Grace according to pundits
Last week, a widely read American magazine asked some famous “personalities” to chime in on a single topic: grace. These are some of their ideas about grace:

• Grace is something you do after you’ve tripped: you’re catching yourself and taking something that could have been negative…and moving past it.
• It’s the joy of giving another person pleasure.
• You can’t legislate when beauty will happen or if it will happen. That is the meaning of grace.
• Grace is a kind of illumination: that feeling of being comfortable in your own skin.
• I think of grace as the courage to be hopeful in hard times.

Rereading those as I type here in my office, I find them as empty as the mug I just drained of tea. Yet, just as my cup has some tea dregs in the bottom, there are small aspects of truth in those statements. The problem is they are the dregs, divorced from the richness of the source.

John dealt with the issue head-on in the prologue to his gospel, declaring in John 1:17, “Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” Jesus alone delivers the unmerited favor of God. Charis – the Greek term we translate “grace” – is undeserved blessing that can only be found through God. If one connects to God’s unearned approval through Jesus, then one is in grace. Anything else is not grace, as Paul points out in Romans 11, declaring that life and salvation “is not by works; otherwise grace ceases to be grace.”

Such is the key problem with the pundits. They are each trapped in the perspective of humanity, either describing grace in works terms or are divorcing it from the source – Jesus.

Of course, it’s not merely famous “personalities” who do this. You and I are eminently capable of reducing truth to nasty dregs divorced from the source. By God’s unmerited favor through Jesus, I pray we instead enjoy the powerful richness of lives steeped in truth.

God bless,

Wayne

True sight
In one of the greatest contrasts ever penned, God shows Isaiah the difference between Messiah and the rest of humanity. Messiah seems blind and deaf, focused on what really matters. Humans pride themselves on our imagined breadth and depth of sight, yet we are in reality the ones who do not see.

This Christmas, I pray you and I who have eyes to see and ears to hear will really pay attention to what matters – the Messiah and service to the Lord.

Hilarious!
I was discussing all this with a pastor friend, and he related this awesome example:

This reminds me of a wedding I performed. First, the back story – a young man had a farm accident that caused him to become blind. His family sent him to a special school to learn to cope with his disability. He met a wonderful girl at the school. They asked me to perform their wedding, because they knew I was comfortable around blind people.

Now, the story – The bride paced off the sanctuary, so she was familiar with all she needed to know. The wedding was wonderful. I pronounced them husband and wife and down the three stairs they went and hurried to the back doors. However, the sighted best man and maid of honor TRIPPED going down the stairs. Laughter rang throughout the sanctuary! For just a sad second, the blind couple at first thought people were laughing at them, but an usher quickly told them what happened so they could join in the laughing too.

Christian, when the world laughs at your Christmas celebration this year, just smile and remember who can really see, who is steadily walking to the marriage feast of Messiah, and who stumbles and falls.

God bless,

Wayne

Grave
A friend of mine has birthed a fascinating vision for a new kind of ministry in Dallas. I have been privileged to pray for him and occasionally help his team think things through. We were all excitedly anticipating the first fruits of their efforts early next year.

Then the tornado struck. The area of his new work was devastated, disrupting many lives and throwing a seemingly insurmountable blockade in the way of the new ministry. When we met recently, all our hearts were very grave over the circumstances.

Beyond gravity
Yet, that gravity did not keep my friend down! Though the metaphorical fig tree was uprooted, he exulted in the Lord like Habakkuk. He was excited about alternate strategies, at rest in the Lord, even buoyant. How can such a thing be? How can a person confidently keep working in service to God when an act of God has thrown a wrench in those very works? (Make that “wrench” a spanner, for my British friends.)

The answer is that he is building to last. That type of development is not established on shifting circumstances. It is built on God Himself and His unchanging word. Any kind of construction demands one deal with earthly conditions; yet building to last allows us to see beyond circumstances. Establishing life on the Triune God makes for achievements that far outlast the tornadoes.

God bless,

Wayne

Grave
A friend of mine has birthed a fascinating vision for a new kind of ministry in Dallas. I have been privileged to pray for him and occasionally help his team think things through. We were all excitedly anticipating the first fruits of their efforts early next year.

