we just had our last supper (together) and are on the last hour or so of the trip...
we are not sad. we are happy to bring you loud teenagers home to you. get out of your hot tub, dry off, call those fancy restaurants where you have fine dining every night and tell them they won't be seeing you for another year... and get in the car and head up to church... oh, and make sure you have some tide detergent ready to go. they do need to wash their shirts tonight to wear tomorrow night (sunday) at the home concert (which is at 6:00 p.m. at fbc. the kids have to be there earlier to warm up and do a sound check). hope to see all of my blog readers there!
one more devotional for you first. to put you in the right frame of mind to greet your lovely children.
devo #6 NO BOUNDARIES!
okay so i have had a lot to say about rules and commandments and boundaries... all good stuff (just agree with me here, it will make it all go easier for you). and hopefully all Biblical stuff. and maybe just maybe you are starting the think differently (more biblically) about those boundaries and freedom. but there is one area where there are no boundaries...
one area where we REALLY like to put them up, but they aren’t there...
the area called GRACE. called God’s forgiveness. His power over sin.
i love what jon acuff has to say about this boundless grace. he has a great blog called “stuff Christians like” (
http://stuffchristianslike.net) and here is a part of a blog post he wrote about God’s grace which has no limit...
We sometimes establish a limit to grace and God’s love. We start to draw boundary lines on grace and it’s not the first time we’ve seen this kind of thing happen.
There was a guy in the Bible who was the worst. He was such a failure. He lied once and got an entire village murdered as a result. A priest and his family were killed because of his lies. He committed adultery. He cheated. He trusted in his own strength instead of the Lord’s. And when he did, when he failed, thousands and thousands of people died as a result. His family suffered from incest and murder and his hands were so covered with wrongfully shed blood that eventually God wouldn’t let him do something really important.
Now imagine if that person was a commenter on Stuff Christians Like. Imagine if they confessed to homicide and adultery and a laundry list of other sins. I mean there have been some crazy comments on this site, but no one has ever said, “I saw this girl online and thought she was really hot, so I slept with her, got her pregnant and then arranged on craigslist for her husband to be killed.” But this guy, the guy in the Bible, he could have left that comment. And if he did, would you or me or the writer of that email instantly think, “He didn’t take grace too far?” No, we’d be horrified. We’d be terrified.
So how is he referred to in the Bible? Here is what God says about him:
“I have found David son of Jesse a man after my own heart,”
What? Are you kidding God? David, the murderer? The adulterer? That can’t be right.
Surely David himself knows what a mess he’s made. Aren’t we all our worst critics? David knows that there is blood on his hands. How does he describe himself in Psalm 26?
“Vindicate me, O LORD, for I have led a blameless life;
I have trusted in the LORD without wavering.”
No. No. No. David hasn’t led a blameless life. He hasn’t trusted in the Lord without wavering. He ran away and got people killed by trying to cover up his tracks when he was afraid. How can David say these things? How can God say these things?
Because grace is scandalous.
Grace does not make sense to our tiny human brains. We can’t control it. We can’t draw boundaries and borders on it. And when we try I think it breaks God’s heart.
I think we insult the cross when we act as if we can “out sin” it.
I think we wound our father when we think we can “out filth” his love.
I think we hurt our Christ when we believe that we have found the end of his grace.
I know, I know, I know that it is possible to mistreat the Lord. To blasphemy his name with our actions and our attitudes. David certainly did and he paid the consequences.
I don’t think we get discipline orgrace. I think we get both.
I think discipline is a by product of grace and in my own life I have received large amounts of it.
But above that, I think God understood the grand risk when he offered us grace. A book called “True Faced” called it the New Testament Gamble. I think God knew the risk that we’d misunderstand grace and try to take advantage of it. I think he knew we’d try to find the limits of it with our sinfulness. Which is why he made it limitless, which is why he made grace infinite and never ending.
