dancing cripples

Liz Curtis Higgs was one of the best-known disc jockeys in America, and she lived quite a wild life.  In fact one day Howard Stern said to Liz, “You know, you need to clean up your act…or something bad’s gonna happen.”  Seriously something is wrong when Howard Stearn is functioning as your conscience.   Liz was going hard to the well of success and wild parties…to quench her soul-thirst.

That kind of life brought it’s share of hurts.  Liz had been burned by so many guys…her heart had been broken and hurt by so many men, she became a militant feminist.  But a girlfriend kept inviting her to church.  So one day
after a long, long time, she said, “Okay, I will go to church one time and ONE TIME ONLY.”  So she went to church one time with her friend.  And that week, the pastor just happened to be teaching on the Bible verse that says “Wives submit yourselves to your husbands.”  Not exactly a great verse to start with a militant feminist, okay?  She got a little uptight and a little ticked, but she
continued to listen and she actually heard the second part of the verse, which most people never talk about, “…and husbands – you sacrifice yourself; you give yourself for your wives just as Jesus Christ sacrificed Himself for the church and died for her.”

Well, when Liz heard that part, she leaned over to her friend and said with a little cynicism, and said, “Shoot, I’d gladly give myself to any man if I knew he would die for me.”  Her friend leaned over and said, “Liz, there is man who loved you enough to die for you.  His name is Jesus Christ.  That’s how much He loves you.”

Hearing those words, was like waking up from a bad dream.  Liz began to see her life for what it was, an unfulfilled search to satisfy her thirst — for God.  Not long after that Liz surrendered her life to God’s love and started living the life of her dreams.

The Apostle Paul once said, “It’s the kindness of God that lead us to repentance.”  That’s grace.  It flows when we surrender.  It leads us to surrender.  Grace is not merely a second chance — unlimited do-overs.  It is not less than a second chance, but it is far more than forgiveness.  Grace changes us.

May Amazing Grace always be our song.

I think sometimes, when it comes to grace, perhaps our range of vision and understanding is simply to narrow.  We typically stop at forgiveness.  Grace = forgiveness = a second chance.  But grace actually goes well beyond forgiveness.  Paul says that it is by grace that we are saved — and “saved” actually goes well beyond, “I made it into heaven.”  Being saved is the process of becoming more and more like Jesus.  So grace goes beyond forgiveness and saved goes beyond hell-insurance.

In other words, God not only forgives us by grace, he redeems us and transforms us by grace. In Malachi 3, it is stated this way,  

Look! I am sending my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. Then the Lord you are seeking will suddenly come to his Temple. The messenger of the covenant, whom you look for so eagerly, is surely coming,” says the LORD Almighty. “But who will be able to endure it when he comes? Who will be able to stand and face him when he appears? For he will be like a blazing fire that refines metal… He will sit and judge like a refiner of silver, watching closely as the dross is burned away.

When God comes close, do not expect it to be an entirely comfortable experience.  You may be unable to stand.  It may burn.  He is a refiner’s fire.  Burning away the garbage in our hearts. It’s not optional so, we have to decide, when God comes close will I let the fire burn?

A lady once went to watch a silversmith.  She actually wanted to have a better understanding of what it means that God is like a blazing fire, a refiner of silver.  The silversmith held a piece of silver over the fire and let it heat up. He explained that in refining silver, one needed to hold the silver in the middle of the fire where the flames were hottest as to burn away all the impurities.  Did it ever feel to you like you were being held in the fire?  Not just the edges, but the very hottest spot?  Like God just wouldn’t let you go no matter how much it burned?

The silversmith went on to describe how the refining of silver took his full attention.  He had to sit right there holding the silver…watching it the entire time it was in the fire… left even a moment too long in the flames it would be destroyed.  At just the right moment he would bring the silver out of the fire…the dross… the impurities would rise to the top and he would skim it out.  Over and over again…he would do this till the silver was fully refined.

The woman was silent for a moment. Then she asked the silver smith, how do you know when the silver is fully refined? He smiled and answered, “Oh, that’s easy –when I
look in the silver and see the reflection of my face.  I know it’s fully refined.”

God will not stop refining us till he sees his reflection in our hearts.  This is his grace.

May Amazing Grace ever be our song.

Every Saturday, when Ann Lee walks to the end of her driveway to get the mail she finds an envelope with the same return address:Harrison County Jail.  Inside is always a $1 check with the memo: “For causing the death of your daughter Whitney.”  It was Super Bowl Sunday, 1995.  Ann strapped her 4 year old daughter Whitney into her car seat and set out for a supermarket near home.  Brandon Blendon, 17, was driving behind them, a beer between his legs and two more on the front seat.  When she stopped, he didn’t.  The pickup slammed into the car, crushing Whitney.  She was in a coma for 49 hours before she died.

In the fall of 1996 Judge Whitefield made certain Brandon wouldn’t soon forget his past.  He sentenced him to 20 years and ordered him to pay $520 dollars in restitution — $1/week for 10 years.  He should’ve sent the last check about 3 years ago.

Can you imagine that burden of guilt? Can’t you just picture pain flowing from pen to check to mother…each week…week after week.  Few would question the justice in such a sentence.  Only the foolish would think there should be no consequences for our actions.   But let me ask you?

Will it be enough?  How many years and how many payments would it take to pay for the life of a 4 year old daughter?  How many $1 reminders will it take to bring peace to Brandon or Ann or her husband Jack?

What’s your picture of God? Is He your Judge Whitefield?  Do you imagine God keeping track of your every offense — every failure; big ones, little ones, secret ones — and He’s gonna make you pay, remind you every day, that you don’t measure up.  Or maybe He’s your Ann Lee and you don’t think you’ll ever be able to do enough to make it up to Him, for what you’ve done.

