Grace Again

 Play this while you read.


What grace is. 

Grace covers my sins so I can be near God. Jesus died so I wouldn't have to be perfect, because I'm definitely not. Grace encourages me to do good things, because when I get to heaven or Jesus comes back, whichever's first, all my deeds must pass through the fire, and the bad ones will burn up and the good ones will remain. If the good outweighs the bad, I get to stay.

Or?

Or I go to Hell.

That's rough. Think of all the deeds you do everyday. The word says 'if you even look on a woman you've sinned' - even thinking about it is a demerit. How could you possibly do enough 'good works' to counter the bad?

That's why we have grace. I can't earn my way to heaven, that's why Jesus died.

But aren't you still measuring your salvation by volume of works? The staying power of your deeds?

That's why it's so important to be involved with a church and volunteer organizations who can help you do good for a world that's in such a wretched state.

Wait... what?

What is grace for in this life if I still have to do good works to get into heaven? Once a faulty work has been done, it's done and will burn up at the end. So why grace? Does grace permit me to do the good ones? Wouldn't that mean I'm inherently evil? And if it's 'by grace I have been saved through faith,  not of myself, but as the gift of God, and NOT of Works lest I boast', why do I try to be a good person at all? That verse says Faith already saved me; what more do I work for? Well, nothing, really.
Ahaha. That's rich.
The word says that I am being saved. Jesus died for all men, especially those who believe, which means all men are saved: Grace for everyone!
--I accept Jesus and am saved. It's been done and I choose to walk in it.
--I'm being saved: today I had hard times but remembered that Measuring the depth of my redemption is what the Christian walk is all about.
--I will be saved: tomorrow will become today and I will get some more saving in me unto the perfecting of this saint.
My heart is for Him, that higher mind and life, so my drive is to be a "good" person, a whole person, but above that a free person. I haven't really been free, I've been a slave. I've been subject to one who would rule as if he were God, an imposter. He led me to believe that God requires much of me, and that I owe him and must repay him, but that I'll only fail in that endeavor because I'm an evil, sinful, worm.
I'm not evil. I'm not a lost and lonely sinner.
I am made like God looks and like God is. He says 'I am' so I can say 'I am'. But our understanding and perception of the spirit of the living God has been perverted, so we worship dumb idols and ideas on which we have no grasp. But there is hope for children of light. That light is the hope for those who recognize there has been a gap between us and God. You mightn't know what it is, but recognizing this fact is actually a huge hurdle, Overcomer. This huge barrier is the impossible distance from the earthly mind to the spiritual; it's faith that opens your eyes and it's grace that gets you over.
Grace permits us to look to the father when our eyes have been elsewhere. It eliminates the preventative force that keeps me in a holding pattern while I run out of fuel. Grace slices through pride. It subjugates what I have been to who God is, and permits me to walk forward. Not to do more good works, but to be free from the thought that I must do anything, that God requires a single thought from me. Sovereignty is at the top of God's list. His List!
Sovereignty is being a king: preeminence, indisputable, supreme rank, power or authority. I am subject to nobody; God's made me king of my land, my heart. My free will cannot be contested by any man or spirit. It is when I lay my crown at someone's feet that I submit my sovereignty to their heart. I can submit to a harsh task master if I choose to, I can be terrified of demons if I take my crown back from the feet of God and lay it at the feet of darkness. I only have one crown and can only submit to one master. Made sovereign by God, I am growing in humility. It takes a strong foundation for a king to lay his crown down in service to another man, made sovereign by the same God. Another king cannot lay claim to my actions or heart. I am free to submit there or remember my place in God as a freeman. There are no chains on me because Jesus stood me up, dusted me off and said 'hey brother, what do you want to do now?' I'm not indentured to God, and I don't owe a man anything. Obligation and social norms are the bondage of every man. I'm free to be ostracized and empowered to maintain my integrity as a Man of God Most High.
All that said, I cannot demand a single thing of another man, and it's reciprocal. God doesn't demand anything of me, and doesn't impinge on the free will he gave me. He's sovereign and made me the same. If every man's a king, he can do as he will; if he lives in peace, he can maintain peace; if he declares war, war may be declared on him. If he submits to council, he will be a wise ruler. Sovereignty says that I can do whatever I want, and Grace says that it's permissible. God even says it's good. My heart is bent on finding God, so the stuff that looks good and the stuff that looks bad and the stuff that hurts my heart and the stuff that holds my head in fruitless, endless battle is all food for me: I offer it to God and don't need to take a thought for myself. This act offers darkness to the light where it's disempowered, unhinged, and disassembled. Grace is the 'I know a guy' that lets me into God's workshop, a place in which it doesn't matter where the goods came from, he'll take them all. This keeps me safe because it leaves no room for reservation or compromise. I am liberated from the things that have weighed on me, either deed or thought, and I don't desire to continue in either of those. So I'll be a sell-out; all my stocks have been purchased anyway.
