I looked around, and I watched for joy.
It seemed more than finding joy, I found faces creased with worry-lines, etched deeper with each passing year until they became such a permanent part of countenances they no longer disappeared.
Even in laughter, sadness remains in the faces of those around us.
I hear their stories, and I weep. Life is cruel and unforgiving at times, early dreams gone to the wind as if they were never held tightly by young, hopeful hearts who had not yet learned that this planet is a wrecked place.
There will always be death.
There will always be infidelity.
There will always be hidden sins affecting the lives of those we love.
Because there will always and only be humans living on this earth, and we get to live right alongside them. Not only that, but we are human, too.
Human enough to mess up just like them. Human enough to be gripped by the failure of another until we make it our own, somehow believing life to be over unless another very fallible human begins to live a different life.
I see them go under, then step out and up. Somehow, these strong people know that there’s more to life than what another human does—even if it’s done to them.
The person who wronged them never defined their worth. What they saw from the person’s visible actions didn’t match up with what they knew God’s heart saw when they were yet in invisible places in their mothers’ wombs.
In Psalm 110:1, David writes, “The Lord says to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.’
The Lord sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter. Rule in the midst of your enemies!”
If God asks Jesus to sit at His right hand until He {God} makes His {Jesus’} enemies His footstool, it seems to me we can do the same.
Ephesians 1:3 says, “Blessed me the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.”
And in Ephesians 2:4-6, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ.”
See this—He has seated us with Himself. Who else gets to sit in warfare?
We are blessed in Christ. Blessings are free, and they are a gift.
He’s made us alive, when before we were dead.
He’s raised us up, above this planet where otherwise we would be destroyed.
Grace is unmerited favor. That means you get it when you don’t deserve it, and I dare say you receive it when all odds defy it.
You don’t work for it; it’s handed to you while you rest right in the center of your enemies.
This means before they’ve gone away. You can rest in the middle of warfare because you’re seated with Christ in heavenly places—and we all know that evil can’t get close to God and the heavenlies.
Our warfare is fought in our rest. Grace has only to be received.
But what is this grace? If we must receive it, doesn’t such a gift merit a true understanding of its attributes? For what if we are offered a counterfeit, and we receive it without being aware that it’s a replacement, wrapped in packaging so close to the original but designed to trick us?
We need real gold to purchase real things. In the same way, we need true grace to inherit real salvation. Settling for cheap grace when there is true grace is the worst dilemma that could occur to you on this planet.
Cheap grace doesn’t save you, either from your own sin or that of others. True grace always delivers.
Cheap grace lures you into a counterfeit “peace” while you continue in sin; true grace sets you free from the bondage of your sin. {“For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved.” 2 Peter 2:19b}
I wonder how we are more concerned with setting people free from working slavery than we are with setting them free from soul slavery.
My friend looked at me the other day in bewilderment when she said, “I know so many Godly men who are living in sexual sin, and have no qualms about it.”
“Godly?” I queried. “How does one profess to walk with Jesus when they purposefully choose to walk in the same sin as a lifestyle choice?”
Falling into sin, then getting back up because you know saving grace is one thing. Deliberate choice for a lifestyle of ongoing sin is quite another—and we can’t profess to walk with Jesus without receiving His grace that saves us from those sins.
My children can’t choose a daily lifestyle of rebellion to their father without losing the peace they enjoy with him. Just as the “fear of the Lord is the beginning of {our} wisdom” {Psalm 9:10, ESV}, so a healthy fear of their father is the beginning of their joyful relationship with him.
Grace sets us free to walk in life; it does not give us a ticket to continue in death.
As Shane Beeson says, “Just because we’re not under law doesn’t mean we have no law.”
The law is our greatest tool of teaching us how impossible it is to live righteously. We are set free from the law because the Spirit of Christ can do what the law could never do.
Under the law, we know what we should do, and we don’t do it.
We know what we shouldn’t do, and we do it anyway.
God wants us to feel this sting. He gave us the law of righteousness so that we would know our inability to live righteously without His Presence. He wants us to know the need for His own Spirit to indwell us, because He wants to be center of our hearts.
As darkness is dispelled by a strong beam of light, so the power of sin loses its force when the light of true grace is known in our otherwise dark hearts.
If you were to hold a flashlight with no batteries, darkness would remain when you pushed the on button. In the same way, when you know only cheap grace, your life will not change.
Just as a flashlight must be charged by batteries in order to work, so your soul must be full of the Spirit in order to change. Just as it is not enough to go camping with a flashlight full of dead batteries, so it is not enough to claim grace that is not truly saving you from the power of sin.
You can hold that flashlight all night long, but it will do you no good. Likewise, you can name the name of Christ all day long but it will do you no good unless you allow Him to dwell in you and change your life from the inside out.
A joyless life stems both from a lack of deliverance from our own sin and that of the sins of others. We are meant to be overcome by neither. We are meant to be seated with Christ in heavenly places, to rest in the center of our enemies, to know what it means to be set free from sin rather than be overtaken by it.
We must first understand true grace, then choose to receive it. When we do, the Spirit of God will indwell us with a Presence not our own, and will lead us to a continual and fuller awareness of His saving grace.
The world will know you, not by your words, but by your fruit. They must see the affects of your grace in order to believe in the truth of your grace.
They must see light turn on when you hold the flashlight,or they will never take the trouble to carry it—and they will want you to toss it as well. Just as they are better off without the burden of carrying the non-working flashlight, so they feel better off without the burden of a religion that doesn’t change a life.
They know more than we think they know, for darkness is felt more than seen, and light shines more than we are even aware.
And no matter what, they must see that the grace you profess to know can keep you in the peace they so desperately desire to know.
The hard in your life need not create hardness in your heart. As you receive this saving Grace for your sin, may you also receive it for the sins committed to you, and allow God to seat you, even still, in heavenly places with Him.
Because nothing beneath God will ever rise above God. He has you, and He holds you—because His grace saves you.
Women of Purpose 