“The law says, Do, and life you’ll win;
But grace says, Live, for all is done;
The former cannot ease my grief,
The latter yields me full relief.”
The law excludes not boasting vain,
But rather feeds it to my bane;
But gospel grace allows no boasts,
Save in the King, the Lord of Hosts.“
There are many things that I could say about 2007, but the one word that echoes louder than any other for me is “grace”. I found grace at every turn as the Lord led me from Texas to Kentucky, from Texas A&M to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, from being a brooding legalist to becoming a recovering legalist, from a critic of “contemporary Christian music” to a fan of Caedmon’s Call, Jimmy Needham, and Derek Webb, and from Dec. 31st, 2006 to 365 days closer to the return of Jesus Christ!
That being the case, I’ve assembled 9 ways in which I found the grace of God working in my life this past year. (I have a thing against round numbers…lol…just kidding).
1) I found grace in working “as unto the Lord” this summer at a landscaping place (which soon became part of the inspiration for the “Lawn” Gospel blog). As June marched along, I began calling it the “summer of grace“, and I was not disappointed. Along with God’s Word, I was blessed to encounter this quote from Charles Spurgeon on gospel work:
“Some persons have the foolish notion that the only way in which they can live for God is by becoming ministers, missionaries, or Bible women. Alas! how many would be shut out from any opportunity of magnifying the Most High if this were the case. Beloved, it is not office, it is earnestness; it is not position, it is grace which will enable us to glorify God. God is most surely glorified in that cobbler’s stall, where the godly worker, as he plies the awl, sings of the Saviour’s love, aye, glorified far more than in many a prebendal stall where official religiousness performs its scanty duties. The name of Jesus is glorified by the poor unlearned carter as he drives his horse, and blesses his God, or speaks to his fellow labourer by the roadside, as much as by the popular divine who, throughout the country, like Boanerges, is thundering out the gospel. God is glorified by our serving him in our proper vocations. Take care, dear reader, that you do not forsake the path of duty by leaving your occupation, and take care you do not dishonour your profession while in it. Think little of yourselves, but do not think too little of your callings. Every lawful trade may be sanctified by the gospel to noblest ends. Turn to the Bible, and you will find the most menial forms of labour connected either with most daring deeds of faith, or with persons whose lives have been illustrious for holiness. Therefore be not discontented with your calling. Whatever God has made your position, or your work, abide in that, unless you are quite sure that he calls you to something else. Let your first care be to glorify God to the utmost of your power where you are. Fill your present sphere to his praise, and if he needs you in another he will show it you. This evening lay aside vexatious ambition, and embrace peaceful content.”
2) I found grace in properly distinguishing Law and Gospel (which is the second half of the inspiration for the “Law”n “Gospel” name). Thanks to Tom Baker, a Lutheran pastor and radio host of Law & Gospel Radio on KFUO, I began to understand more of what Martin Luther was getting at when he wrote this commentary on Galatians 1:4:
“Let us equip ourselves against the accusations of Satan with this and similar passages of Holy Scripture. If he says, “Thou shalt be damned,” you tell him: “No, for I fly to Christ who gave Himself for my sins. In accusing me of being a damnable sinner, you are cutting your own throat, Satan. You are reminding me of God’s fatherly goodness toward me, that He so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. In calling me a sinner, Satan, you really comfort me above measure.” With such heavenly cunning we are to meet the devil’s craft and put from us the memory of sin.
St. Paul also presents a true picture of Christ as the virgin-born Son of God, delivered into death for our sins. To entertain a true conception of Christ is important, for the devil describes Christ as an exacting and cruel judge who condemns and punishes men. Tell him that his definition of Christ is wrong, that Christ has given Himself for our sins, that by His sacrifice He has taken away the sins of the whole world.
Make ample use of this pronoun “our.” Be assured that Christ has canceled the sins, not of certain persons only, but your sins. Do not permit yourself to be robbed of this lovely conception of Christ. Christ is no Moses, no law-giver, no tyrant, but the Mediator for sins, the Giver of grace and life.
We know this. Yet in the actual conflict with the devil, when he scares us with the Law, when he frightens us with the very person of the Mediator, when he misquotes the words of Christ, and distorts for us our Savior, we so easily lose sight of our sweet High-Priest.