Then the tornado struck. The area of his new work was devastated, disrupting many lives and throwing a seemingly insurmountable blockade in the way of the new ministry. When we met recently, all our hearts were very grave over the circumstances.

Beyond gravity
Yet, that gravity did not keep my friend down! Though the metaphorical fig tree was uprooted, he exulted in the Lord like Habakkuk. He was excited about alternate strategies, at rest in the Lord, even buoyant. How can such a thing be? How can a person confidently keep working in service to God when an act of God has thrown a wrench in those very works? (Make that “wrench” a spanner, for my British friends.)

The answer is that he is building to last. That type of development is not established on shifting circumstances. It is built on God Himself and His unchanging word. Any kind of construction demands one deal with earthly conditions; yet building to last allows us to see beyond circumstances. Establishing life on the Triune God makes for achievements that far outlast the tornadoes.

God bless,

Wayne

Filled

πίμπλημι pimplemi [peem’ play me] is the original term – what we translate “filled” in English. It’s a word often employed by Luke. It means to be filled, satisfied, or facilitated. Pimplemi appears regularly in the Greek version of the OT, which is where Luke probably first considered the term in a spiritual sense.

For example, consider this text from 2 Chronicles 5. Solomon has completed God’s temple, and the end of the temple dedication unfolds like this…

It was the duty of the trumpeters and singers to make themselves heard in unison in praise and thanksgiving to the Lord, and when the song was raised, with trumpets and cymbals and other musical instruments, in praise to the Lord, “For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever,” the house, the house of the Lord, was filled with a cloud, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord filled the house of God.
[2 Chronicles 5:13-14 NRSV]

The glory of God fills – that’s pimplemi – the temple where God’s Spirit has come to dwell. And because God’s Spirit is there, the human priests can’t work. They are no longer in control as God takes over the work. That’s pimplemi – a word Luke references on purpose. Look at the parallels:

2 Chronicles                                    Acts
Priests of a chosen nation            All believers are chosen priests
God’s new dwelling place             God’s new dwelling place
His glory comes                              His glory comes
People no longer in control          People no longer in control

That’s what is means to be filled with the Holy Spirit of God. With pimplemi the issue is control. It’s not about the human controlling God, as in paganism. Filling is about God controlling the human. Which explains why filling with the Spirit is contrasted with wine. Throughout the New Testament, descriptions of the filling of the Spirit use drunkenness as a comparison/contrast. In each case, the person is controlled, but one is influenced by God, the other by alcohol.

God bless,

Wayne

Building

Construction is happening on the street behind my home office. On a walk this morning, I observed the workers pouring concrete for a house foundation. Deep holes in the ground make for strong pilings of concrete. A lattice of rebar forms a steel web holding the foundation together. They were doing great work, filling the pilings and surrounding the rebar up to the top of the forms. As I watched, I smiled at the dual images that scene brought to mind.

My first job was shoveling sand for my uncle’s concrete company. Starting at age twelve, I spent many summer days leveling pile after pile of sand for home foundations. In the ensuing years, I began to work the come-alongs, screens, floats, and edgers that shape the slab. It was a blessing to follow the lead of my uncle and his crew, learning the pride of building in such a manner that those homes would last.

More importantly, I was reminded that on Jesus, my soul is established. When I build my life on the firm foundation of Christ and His word, what is constructed cannot be destroyed. In a world of vacillation and uncertainty, Christians need to establish our lives on the core foundation of Jesus’ scripture, His church, and the Holy Spirit Jesus sends. Such focused building transformed our forefathers and can do the same for us. Following their lead allows us to rejoice in the amazing truth that Jesus’ universal, invisible church has endured and will continue to outlast all that can possibly be thrown at it.

Though written for businesses, Jim Collin’s bestseller speaks to individual life construction: “The only truly reliable source of stability is a strong inner core and the willingness to change and adapt everything except that core.”
– Jim Collins & Jerry Porras, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies.

God bless,

Wayne