Your Grace
Your Grace Is Enough - Chris Tomlin
Great is Your faithfulness oh God
You wrestle with the sinner's heart
You lead us by still waters and to mercy
And nothing can keep us apart
So remember Your people
Remember Your children
Remember Your promise
Oh God
Your grace is enough
Your grace is enough
Your grace is enough for me
Great is Your love and justice God
You use the weak to lead the strong
You lead us in the song of Your salvation
And all Your people sing along
So remember Your people
Remember Your children
Remember Your promise
Oh God
Your grace is enough
Your grace is enough
Your grace is enough for me (x2)
So remember Your people
Remember Your children
Remember Your promise
Oh God
Your grace is enough
Your grace is enough
Your grace is enough for me
Your grace is enough
Heaven reaching down to us
Your grace is enough for me
your grace is enough
I'm covered in your love
Your grace is enough for me
For me
The depth of you
God is moving in a huge way inside me. I can feel it. The deeper I go with him, the deeper he takes me. It's like uprooting a tree, only to find another tree to uproot and on and on. Seems that there are scars being found that I didn't even know existed. I'm done with trying to do this on my own. I'm done with human effort. I want to live in the presence of God at all times. How is this obtained. Love God with all your heart...working on that, love your neighbor as yourself...oh crap. How is it that I can see the transformation in myself but have a hard time believing the possibility in others? Maybe the transformation is rooted in the wrong thing. When did my ego become so large? I've fought my own flesh so hard but sometimes I think it's really who I am. Human effort isn't enough, I need you. I need to be radically transformed from the inside by the Holy Spirit. I need to stop tell you what you can do for me and start asking what I can do for you. Please Lord, take me deeper. Grow my faith and help me rely on you.
Coming back to "Church"
I think I was onto something in the Church post but I also think I was looking at it totally wrong. When John Neufeld was talking about sin, it really got me thinking about church and trying to obtain the unobtainable. I have lots going through my head about this but I'm going to come back to it...stay tuned.
Sin
For the last two weeks I've been attending Willingdon Church thinking that it might be a place to root myself for a while and be discipled. Last Sunday John Neufeld spoke a lot about sin and it's nature. I think I've been looking at sin with the wrong lens. I look at it as a particular act, instead of understanding that at my core, I have inequity (a twisted nature). That very twisted nature dictates that I am in sin, not just committing acts of it. Jesus knows me and all my inequities and transgressions and has forgiven me for them....but what does that mean? How do I understand the depth of that love when I can't even forgive myself for some of the things that I've done? Paul puts it best when he says "I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out" So where am I going with this? I guess it just taught me that thinking that I can overcome sin is just setting myself up for failure but trusting in God is some place that I can start. I understand that I am forgiven by my creator but I need to trust God, so so I can forgive myself. Making that connection is going to be the hard part.
Captivated by God
If God was an artist, what kind would he be?
Would he be a poet, captivating our hearts with every sonnet
Would he be a painter, capturing our soul with every stroke
Would he be a musician, composing the symphony of our lives
Would he be a sculptor, carving us out in the gospel
God is all of these
For poetry is a reflection on paper of what God has spoken to our hearts
A great painter could spend all his life trying to paint something as beautiful as one of God’s sunsets
Music is the translation of our soul crying out its deepest desires
Sculpting is trying to take something as beautiful as creation and make it more beautiful
We think there is no God and how could he exist but open your eyes and look around at the beauty you’ve been created into. The world is beautiful because God is beautiful and loves us enough to show his face on everything around us…from the beautiful ballad of crickets at dawn to the captivating sunset after a thunderstorm. God is here.
Church
The topic of my heart for most of my life in the church has been on trying to understand why "church" felt so constructed and consumerist. We line up on Sundays to get our spiritual fix, our sermon that makes us feel good and we might even pump each others tires on our baby steps towards following Jesus. I know I do. I've fallen into the same trap that I've tried to avoid all my life. I feel like I'm falling into the abyss of pew warming Christians who treat their faith like a condiment. It's something to help accentuate my life and nothing more. Because, if it became something more, I would have to follow Jesus.
Pick up your cross doesn't mean stare at it and think about how heavy it is. It doesn't mean think about picking it up but I might get around to doing it tomorrow. It should mean "PICK UP YOUR CROSS"
So why does Church feel the way it does. Why do I look at Church as something optional. Why does laying in bed seem like a much better idea then going to church. I guess I should be thankful that Jesus didn't lie in bed instead of picking up the cross.
I was doing my weekly looking around the net for new emergent blogs from people with like questions on their hearts. Came across this post. I'll drop the link to the whole post but this one paragraph in particular really stood out.
Jesus made friends with many people, from many walks of life and many different lifestyles. He never judged them (except the religious leaders) for who they were, and he was willing to go that extra mile to truly be connected to people. He cared more about the heart of people, then developing a program that would do very little for them. Jesus did something very important, that many churches today miss – he made friends with people, he was not “just friendly” to people. What many churches today do not realize is that we are not looking for a “friendly church” we are looking for a “church of friends,” a church where we can make and keep friendships. People today are disconnected with each other, and no program will make that connection. What needs to happen, I believe, is that the church needs to develop this “relationship driven church” into a core of it’s being, and not as part of the church program.
Here is a
link to the rest of the post
So what does all this mean?
Who is God?
One thing that’s really been on my mind is studying God. I really struggle with this. Every time I think I know, I don’t. How can we understand the characteristics of God when those very characteristics are what we use to measure ourselves with? Now a classic argument is, we are made in the image of God, but how we were made and what we’ve fallen to are two different things…or are they.
What separates me from him?
So I sit here at my desk looking at a picture of an old man from Senegal on Google images. A wave of ideas flow through my head about what separates him from me. Why was he born where he was and me here? What makes us so different? He seems to have all the characteristics a man from here would have. He has a face, skin, he lives, loves and dies. Why did God place him there and me here? Why do I live my life like he doesn’t exist? Why do I buy without knowing who made it? Why do I buy things in ignorance when he might have shed blood for those very things I throw away when I loose interest? Why is communication and globalization so great, but I don’t know how to find answers to these questions? Why do I care about the clothes I wear when he worries about keeping his family alive?
Oh LORD, open my eyes more and more each day. Open them so wide that I only close them to cry for how much you love us. Open them so I could look a man like him in the eyes and know I love him. How can I worship a homeless man on Sunday, but ignore one on Monday. I pray this LORD with all my heart.
Why when I look at this man do I feel like he’s saying something to my soul? Why does my mind not listen to my soul deep groaning? LORD, give me the ears to hear your word in everything. Help me focus on YOU in every thought. Let the convictions of my heart be played out in my life. Let the convictions of our hearts be played out in our actions. LORD, help the body of Christ listen to your word. Help us move with your waves of love. Help us show your heart to the world. Help us do greater things than him like he said we will.
I pray all this for you.
