“If grace is so amazing, why don't Christians show more of
it?” -- Philip Yancey –
Read Luke 15 from verse 17 onwards
The story of the young son makes a decisive turn when he gets
up and returns to his father. The story says, “But while he was still a long
way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to
his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.” The father’s love was
ignited when he caught a glimpse of his son while he was still far away. It was
unbecoming and considered undignified for a Jewish man to run. And yet this
father sets aside all concern for propriety and runs to his son and says not a
word to him. In fact, nowhere in the story does the father ever speak directly
to the younger son. His actions speak for him. He throws his arms around his
son and kisses him. The amazing grace of
the father is active, not passive. It is assertive and persevering. No doubt he
prayed for his son while he was away living a riotous life. He never gave up on
him. Never stop thinking about him. And when he finally caught a glimpse of his
son, he couldn’t wait to embrace him. There were no words of judgement of condemnation. How normal it would seem for the Father to say, “Well, what do
you have to say for yourself? Do you think you can just show up after all these
years as if nothing has happened?”
Read Romans 5: 1 – 12 – what is the message of this passage?
Ruth Graham, one of Billy Graham’s 3 daughters tells the
story of her brokenness including the embarrassing failure of her second
marriage which lasted only a few weeks. As the daughter of the world’s most
famous evangelist she was filled with anxious emotions as she drove home to
tell her parents. She writes, “Driving up the mountain to my parents’ home was
one of the most difficult things I had ever done.
I had no idea what they would say or how they would respond.
I had gone against everyone’s advice. As I saw it, I had failed myself, my
family, my children, and my God. I felt deserving of condemnation and
rejection. What would my parents do? Would they say they had told me so? That I
had made my bed and now I would have to lie in it?
As I approached the
house, I saw my father standing there in the driveway. I parked the car and
opened the door to get out, but before I could as much as set my foot on the
asphalt, my father was by my side. He embraced me with those long arms and
said, “Welcome home.” His acceptance instantly silenced my shame. I was broken,
but I no longer feared. My father had embraced me at my worst and loved me
anyway. I experienced grace. I would not compare my father with God, but that
day my father showed me in a very practical, gracious way what God is like.”
God’s grace comes to us, even before we move back toward him.
Read 2 Corinthians 12:8 and 9
What is grace in this passage?
Tutu’s theology of grace:
“God needed nothing outside of the godhead in order to be
God. God did not need us. What a glorious, what a fantastic verity to rejoice
over: God wanted us in a very real sense.
God was, and is, totally self-sufficient, and needed and
needs nothing outside God in order to be God. God created us, God created the
world from an amazing outpouring of the divine love.” See Isaiah 49: 14 – 16
“God loves you, God loves me, not because we could render to
God what God lacked. God is fullness of being, needing nothing outside God in
order for God to be God. God could have been God without us, without the rest
of creation. But God decided otherwise. We were thus created as an act of
divine grace, a free gift not to be earned – in fact, unearnable, because we
were not there to give God the price of creating us.”
Tutu’s question is this:
We find it extremely difficult to be comfortable with the
ethos of grace – of sheer gift. It must certainly be difficult for those who
have never lacked anything, who don’t quite know what it is to be without, then
to experience the exhilaration of being given – of being offered a gift. Why is
it so much harder to receive than to give?
Wesley on reminding ourselves of the grace of God in our
lives – sermon 16. “The Means of Grace” using Malachi 3: 7
“Instituted” means of grace:
1. Prayer –
regular, daily.
2. Daily
meditation of Scripture
3. The
Sacraments – baptism and communion (daily if possible)
4. Fasting
Christian
conference
Large Minutes of 1780, 1789
General Means of Grace Questions for Consideration
Watching
Do you steadily watch against the world? The devil? Yourselves?
Your besetting sin?
Denying Ourselves
Do you deny yourself
every useless pleasure of sense? Imagination? Honour? Are you temperate in all
things? For instance in food. Do you use only that kind and that degree which
is best both for your body and soul? Do you see the necessity of this?
Do you eat no flesh-suppers? No late suppers?
Do you eat no more at each meal than is necessary? Are you
not heavy or drowsy after dinner?
Do you use only that kind and that degree of drink which is best
both for your body and soul?
Do you drink water? Why not? Did you ever? Why did you leave
it off? If not for health, when will you begin again? Today?
How often do you drink wine or ale? Every day? Do you want
[i.e., need] it?
Taking Up Our Cross
Wherein do you ‘take
up your cross daily’? Do you cheerfully ‘bear your cross’ (whatever is grievous
to nature) as a gift of God, and labour to profit thereby?
Exercise of the Presence of God
Do you endeavour to set God always before you? To see his eye
continually fixed upon you?
The author Frederick Buechner, in his book Wishful Thinking,
puts it this way: "The grace of God means something like: Here is your
life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have
been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things
will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It's
for you I created the universe. I love you. There's only one catch. Like any
other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you'll reach out and take
it. Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too."
Need to remember God’s grace and share God’s grace: Tutu from “An African Prayer Book”
“At the moment when we least deserved it, God demonstrated
his gracious love by pouring it out so unreservedly for us. To sin is to hurt
and reject this love. Forgiveness is the possibility of a new start. When we
fail, God does not abandon us and say, “Good riddance to bad rubbish!” No, God
picks us up, dusts us off, and says “Try again.” Christianity is the faith is
ever-new beginnings. ”
What is the last sentence of the Bible? Read Revelation 22:
17 onwards.
The God whom Jesus revealed isn't mean or scary. Rather, said
Jesus, he's the sort of God who throws a party for a child who wasted the
family fortune, who refuses to condemn a woman caught in the act of adultery,
who breaks taboos of ethnicity and gender to encourage a woman who had been
married five times, who welcomes a criminal into his kingdom as the man gasps
for breath while being executed, and who embraces his closest disciples even
though they abandoned him and denied ever knowing him. Isn’t that grace?
And so the last page of the Bible invites everyone with these
welcoming words: "Let him who hears say, 'Come!' Whoever is thirsty let
him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of
life" (Revelation 22:17). And note how it ends!
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