For this reason I am so anxious for you to gain a true picture of Christ out of the words of Paul “who gave himself for our sins.” Obviously, Christ is no judge to condemn us, for He gave Himself for our sins. He does not trample the fallen but raises them. He comforts the broken-hearted. Otherwise Paul should lie when he writes “who gave himself for our sins.”"
3) I found grace in dealing with my own legalism. This summer I ‘really’ encountered Mark Driscoll for the first time when a buddy of mine convinced me to listen to a sermon of his entitled “Good Wine, Glad Hearts“. I didn’t even get through with the sermon before I was on the phone with my dad, repenting of my cold, self-righteous heart. Believe it or not, I found grace, the Gospel, and genuine deliverance in a sermon about alcohol.
4) I found grace in the fact that I don’t have it all together. Once I began stepping out of the “white washed tomb” of my prized shroud of self-righteousness, I found grace in sharing with my readers that I’m a sinner in need of grace upon grace:
“So let me tell you, I’m real. And I don’t have it all together. I struggle to get out of bed and read the Word some mornings. I have bad moods that threaten to overshadow my witness for Christ. I have fears and struggles, pain and anguish. I have sin. Though I am freed from its dominion in my life, I still struggle with its temptations – and I fail – often. I don’t understand the depths of God’s love. I can’t fathom the mercy that God has poured out on my wretched soul. I have difficulty sharing my faith at times. I am slowly recovering from my legalistic past. I read a lot of theological books, and listen to a lot of preacher’s podcasts, but what I may gain in knowledge, I often try to cover up in pride. I’m healing, not healed. I’m getting sanctified, but I haven’t “arrived”. I am weak, but, praise be to God, He is strong.
My fellow bloggers are in the same boat. We are all “journeying unto the place of which the LORD said, I will give it you” (as Numbers 10:29 says), but our road is no different from yours. We must bear our crosses daily. We must daily look unto the Lord for our strength and refuge. We must remember that apart from Him, “we can do nothing”. We too are like the disciples in Matthew 8:25, when the storms threatens to sink our ships, we cry “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!”, and He replies, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” After He calms yet another storm in our lives, we too are amazed and ask, “What manner of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!” And because we are on Resurrection side of the cross, we can know for certain what manner of man He really is – the God-Man, Jesus Christ our much needed, and only Savior of our souls.
So yeah. I’m real. A real sinner. A real blood washed heir. A real guy. With real problems.
Don’t forget it.”
5) I found grace in my calling – whatever it may be. Although this year was replete with the Spirit of God leading me to where he’d have me go, I still sought God’s grace and comfort in His calling on my life. It was stories like this one from Bud Robinson (a 19th century traveling preacher) that confronted me with God’s encouraging grace:
“I started back home and tried to tell the Lord that if He would find somebody else to preach I would help him all I could, but that I couldn’t do it. By that time I was getting into darkness and it seemed like all the salvation in the world wouldn’t get me to heaven if I did not preach. I finally went to see a man about it and as he talked worse to me than the other one, I left broken-hearted.
About that time a new preacher came on our circuit. I went to hear him preach one Sunday morning and went home with him for dinner. After dinner, I took him down on the hillside below the little parsonage to tell him about my calling to the ministry, but I broke down and began to cry.
He said to me so kindly, “Brother Bud, I know what your trouble is. God has called you to preach and you don’t think you can do it. Isn’t that your trouble?” All I could do was to nod my head and he said, “I know what it means. I refused to preach until God had to nearly kill me and my family in order to get me into the ministry.”
He said, “Brother Bud, God knows whom He wants to preach and if God wants you to preach, He will help you to do it. This afternoon I will put your name before the church and we will recommend you to the quarterly conference for license to exhort.”
Well, glory to Jesus! That afternoon as he preached, I think I made more noise than he did. Once more my burdens were gone and the light of heaven was flooding my soul. I was getting back into God’s purpose and plan for my life.
I want to say right here that a poor, ignorant boy has a hard time getting into the ministry because many of the best people seem to know that God did not call him to preach. If the poor fellow does not suit the folks, they do not think God called him. But the Lord sometimes calls people to preach that no one but the Lord would have called.”
