Grace for Grace

 We are blind and limited and fallible. I don't care how old or wise or experienced or "enlightened" you are, you are still blind and still limited. As someone who is still working through my own ideas of self-worth and earning love and acceptance, those sentences are just as much for me as for anyone.  He has given us everything we need to live our life by so that we don't have to use our own understanding, and we have taken it as a suggestion, as a guideline that we get to change based on our feelings, using our own judgement.  This new wave of Christianity that touts blind love and allowance (because it isn't just acceptance, it is allowance. Acceptance is the opposite of rejection. Jesus accepted. Allowance is the opposite of restraint. It is fleshy and self-serving. Paul warned us against it.) is just as damaging as the Christianity that touted exclusivity based on arbitrary earthly measures.  We condemn legalism while remaining blind to the other side of the...

For one of the first times that I can ever recall, I actually wasn't prideful or defensive or offended in a conflict. I was clear and I was careful. This is huge for me because even if I don't act on it, I usually feel those spiteful, offended, or even self-pitying feelings.  I was hurt, but I didn't dwell on it, I didn't stew. It was a natural hurt that didn't turn into anything. It felt...healthy. And because I knew that I loved the person so much more than my self-protection or allowing bitterness to whisper sweet nothings to me, the resolution was the easiest thing in the world. I didn't try to make her feel sorry, I didn't try to "get justice" for myself. I wanted peace between us, and I knew that she was a work in progress just like I am, and I am more than okay with giving her the space she needs to figure it out with God.  Y'all, this may not be a big deal for anyone other than me, but when God said that no one was good except for Him, ...

As a result of the hyper legalism that most have experienced, Christianity has started to focus only on the soft, sweet, humanized version of God. We have fit Him into our understanding, but anything that leaves out a part of the nature of God is a false and incomplete religion. I will not settle for a God that is less than the reality. The principle of "dying to self" has been painted over with the message of grace, but they can coexist. They are not at odds against one another, they compliment each other. We have been given victory through Jesus' blood over our flesh, the power to choose righteousness AND we have been given grace through Jesus' blood to sin, to choose our flesh, and then get right back on the horse. He has given us the miracle of moment to moment choices. One choice no longer defines our entire life. But it is because of that insane grace and the gentle guidance of the Holy Spirit that we are called to righteousness. "Be ye holy, for I am h...

Everything in the Christian walk revolves around choice. I would be journaling my prayers to God, asking for peace and joy and strength and asking for so much, and that was all I knew how to do, because that was all I had ever heard to do. What I didn't know was that it was already within my reach. because we live with the Holy Spirit, we live with all of that waiting for us. I remember one morning I was having a hard time relating in love to a family member, and I journaled a prayer, and ended it with: Holy Spirit, I want to love my sister unconditionally. And I felt Him whisper: "So do it." And every time after that when I would pray an "I want" prayer, I felt a non-judgmental eye roll of "don't you get it? it's your choice. it's up to you." I've had fruitful encounters from those "I want" prayers, where I am all of a sudden overwhelmed by abundance of what I asked for, but I really don't think that's the norm. I...

This is where we start getting to my favorite part: brutal honesty. Growing up in a Baptist church, I internalized a very sanitized, prim and proper reverence towards God, but in the Psalms, seemingly disrespectful, blasphemous verses are a part of the reverence. If I believe that anything I could say to God would shake Him, or cause Him to love me less, then I believe in a weak, small god. It is because I so completely know His commitment to me, His holiness and greatness, that I feel no fear in voicing something in my heart that is potentially blasphemous. And clearly David & Co. felt the same thing. BRUTAL HONESTY: What fascinates me about David's relationship with God is that in Psalm 18, David experiences God's saving power. "In my distress I  cried unto my God: he heard my voice out of His temple, and my cry came before Him." "...He bowed the heavens, and came down: and darkness was under His feet." "...He took me, He drew me out of many wat...

(What I really wanted someone to tell me, so instead of talking it out with an actual person, I sat on the edge of the bathtub at 11:00pm and cried next to a gnome, writing it in the notes app.) It's okay if you are still afraid and sometimes that fear makes you do crazy things. It's okay that you are desperate for love and acceptance and so so terrified to lose it. It's okay if you're reactive and sensitive, overwhelmingly so. It's okay if you don't have an exact reason for your fear or your feelings. It's okay if the panic that rises up hasn't gone away yet. None of it invalidates your progress or position in God's eyes. Your heart is not a mystery to Him. It's okay if you get confused by all this. It is okay if you are not a complete human yet, and no one is going to love you less for it. It's okay if all this is being brought to the surface and new for you, too. It's okay if you need comfort and it's not for something big. Th...

It is easy to get caught up in the idea that we glorify God by being closer than anyone else has ever been, and it's really easy to feel that way because when we experience God in new ways, it feels like it's ours and only ours and it's so fully validating and filling that we think "This is the object of the Christian walk, to be deeper and deeper with God, and the sign of deeper and deeper is these spiritual encounters." um. no. all of that feels good, and is great in moderation, but if we think feeling tingly or having visions or dreams from God, or even hearing God's voice, is the goal, then we have not read our Bible well enough. John 15:8 says "Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit." That feels pretty clear to me. Just a few verses ealier, in the whole "He is Divine, we are de branches." (haha, just a little plant humor for ya) section, he is so clear that when we grow, He rewards that with pruning for more growt...