Grace in the Gap

There is a deep divide between the life we are called to by God and the reality of our everyday existence. I know what you are thinking; “You’ve been a Christian and a pastor for how long and you are just now getting this!?” Well, it is not that I am just now getting it, but I am seeing it more clearly.

God is holy and created us to live holy so that we can live with Him, because “without holiness no one will see the Lord.” (Hebrews 12:14 NIV). And of course the problem is that since the “fall” of humanity, no one can live holy. It is not a matter of being hard, it is simply impossible. Our lives are filled with lies, dishonesty, sexual immorality, temptations, strife, hatred, greed and an assortment of other things we don’t need to mention. So there is a wide gap.

As God instructed an unholy people about holiness, He never stopped calling us to holy living because He has not stopped wanting a relationship with us. (See Hebrews 12:14 above again). Since holiness is not (at least post-fall) a natural part of our nature, God throughout the Old Testament laid out instructions and illustrations of what holiness would look like both individually and communally. The point of that instruction was to show humanity that 1) we are not holy by nature and 2) we cannot be holy in our own strength, even with detailed instructions. In other words, we don’t need more knowledge about holiness, we need more power for holiness. We are not unholy because of circumstances, we are unholy by nature. We aren’t unholy because we “sin” (unholy actions and omissions), we “sin” because we are unholy. 

The question, then, is what do we do with the gap between God’s requirements and our lives? Some have sought to moderate God’s requirements. They read the Bible and say that these requirements are not possible, therefore they are not accurate. Perhaps the Bible was written by men with their own agendas, or utopian, unrealistic thinkers. They want to bring God’s holiness down to our level. Others have sought to deny the reality of human existence. These people choose to look at the pain, suffering, and evil in the world and claim that it is an aberration from the norm. We see this every day as the media tries to explain away horrible events by picturing the perpetrators as “sick” or “not normal”.

Whatever route we choose, something must fill this gap. Many have chosen to allow religion to fill it. They have taken God’s descriptions of holiness and turned them into rules to be followed, religion to be adhered to. Religion, in this view makes, us holy. But religion does not really fill the gap. Religion can clean up the outside of our lives, but the inside is just as far from God as ever.

Jesus came to show us God’s answer to the gap: grace. According to Dallas Willard, grace is God acting in our lives to accomplish what we cannot on our own. Grace is not magic. Grace is God taking our faithful obedience and through the power of the Holy Spirit enabling us to live into holiness. Grace also fills the gap between our efforts and God’s requirements. Grace rewards us with love and acceptance when what we deserve is judgment and condemnation. So how are you filling the gap in your life?

Shallow Living

As any of you who stop by here know, I have not blogged in months. I think I know why. A friend and colleague of mine told me that she thought blogging would fit me perfectly. I was hoping she was right and started on the journey. But contributing something here quickly became burdensome. I do not want to waste my time or yours, so I don’t write anything unless I think I have something to say. Which, if you know me, doesn’t stop me when I am with you in person!

I think the reason I haven’t blogged in a while is because I have been living too shallow. The world pushes us to live shallow. The pace of our 21st-century American culture calls us to live everywhere at once, which spreads us so thin we become shallow. I have not successfully resisted this and so my life has become shallow in these past few months.

Jesus invites me into the deep with him. Jesus asks me to spend time with Him every day, not just a few “devotional moments” but time. There is no legalistic definition to this time. In fact, seeking to define “time with Him” is a sign that you are living shallow. What young lover tries to figure out the “right” amount of time to spend with his beloved?

Blogging flows naturally out of my heart when it is full but becomes a burden when I am empty. How are you doing right now? Is your heart full? Or is the deep well of your being close to empty? Are you desperately trying to figure out how to keep going until some future rescue arrives? Consider these words of Jesus:

“Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say? I will show you what he is like who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice. He is like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built.” (Luke 6:46-48 NIV)

The fight against shallow living is a fierce one and not to be taken lightly. We cannot fight this battle alone. Who is helping you live deep?

Contemplating Heaven

I have been thinking about Heaven lately. I wonder what that means? Heaven has always been the goal of being a follower of Jesus, but in all of my years, I have never had more than a very dim (nearly dark) understanding of what Heaven would be like.

The progressive story of redemption contained in the Bible gives us only glimpses at best. I am afraid my picture of heaven may have been formed by cartoons as much as anything else. There was always someone or something in a cartoon that got crushed and then floated upward with a harp and wings. But I am beginning to believe that Heaven will be both dramatically similar and correspondingly antithetical to life as we now know it.

Here’s what I mean: The opening pages of Genesis take great care to help us understand that the Earth and all that exists here were created on purpose and were “good” in the eyes of God. The epitome of all this created goodness was the Garden and humanity was placed in the Garden to have fellowship with God, each other and the created universe. But there was one unique thing in this Garden. There was a tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Humanity was forbidden to eat from it. This was the sole restriction of life that we know of in the beginning. The fruit of the tree was not special or bad, in my opinion. The fruit had no magical powers or special qualities. The issue was that God in His sovereignty had said we could not eat from it.

I believe Adam and Eve had the freedom to choose to obey God in a way that no human has had since. Adam and Eve were unstained and perfectly naive. But the enemy of God, Satan, caused them to question God; to believe for a moment that they could make decisions for themselves rather than obey God. In that instant, all was lost. For each of us, the moment we begin to believe that we can or should make decisions for ourselves apart from obeying God, we become lost.

BUT…God is a searcher for lost souls. The rest of the Bible describes God’s work to redeem and restore. The final word God gives us in the book of Revelation is that at the end of history, the Garden will return. I imagine it to be Heaven and I think it will look curiously familiar and gloriously different. God will be there and will be our Light. And the Tree of Life will be there and will bring healing to the Nations.

One thing will not be there, however: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The tree of rebellion will not exist anymore. Everyone who reaches Heaven will be there because they have chosen to place their life in the hands of God, in the grace of our Lord Jesus. The decision to trust God comes prior to Heaven, and Heaven is then the eternal expression of that trust in a God who is good and loving and powerful and glorious and adventurous. I want everyone to be there. I want everyone to understand.