Daily Archives: December 7, 2011

Proven Path Ministries

>Got Grace?

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“That’s it, Job! It’s your arrogance!” Eliphaz backs away and stares at him with that glare, saying, again, “You are getting exactly what you deserve!”
The style of communication Eliphaz employs is not that unusual to those who lack grace. It may not always be this brutal, but haven’t you noticed this tone when you’re around people who evidence no grace?
When you’re down, they kick you.
When you’re drowning, they pull you under.
When you’re confused, they complicate your life.
And when you’re almost finished, they write you off.
Other than that, they’re pretty good folks.
~ Swindoll
 
One thing that I have learned in this walk with Christ, is that the two best places to learn how to love your enemy is in your family and in your church. It also is the two best places to learn how to give and receive grace. 
 
You see I have met Eliphaz.
I have even looked at Eliphaz in the mirror staring back at me with stubborn defiance.
 
I have learned that the hardest time to give grace comes when it is to be appropriated to someone I know should know better… to someone I have helped over and over… to someone I have loved hard and long.
 
If we remember the context, this Eliphaz was Job’s friend. He was close enough to him that he felt he needed to be there for him physically. He was the friend who was close enough to show up. Yet, his words brought Job no comfort… because they came without grace.
Yes I know Eliphaz. I have met him. I have been him.
 
I remember when I first became wholly surrendered I began studying the Word like crazy and I still study it like crazy… would love nothing more than to just sit and study the Word and write about the Word and teach the Word from daylight to dark but for some reason the people in this house want to spend time with me and eat food and wear clean clothes and stuff like that.

(I mean really the nerve of some people, lol).

 
So as I grew in my knowledge, I grew in my arrogance. When I would hear of someone in a hurt or struggle I would think “well, if they would just do what God says right here then they would not be in that mess” 
I truly believe the only thing that kept me from saying some of the things I thought was because in all honesty I truly believed that I went through my sins and the struggles of my youth simply because I was ignorant of God’s Word, so I had little grace for those who were supposed to “know better”.
 
Mercy was not my gift… yet God would teach me.
 
You see I had mercy and grace galore for those who did not know better, but those that I thought should know better… well, go on and suffer the consequences of disobedience.
 
You see, I would look at them and think how I thought I would have made such different choices had I been where they were, knowing what I know now, then.
And what I have learned is that really it boiled down that my heart hurt that they would choose not to do what I so wished I could have and would have done… 
 
I am grateful that God has chosen to teach me grace through His word as well as through personal life experiences… I love learning to see life through His eyes and not my own… my eyesight has never been that good to begin with.
 
So Eliphaz is out there…
He might even be staring at you in the mirror…
He may only show up at certain times and with certain situations or people…
But here’s the thing… 
This Eliphaz who shows no grace, speaks no grace, needs grace.
Yep that’s right, he needs the grace that he doesn’t yet know how to give. 
 
So not only is God teaching me to give grace to those who are struggling and hurting whether it be just life or consequences of sin or bad decisions, He is also teaching me to give grace to those who have none of their own. Because as my Pastor said once they just need more knowledge of God. And not just knowledge in knowledge, but knowledge of God and His Christ…
 
Grace and peace be multiplied to you
in the knowledge of God
and of Jesus our Lord;
2 Peter 1:2
 
I’m left with one thought: “Lord, if you are teaching us anything through Job’s endurance, teach us the value of grace. Teach us about demonstrating grace. Show us again that grace is always appropriate. Always needed.
The person sitting near you in church next Sunday, the lady pushing that cart in the grocery store, the one who’s putting gas in his car at the next pump, the man behind you at the movies, waiting to buy his ticket, the student across from you at school. You have no idea what that person is going through. If you did, chances are you’d be prompted to show grace or to say a few encouraging words even quicker. Remember this please: grace is always appropriate, always needed!
“Amazing grace—how sweet the sound!”
~ Swindoll
 
So precious one… Got Grace?
Have you got it to give?
Are you willing to give it to those that ain’t got it and don’t give it?
but grow in the grace and knowledge
of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
To Him be the glory,
both now and to the day of eternity.
Amen.
2 Peter 3:18

 
 
 
  
Confessions of a Christian Wife, Proven Path Ministries

My Body

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I found this in my posts that I never actually posted… think I’ll post it now 🙂

So I have been reading and reading and soaking in the words of wisdom found in The Pursuit of God by AW Tozer… and well I have finished it and I suppose I shall finally return it to the library and pray that some other soul chooses to take it home and be enlightened by these words of exhortation.

The last chapter is titled The Sacrament of Living which is based from 1 Corinthians 10:31 

Whether, then, you eat or drink
or whatever you do,
do all to the glory of God.
Tozer writes:

One of the greatest hindrances to internal peace which the Christian encounters is the common habit of dividing our lives into two areas, the sacred and the secular.

As these areas are conceived to exist apart from each other and to be morally and spiritually incompatible, and as we are compelled by the necessities of living to be always crossing back and forth from the one to the other, our inner lives tend to break up so that we live a divided instead of a unified life.

