disease is a frightful opponent.
Sometimes, God intervenes and delivers, raising even the clinically dead. Other times, he chooses to receive his child back home.


One of my heroes of the faith is Amy Carmichael. She rescued children from temple prostitution in South India.

 She lived such a blameless and selfless life. But the final two decades of her life was mostly spent increasingly in bed and in pain. Those twenty years with chronic pain, she prayed and thought and wrote some of the most illuminating and powerful books ever (books by Amy C).

It will be a travesty to say she remained sick because she did not pray a certain way. The only right way to pray as Jesus reminds us is to be honest and humble before God:

"But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me, the sinner!'..." ~ Luke 18v9-14

That wouldn't be Amy's issue at all.

In case you are wondering, Amy lived from 1867-1951, and unlike so many things done in the name of Christ, her mission work endures even after a century: Donhavur Fellowship. The legacy of her life, her work, and her faith is astounding.



Practically, what does this mean for us?

When I fall sick, I take it that my sickness is speaking to me in various possible ways:

1. It is time to rest
Seriously, city-dwellers have a way of going at a speed that is largely detrimental to our health. God designed our body to be a finely-tuned instrument that will scream for attention when it is out of whack. Rest and restoration is needful for good equilibrium (as for how to really rest, check ...).

2. It is time to pray
The sovereignty of GOd is not an abstract theological idea. It is a present truth we need to learn to press onto our lives because it leaves a very different imprint. Sickness starts me on a new conversation for me to seek God for insight and better understanding about life in general, and my life, in particular. Sometimes as I pray, I decide against seeing a doctor. Always, I pray authoritatively over the sickness, commanding it not to become an doorway for fear and worry. I rebuke it and demand it leave. I then give my body permission to heal at its pace.

3. It is time to rely on others
Hopefully, none of us are so wary or shy of others that we live in total isolation. I learnt that I will be less miserable if I had the right foods and drinks to help me along. So I had to make a list and share it with the dh so that he can help me as I heal. One time, I was so sick and even the extended family was unavailable due to a bereavement, so I called up an elder who is a doctor. He could sense the urgency and I think he saved my life when he came and gave me that injection.


I am glad my friend pointed out my error. She also texted this:

"Once you know Him and have an intimate relationship with Him, all the cares of the world and our mortal self become strangely dim."

Indeed. May we live with the clear imprint of a Sovereign God upon our lives so we can say like Amy -

“It is a safe thing to trust Him to fulfill the desires which He creates” 

The One reason to keep you going and growing

What keeps you going?
What keeps you growing?

Coming to Christ gives us a new command centre, but as we can clearly see from all the difficulties Paul the apostle had with the early church, a new identity and destiny does not always translate into new godly behaviours easily.

With Whatsapp, I belong to several group chats. One of them is a group of ladies who I go to exercise class with. That chat is filled with Youtube videos, links, pictures and quotes about living healthy, shopping cheap, and eating well.

One time I decide to risk a little and peel it all back by asking, "It is normal to be afraid of sickness and want to be happy. Perhaps we should ask 'Why'".

Perhaps we should /why?'.

I imagine it is entirely possible for other chat groups to exist consisting of fellow Christians who post videos, links, pictures and quotes about .... more or less the same thing, with a layer of 'faith' and large doses of Christian activities thrown in. 

Another event.
Another seminar.
Another conference.
Another gathering.
Another training.

Another speaker/teacher/prophet.

Perhaps we should ask /why?'.

What if --

We are afraid... that Singaporean syndrome called kiasuism. We are afraid to lose out on the latest, the great 'spiritual deals' as it were.

What if we are really worried that we will look ignorant, ill-informed, not with the times?

What if we are really unsure of our faith?

I was prodded to start asking 'why' many years ago by a missionary friend's well-written piece on what he calls a peculiar Christian disease: 'meeting-gitis' -- the endless meetings Christians feel obliged to attend. 

It is true, isn't it?

 So few of us even  think through the ramifications of our daily devotions and Sunday sermons so that we are living them out.

Many of these conferences are fantastic and have solid material. But our buffet spread is wolfed down and poorly digested, much less savoured for all its texture and flavour.

Less can be more.

Scripture urges us, '

keep in step with the Spirit' ~ Galatians 5v25

How do we do this unless we know where we are. Unless we really see, for without good sight, how shall we know which way to go? 

This admonition is given in the context of real intra- and interpersonal struggles. Right here, right now. 

Yes, it's great to follow the grand winds of the Spirit. But the Spirit of creative orchestration works specifically and uniquely in each of our lives. A meaningful journey is not a long march of the masses. It is a deliberate walk by the pilgrim. A walk where flowers are noticed, pauses are made, strangers are met and turn into friends, where difficulties are surmounted and overcome.

It is a journey where we learn to see truly, rightly and lovingly.  

You are a pilgrim, not a tourist. 

Go on your walk.

Keep in step with the Spirit who is leading you.

You may be feeling tired from all the stuff you feel you ought to be part of. You may know others who are trudging along and adding one more thing to their plate.

Ask yourself 'why?'.

The Holy Spirit works in our lives and circumstances to bring us to both understand and experience God's goodness of abundance.

I have met too many who don't know how to relate to parents, spouse, sibling. I have met too many who complain about fellow Christians. I have met too many who live clueless about why they have the issues and struggles they do.

Their lives appear to suffer from a lack of leadership. Or perhaps, it is a lack of follower-ship. There is no real pause to observe, sense, and obey the Spirit.

Life is hard, and it doesn't get easier except in one way: you either know how to walk, or you don't.

The Holy Spirit wants to lead you. Will you follow?

Don't let the reason to grow and go on be a fear of being left behind. Let is be that you hear the Spirit beckoning you. Let it be Love. Nothing else will really do.