This brings God close because whether I am up or down, the Father is still for me.  Php 4:12  I have known both to be abased, and I have known to abound; in everything and in all things I have been initiated, both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to be in want.  When I do the profitable or the less-than-profitable, He'll be right there. Sitting pretty in the physical things, my heart may still be yearning for the spirit to fill me. Grace permits me to turn from what used to fill me to the table that truly satisfies.
God never wanted sacrifices, but men wouldn't receive that they were loved and well-thought-of. So God gave them animals to slaughter so they could breathe easily about being, in their eyes, less than worthy. Well, killing a man, a bit better thought of than rams and cattle, who walked a perfect walk put an end to sacrifices for good because he woke up. His death made a big impression, as an open declaration of God being an accessible everyman's-God, and his resurrection made all things new by informing people that because God was close and super keen on being known, death just...wasn't anymore. Isn't. These are ongoing statements. We're being saved, remember?
God's active and real, the God of life, so death isn't a thing anymore. People consider this a crazy idea because of course everyone dies. Everyone who's ever been anyone has died - that's sort of the only thing everybody has in common. But death is actually a matter of lordship.
Fear is what you grant power over you (where you lay your crown): people fear death, spiders, and public speaking because they're ridiculous. I have chosen to fear God over giving man power over me; over giving satan power over me; over giving demons, death, and destruction power over me. I am now submitted to a single thing alone: the one true God. Sickness, terror, demons, even the death of this body are no longer considerations for me because I believe by faith that God is who he says he is, that he sent his son as a mediator on my behalf, and that I can LIVE an existence I haven't even dreamed of because God has made himself knowable. There have been men who haven't died - Enoch and Elijah - because they walked with God. They were so wrapped up in who He is that they became one with him and 'were no more'. Whether you believe that or not doesn't really matter: either the word is the final authority or it isn't.
Watch this relate to grace.
When the last sacrifice rose again, man's performing his way back into God's good graces lost 100% of its effect. He took our ability to earn righteousness, our right standing, out of our hands. Now it's a matter of heart. Only a matter of heart. God doesn't need you to do a damn thing (1 - you're loved, 2 - you're sovereign, 3 - you're forgiven, 4 - you can't really impress him, 4.5 - impressing people (which is what we're really trying to do because we don't know God much anyway) doesn't get you any lasting peace.) All you can do now is receive what's been done for you, accept that you can control you're life as much as you can control your 16 year old brother (can't), and trust that God really knows what's best for you. He doesn't want me to go without food for 30 hours unless I want to: I owe him all I am, but that? What is that to him? He doesn't want me to do 25 hours of community service a week unless I want to: if I do it out of obligation thinking it'll make me a good person, I'm just lying to myself. These things arise because I want the credit, I want to be seen, I want to love on people so they'll like how great I am, I want the hours for the honor cord, etc. (This isn't to say that being a servant isn't godly, and that no hearts are pure. Quite the contrary: My faith is active - see the works that come from this faith, this pure heart motivated by the understanding that I'm free to serve or not serve and that I'm loved just the same.)
God's about growing light. He's about having us exercise the freedom he let his son DIE so we could move in. Sin is simply not believing that God is on his throne, in control. When I look on a man's wife, I'm in trouble because I start thinking that God's not satisfying me bodily. When I long for a shiny Red car instead of my blue pinto, I am relating more to what I have than who God is. If I get pissed at my boss (murder), I've lost sight of the fact that God's every moment is about showing me where I'm not founded in his peace. Sin is no big deal. They're just signposts that point to freedom and love. Grace is the road.
Blaspheming the holy ghost, called 'the unforgivable sin' (where I intentionally and without remorse deny that God is doing a thing) is only unforgivable because I clog the conduit through which forgiveness pours. I cram dirty rags (my mindsets) into the opening and so am dry and miserable. It's like asking a master for sagely wisdom, plugging your ears, and then blaming them that nothing's getting through. It's just hard-heartedness, there's even grace for that, and God's faith is steadfast.
So grace is kind of a big deal. You can't find peace by the works of your hands because God's already impressed with you. You are sovereign to choose to pursue Him or not, to turn aside at any time, and to return again just as quickly without shame or judgement. He doesn't demand a single thing of you, including calling your mother on mother's day.  You are free to do or not do anything, so be liberated. The crux here is that you are empowered to do any single thing you want, but the hope (expectation) is that you'll find God through it, and not a constructed identity in it. The thing is not the thing - it is an expression of God's vision of freedom for you, performed on your behalf. If you miss it, it isn't an issue: there's grace for that.