6) I found grace in Proverbs, particularly in regards to Pro-life ministry. My heart yearned to “seek a God-entranced vision of the Pro-Life movement”. Being increasingly confronted with Christians who were at a loss for what was required of them in regards to protecting life created in the image of God, I was driven to God’s word in search of answers. Eventually, that led to a series I called “Pro-Life in Proverbs”, that I hope to continue in ‘08. It started here, prompted by a sermon that John Piper delivered in 1989, a week before he and a handful of his staff were arrested for trying to save babies being aborted at a Planned Parenthood in St. Paul. I continued the series with Silence Isn’t Golden…It’s Deadly, and Will You Reprove The Works Of Darkness?
7) I found grace in Church History. Studying under Dr. Tom Nettles was probably one of the most grace inducing relationships that I had all year. Add to that his commitment to the “original sources”, and you have a very thankful Church history student who was required (at first) to read theologians such as Tertullian, Irenaeus, and Justin Martyr. The ‘requirement’ didn’t stem the flood of grace that I encountered as I read of how God preserved His Church throughout the ages – up until this very day. It was quotes like the following that many times drove me to my knees (and often to tears) rejoicing in God’s ancient grace:
“Examine then, and see if He be not the dispenser of kingdoms, who is Lord at once of the world which is ruled, and of man himself who rules; if He have not ordained the changes of dynasties, with their appointed seasons, who was before all time, and made the world a body of times; if the rise and the fall of states are not the work of Him, under whose sovereignty the human race once existed without states at all. How do you allow yourselves to fall into such error? Why, the Rome of rural simplicity is older than some of her gods; she reigned before her proud, vast Capitol was built. The Babylonians exercised dominion, too, before the days of the Pontiffs; and the Medes before the Quindecemvirs; and the Egyptians before the Salii; and the Assyrians before the Luperci; and the Amazons before the Vestal Virgins. And to add another point: if the religions of Rome give empire, ancient Judea would never have been a kingdom, despising as it did one and all these idol deities; Judea, whose God you Romans once honoured with victims, and its temple with gifts, and its people with treaties; and which would never have been beneath your sceptre but for that last and crowning offence against God, in rejecting and crucifying Christ.” – Tertullian, Apology – Chapter XXVI
8 ) I found grace in Christ’s sufficiency, realizing that not only is He enough, but He is all there is – and the crowning jewel of all there will ever be! When I considered that I won’t even walk without Jesus, I found that grace was there, in the power of Christ, ready to warm my soul.
9) I found grace in sharing the Gospel. Even being at seminary did not render me immune to the temptation to disobey and ignore the Great Commission. It was only when grace moved me to consider the interests of immortal souls, that I began to see what happens when seminarians evangelize. When 2 Corinthians 5:20 finally penetrated my disobedient heart, with shivers down my spine, I was confronted with these words: “we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.“
“Every blast of war, or pestilence, or famine which shakes the human crop strews hell with precious seed of lost souls as thickly as when the November wind sweeps the sere leaves of some trackless wood into its silent lake. If the deaths of this generation of sinners were perfectly regular in series, it would furnish well-nigh sixty for every minute; so that, while we sit here deliberating in cold debate, somewhere in this field of death every second of time marks the dying gasp of a human being! Hark to the fatal beat! Each stroke of the pendulum tolls the knell of another soul that drops; each stroke is another plunge into the pit, and a new burst of another everlasting wail joining the many-voiced threnody of despair.
Oh! terrible world in which to live! Oh! dread responsibility of this living harvest, in the reaping of which we must race with death! How can our sluggish feet overtake the swift angel to snatch the prey from his grasp, when the baleful shade of his wings is seen flitting over isle and continent, even as the gathering gloom of night would appear to some watcher from the skies to sweep around the revolving globe?” – R.L. Dabney, from The World White to Harvest: Reap, or it Perishes
Wherever I turned this past year, I found grace – swimming to me in a sea of Christ’s blood. All that I encountered was ordained from eternity past to conform me to the image of Christ. Indeed, indeed brethren, we all found grace in 2007, and will find more where that came from in 2008.
“And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” – John 1:16-17
Our God reigns, Hallelujah!
‘BH
2 Comments
December 30, 2007 at 1:38 am
Wow, Hank. I’m right there with you through all of these. Chalk that up to God’s providence.
December 31, 2007 at 4:59 pm
Thanks for the post. That was encouraging buddy.