There was this student at the church I worked at who was passionate about service. We had just finished a conference where we focused on the power of God’s grace and how it should encourage us to serve all people, no matter what their background or current situation was. The last day of the conference was on Sunday, so we had some students share stories in the main service about what happened. He stood up in front of the whole church and said something that would completely rock my world.
“Without grace, we would be screwed.”
That’s true, isn’t it?
Is there anyway to live this life without grace? Without forgiveness? And if there is a way to live without those things, is that a life worth living?
The need for grace, and the recognition of that need are the basis of the Christian faith. Grace should change the world, and knowing that we need it, that without it we would be screwed… well that’s something that should turn your whole life upside down.
So I wasn’t surprised to hear that people were upset about what he said. I was just surprised at what specifically upset them.
“screwed.”
It’s lewd language. It’s crass. It’s immature. It’s sexual, and aggressive, and it’s just wrong. So we don’t say it in church, and if we do we need to learn better, and grow out of our childishness and become true Christians.
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It was a few months later that I was sitting in an Elder’s meeting, that same kid who got me in trouble by saying “screwed” was preaching in my place for the Youth Ministry. I was needed in a 4 hour long meeting about whether or not I would be keeping my job. As it turned out, I would not be.
As I heard one of the Elders tell me that I would no longer be employed at the church, I was trying to piece everything together in my head. My wife and I had moved our entire lives to Kansas because we knew God was calling us to this church. We bought a house, we began planting roots, she was even pregnant with our first child. We dreamed of having our baby grow up in this Kansas town, and now I was watching that dream die.
The Elder Board paused for my response. A long, pregnant pause.
“This sucks,” I said.
It was the first time I had admitted it, to myself or to anyone else. I think my wife had known for a few months already, but I kept thinking “this is all for God’s glory, and it will all work out.” And at that moment I finally accepted the fact that I was wrong. This wasn’t what God wanted, this was sin, this was the consequence of human failure. I allowed myself to say it, and feel it, and have it be realized. This sucks.
And it really hasn’t stopped sucking.
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So a few more weeks pass. I find myself back in California, scrolling through my wife’s Pinterest. I see Christian blog after Christian blog explaining everything from money management to craft ideas, all accompanied by these perfect pictures. And I start to wonder, “why doesn’t my life ever feel this way?”
I’m expecting my first child in December, I now live in this awesome cabin in the woods, I’m going to start school again and pursue the things I’m passionate about, and I feel like if I just took a snapshot of each one of those things and posted them on the internet I would end up looking like a pretty cool Christian guy, and if that’s the case then my question burns even more. If I have the ability to polish my life, and make it look pretty, like PINTEREST pretty, then why doesn’t my life ever feel that way?
Because without grace, I’m screwed.
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The fact is, this does suck. Being torn away from people I love, and the dreams that I had built, feeling like I’m distant from God and no longer trust His calling in my life, feeling sickened by the thought of church, and of the Christian faith… it sucks.
And I really do feel that way. I feel like God did these things to hurt me, like God allows people to sin when He has all the power to stop it. I feel like the church is a breeding ground for pride and arrogance and that if the God I believe in is real then He would have no part in what we call Christianity.
If I took a picture of that and pinned it… well, it wouldn’t be pretty.
It would be lewd, crass, immature, aggressive, awkward. It would suck.
Cause that’s what humanity is.
And that’s why I need grace.
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I need it. I’m hungry for it. I want it so bad it hurts, because without it, the truth of who I am is ugly.
And I can’t cover it up with some good lighting, or Instagram filters, all I’ve got is the reality of who I am, and it’s a faithless man who is deeply broken by a world that thrives on sin.
The story of how I got here isn’t pretty. The story of my life, and the things that I’ve done are hideous, and if my blog was only filled with honest posts about myself then it would disgust people.
I need grace.
I need a God who is big enough to take all of that and make it beautiful, to polish it off and make good come from it. I need a God who can exist in a church that despises Him. I need a God that sees my anger and hurt and says “that’s good enough.”
Because David, who killed a man to take his wife, was good enough.
Because Solomon, whose sin led to the kingdom of Israel being torn apart, was good enough.
Because Saul, who murdered Christians and persecuted the church, was good enough.
The stories in the scripture of people who showed the glory of God to others look nothing like the stories we tell about ourselves through pictures, and statuses, and blog posts. They look like people who, without grace, would be completely screwed.
So, I’m not going to pretend that everything is fine. That lie takes away the glory of this story. I’m not fine. I’m hurt and angry, and I have trouble believing in a God who would allow this sort of stuff to happen. I’m prideful and arrogant, because I think that God shouldn’t have let anything bad happen to me when I was “doing what He wanted”. I’m exhausted, and scared of being a dad, and going back to school, and trying to find a new job in this new town.
This sucks,
because without grace, I’m screwed,
and for so long I gave myself no grace,
but I’m good enough.
Next week… “How I Got Here pt. 1, or With the Faith of a Mustard Seed you can Move to the Mountains”
|| posted by Alex ||
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