Grace and Faith

Back in September we talked about our church themes for this year -

1) How do you live the gospel?

2) The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever.*

And I feel like instead of sitting in a classroom getting academic book-knowledge, God signed me up for the hands-on outdoor field lab.  Across the top of the syllabus were written these words: 

Be astonished!  Be utterly amazed!  And wonder marvelously.  

For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, 

even if you were told.  Hab 1:5

We learned last year that the gospel is all about grace and faith.  The two biggest components - 1) God's grace and 2) seeing, living, and walking by faith.  And I've used those words and hear those words so often that they've almost lost their meaning to me and I don't really understand what they mean.  But God's been recently showing me just a glimpse of grace and faith.  Of what the gospel looks like in real life.  And I just can't help but greatly enjoy and delight in Him.

Grace is forgiveness.  unconditional.  undeserved.

Grace is knowing people SHOULD react a certain way and watching them respond completely opposite.

Grace is not being able to escape God's love even when I try to.

Grace is the absence of expected judgment and condemnation.

Grace is God being FOR me.  Even in sin.

Grace is having God teach me life lessons through pain and darkness.

Grace is seeing my brokenness allow me to love others needing grace.

Grace is watching those who have been forgiven much truly love much.

Grace is being able to forgive myself.

Grace is being able to give and receive love, affection, and warmth..

Grace is having God plant dynamite charges on a glacier-covered mountain that has taken years to build and watching Him blow it up in an instant.

Grace is watching scales being removed from blind eyes.

Grace is kindness, mercy, forgiveness, and love poured out in the midst of the messiest and most difficult circumstances.
Grace is watching God answer the desperate prayers of His children. 

Grace is watching God give life to the dead and create beauty from ashes.

Grace is watching God replace a heart of stone with a heart of flesh.
Grace is God binding up the brokenhearted, making them to know joy and gladness, and turning mourning into dancing again.

Grace is watching God accomplish the impossible in ways man could have never dreamed of.

In the past we've talked a lot about seeing God's grace in the little miracles of life that we all take for granted - like waking up this morning, taking two breaths back-to-back, arriving safely at our destination, having the leaves turn different colors in fall instead of just being brown.  I'd like to offer another perspective.  On a sunny day, you can't see the stars in the sky.  But in the darkest night, the stars shine the brightest.  In the middle of struggle and pain, God's grace is brilliant.

Faith is believing and accepting forgiveness.

Faith is knowing God is with me in the deepest pit, longest valley, and darkest mourning.

Faith is knowing that even in the most intense pain, God will never leave me nor forsake me.  In fact the pain is proof that He is still with me because He's the One doing the heart surgery.  

Faith is being willing to humble myself under His skilled hand.

Faith is waiting.  Waiting on God  Waiting on other people.  Because I know He will accomplish His perfect will in His good timing and it's gonna' be better than anything I could have come up with.

Faith is believing, believing, BELIEVING "The Son of God bore in His body all my punishment and all my guilt and all my condemnation and all my blame and all my fault and all my corruption, so that I might stand before a great and holy God, forgiven, reconciled, justified, accepted, and the beneficiary of unspeakable promises of pleasure forever and ever at His right hand."*  Starting today.

Faith is eagerly anticipating what God is going to do, when everything I see seems impossible.

Faith is being filled with a crazy hope when everything seems hopeless.

Faith is desperately crying out to Him on my face, "ransacking the Bible for God's appointed promise"*, then believing it and walking in it.

Faith is wrestling with God, not letting Him go, until He blesses me with whatever I need because He said "Ask and ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find, knock and the door will be opened unto you." Mat 7:7-8

I've discovered that my biggest battle is the battle for my sight.  Am I going to see through eyes of faith or eyes of flesh?

So at the end of this first semester of my hands-on outdoor lab, all I can do is stand here with my mouth hanging open, saying, "My God is the God of the impossible."  And He asks me, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?"  And all I can answer is, "I have no idea."

*John Piper