I don’t know what you’ve done. I don’t know your life or the bumps or bruises. Maybe you actually have murdered more people than David. I don’t know. But I do know, we serve a God who accepts our repentance and confession. We serve a God who when offered a chance to reveal himself to Moses, chose one thing to show, the most important thing, his goodness.
We serve a God who “rises to show us compassion.”
A God who delights in you.
A God who sent his son to the cross not to show the end of his grace, but rather the beginning.
the SAME GOD who loved you enough to create boundaries and to reveal them in His Word for your freedom is the same God who has NO BOUNDARIES on His Grace so that when the Son sets us FREE, we are FREE indeed.
sometimes we get this law=freedom thing backwards. we think keeping the laws makes God love us more. makes us RIGHT with God. makes God do things for us. makes us love God more. nope... it doesn’t. the law is there to show us that we can’t keep it perfectly, and to show us our need for BOUNDLESS grace. and to make us grateful for our Savior and Lord.
keeping all 10 commandments perfectly will make our life work better... but even if we could do that (which we can’t)... it still would not put us right with God. only accepting His Grace, His Perfection, His Love to take our place on the cross. only admitting that every day each one of us crosses over the boundaries into the danger zone of sin and selfishness and that even more than the LAW, we each need a Savior who is RIGHTEOUSNESS, who obtained our RIGHTEOUSNESS on the cross because we could not obtain it on our own. the law could never save us. so Christ came to be the law for us. because we broke it over and over and over again. the law points out our need for GRACE... it doesn’t become grace to us. only Jesus did that.
galatians 2:16 & 20- 21
{we} know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified.
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!
in knowing what Christ has done for us... what He gave to us... how He suffered and died for us... that leads us to such gratefulness. such humbleness. that we yearn to keep His laws. we learn to love His laws. we look to them with gladness. with joy. with all our hearts, we should echo david’s sentiments in that INCREDIBLY LONG psalm. did you read the end of it the other day... if not, here it is from the message version. say these words to God today... let Him hear your love for His Law
psalm 119: 169-176 (the message)
Let my cry come right into your presence, God;
provide me with the insight that comes only from Your Word.
Give my request Your personal attention,
rescue me on the terms of Your promise.
Let praise cascade off my lips;
after all, You've taught me the truth about life!
And let Your promises ring from my tongue;
every order You've given is right.
Put Your hand out and steady me
since I've chosen to live by Your counsel.
I'm homesick, God, for Your salvation;
I love it when you show Yourself!
Invigorate my soul so I can praise You well,
use Your decrees to put iron in my soul.
And should I wander off like a lost sheep- seek me!
I'll recognize the sound of Your voice.
i wish you were all on the bus right now (even though it would be very crowded) because they are doing this final devotion. in each double seat there is one high schooler paired with a middle schooler and they are taking turns reading the devotional out loud to their partner. reading God's grace to each other. and being God's grace to each other.
to have written some of the words they are reading out loud is incredibly humbling. to know that God uses sinners like me to write His Words is nothing short of His scandelous Grace. He always like to choose the "least of these", the weakest, the least deserving to lavish His love upon. i know that is true.
but so much better than my words are to hear them reading God's word to each other. i pray that are hiding it in their heart. that it is sinking to the very marrow of their bones. may it sustain them. may it haunt them. may it bind them in. may it be their delight. their boundary of freedom.
may it be all that to me. and to you.
keep checking the blog in the next few days for the link to the slideshow (which i have worked on all the way home and is fabulous to say the least). i will also post the link to see ALL of the photos from this week (all 400+ of them). you will be able to download any or all of the trip photos onto your very own computer desktop to have them printed up poster size.
i do want to thank lizzie for loaning me her macbook to work on this week. i could not have done this blogging or worked on the slideshow on the bus without her generosity and her trust in me not updating her facebook status since i had her computer. thank you lizzie. i love you and i love your macbook. in that order. maybe.
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