He goes on to write:

This tends to divide our total life into two departments. We come unconsciously to recognize two sets of actions. The first are performed with a feeling of satisfaction and a firm assurance that they are pleasing to God. These are the sacred acts and they are usually thought to be prayer, Bible reading, hymn singing, church attendance and such other acts as spring directly from faith. They may be known by the fact that they have no direct relation to this world, and would have no meaning whatever except as faith shows us another world, “an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”

Over against these sacred acts are the secular ones. They include all of the ordinary activities of life which we share with the sons and daughters of Adam: eating, sleeping, working, looking after the needs of the body and performing our dull and prosaic duties here on earth. These we often do reluctantly and with many misgivings, often apologizing to God for what we consider a waste of time and strength.

He also shares:

This is the old sacred-secular antithesis. Most Christians are caught in its trap. They cannot get a satisfactory adjustment between the claims of the two worlds. They try to walk the tight rope between two kingdoms and they find no peace in either. Their strength is reduced, their outlook confused and their joy taken from them.

I believe this state of affairs to be wholly unnecessary. We have gotten ourselves on the horns of a dilemma, true enough, but the dilemma is not real. It is a creature of misunderstanding. The sacred-secular antithesis has no foundation in the New Testament. Without doubt a more perfect understanding of Christian truth will deliver us from it.

The Lord Jesus Christ Himself is our perfect example, and He knew no divided life.

And he goes on to write:

That monkish hatred of the body which figures so prominently in the works of certain early devotional writers is wholly without support in the Word of God. Common modesty is found in the Sacred Scriptures, it is true, but never prudery or a false sense of shame.

The New Testament accepts as a matter of course that in His incarnation our Lord took upon Him a real human body, and no effort is made to steer around the downright implications of such a fact. He lived in that body here among men and never once performed a non-sacred act.

His presence in human flesh sweeps away forever the evil notion that there is about the human body something innately offensive to the Deity. God created our bodies, and we do not offend Him by placing the responsibility where it belongs. He is not ashamed of the work of His own hands.

And then he writes:

We need no more be ashamed of our body–the fleshly servant that carries us through life–than Jesus was of the humble beast upon which He rode into Jerusalem. “The Lord hath need of him” may well apply to our mortal bodies. If Christ dwells in us we may bear about the Lord of glory as the little beast did of old and give occasion to the multitudes to cry, “Hosanna in the highest.”

That we see this truth is not enough. If we would escape from the toils of the sacred-secular dilemma the truth must “run in our blood” and condition the complexion of our thoughts. We must practice living to the glory of God, actually and determinedly.

By meditation upon this truth, by talking it over with God often in our prayers, by recalling it to our minds frequently as we move about among men, a sense of its wondrous meaning will begin to take hold of us. The old painful duality will go down before a restful unity of life. The knowledge that we are all God’s, that He has received all and rejected nothing, will unify our inner lives and make everything sacred to us.

**************************************************
Wow…
God is not ashamed of my body.
Not ashamed.
He is not ashamed of the work of His hands.
He formed me.
I will give thanks to You,
for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Wonderful are Your works,
And my soul knows it very well.
Psalm 139:14

I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
God is not looking upon me in this flesh of mine with disgust.
How often I forget that.
How often I even pray for the day that I can worship Him apart from this flesh that I have come to hate.
This flesh that God loves.

I find disgust with my body.
I look with disgust upon this flesh of mine.

But quite possibly my Creator does not…

This body, this flesh, that I find myself cringing in shame over at times…
My Creator created fearfully and wonderfully…
And this He wrote after sin entered the world.
This He spoke through the pen of David…
It is God who said He was ruddy and handsome.
It was God who said Esther was beautiful of form and face.
This He said while they were in their sin sick flesh…

I think of my children, those I love, there is no deformity of body horrid enough that I would not desire to wrap my arms around them and pull them close up to my chest and hold them with all my heart and tell them that I love them… God loves me in the sickness and defomity of this wretched flesh no less.

This body He gave me to do His will.
It will serve His purpose.
It will carry me through this life and into His glorious presence.
Of this body I should not be ashamed.

God did not design this body of His to be a split personality. It was not meant to be categorized as sacred or secular… all of it was created for the sacred.

Everything that I do is to be an act of worship to my God at all times.
We are not to divide up our lives… Christ unites.
I am not to feel condemnation because the work I am called to do consumes my day and leaves me weighing the scales of secular vs sacred deeds to find me ashamed with my head hung down because my scale is heavy on what I deem the wrong side…
I have even found myself guilty over the desire that my body has to sleep. Feeling this time wasted… what could I accomplish if this body just did not grow tired, weak, and sick.
Yet God is not ashamed.
All things are His, the works of His hands.
Did I honor Him in my deeds?
Did I honor Him with my body?
Did I speak with Him during my toil?
Did I seek Him for guidance with the business of the day?
Did I do my work with honesty and integrity?
Did I represent Him well where I was at?
Then my work was sacred, done as unto the Lord.
Let every man abide in the calling wherein he is called and his work will be as sacred as the work of the ministry. It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular, it is why he does it.
The motive is everything.
Of course this does not mean that I throw out the Word, prayer, or the assembly… it means that all these flow into every aspect of my life and body.
Whether, then, you eat or drink
or whatever you do,
do all to the glory of God.
1 Corinthians 10:31