Read what Paul wrote in II Corinthians 5:18-19:

And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him.  For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation.

Did you catch that?  Go ahead and linger there for a moment.   Did you know that “in Christ” God doesn’t count your sins against you?  Isn’t that incredible?  God does not count our trespasses against us.  He’s not keeping track.  Do you understand?   Your biggest sin, your greatest failure, your deepest regrets –past, present, even future, they are covered by the riches of God’s grace.  Do you know why?  Because the price we could never pay…He paid.

I love how Joe Garlington said it,

If people don’t think that what we are telling them is too good to be true…then we aren’t telling them the good news.

If it sounds too good to be true, it just might be the gospel and this is the message that Jesus has commissioned us to take global.

May Amazing Grace always be our song.

Every  once in awhile I hear somebody question our commitment, or maybe it’s just my commitment to be against sin.  The questions arise from a variety of sources in a variety of forms.  Sometimes the questions come like this, “Is Calvary way too heavy on Grace?  Have we given up preaching truth?  Are we lukewarm?  Do we shy away from challenging people because we are afraid to offend them?  Have we become so seeker friendly that we are sin-friendly?”  Sometimes I don’t hear questions, I just hear statements.  “We want to go somewhere that teaches more on foundational topics like sin, the holiness of God, and hell.”

So I’ve been thinking about this lately — thought I would put some semi-random thoughts down in print.

1) I will always take it as a compliment when someone wonders if Calvary is too heavy on grace.  I love grace.  I live for and by grace.  I love the fact that there were people in Paul’s day (as in Apostle Paul) who thought he was too heavy on grace.  I grew up in a church that was light on grace and heavy on laws and the traditions of men.  That’s not Calvary.  Calvary is called to be a safe place for people to seek God, a people who will celebrate the fact that mercy overcomes justice.

2) At the same time I do not believe in cheap grace.  Read Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book “The Cost of Discipleship.”  It’s one of my favorite books on living by grace.  He says words like,

“cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.

“costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

You’ve heard me sound the call for costly grace lately when I have said things like, “You cannot follow Jesus without leaving something behind.”  It’s also behind the call to seek a “holy calling instead of a hallow calling.”  It is a motive behind every call to generosity.

3) I am convinced that our greatest sins are not the sins of commission, they are the sins of omission.  Our greatest sins may be less the bad deeds we do and more the good deeds we fail to do.  My preaching reflects that.  In the parable of the talents Jesus called the man who buried his talents and did nothing — wicked.

4) If you are not familiar with true Christianity, this may come as a shock to you, but..
True Christianity is not simply an invitation to become a better person.  It is not primarily a program for cultural reformation.   It is not a political party.  Nor is it simply a get out of hell free card.  It’s an invitation to live the life you’ve been
seeking by connecting with Jesus and receiving his grace.

5) I do believe in truth.  Grace is one of the truths in which I believe.  I do believe that sin is bad, but I also believe that mercy overcomes justice and the kindness of God leads us to repentance.  I believe that the only way we can be truly seeker-friendly is by becoming an enemy of sin and a champion of grace.  I love to challenge people with truth to be known as a people of radical love.

May Amazing Grace ever be our song.

I went to Avatar a week or so ago.  I know I’m a little late.  I’m a big sci-fi/fantasy fan, but not a big 3-D fan.  So it took me a while to go.  I think what finally put me past the tipping point was listening to a bit of Mark Driscoll’s Avatar evaluation (Mark is the pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle – big church).  Now granted if you know anything about Mark Driscoll — some call him the cussing pastor — you know that he likes to speak his mind and he enjoys a bit of controversy.

Anyway Pastor Driscoll called Avatar “the most demonic, satanic movie I’ve ever seen.” He called it “demonic paganism” with a portrayal of a “false Jesus,” a “false resurrection” and a “false heaven.”  Driscoll remarked, “That any Christian could watch that without seeing the overt demonism is beyond me.”  Such remarks coming from a professed fan of ultimate fighting — I decided I needed to see for myself this most demonic, satanic film.

So here are a few thoughts –

1) I thought the 3-D was actually quite good.  The glasses made the movie a little dark, but this was not your father’s 3-D experience.

2) The movie most definitely has a pantheistic (god is in everything, everything is god) worldview, but that has been one of Hollywood’s preferred world-views for years.  We might as well say that Star Wars and the Lion King were demonic movies (both were also quite pantheistic).

3) On the other hand there were some significant connectors to the true story of life — the gospel story — watching the movie you sensed the embrace of things like unconditional love, self-sacrifice, resurrection, incarnation, and even the restoration of creation.  C.S. Lewis suggested that story themes like this can awaken our sehnsucht — an innate sense that we were made for something we are missing.

4) Finally I like the dichotomy that John Ortberg points out in a Leadership Journal article.  He writes,

…the qualities in the heroes (of the movie Avatar) are remarkably consistent with many of the words listed by church leaders (in their description of mature Christians): courageous, loving, giving, loyal, generous. What it means to be a good person has been embedded by God pretty deeply into human consciousness.  How we get there is another matter.  Then I’ll ask this question: do you think the average unchurched person in America thinks of these characteristics when they hear the word “Christian”? Not so much.

If you go to Avatar, enjoy it through the lens of a good Biblical world-view.  It is pantheistic, but it also reminds me that there are elements of the gospel — at least reminders of a hunger for the gospel planted within all people.  I would encourage you to go with someone who is not a Jesus-follower and have a good conversation about their world-view and your world-view.  But just a head’s up — I wouldn’t start with the words — “that was the most demonic, satanic movie I’ve ever seen.”  I statement like that tends to be a conversation stopper.