The Relentless God

We've been working through a five-part sermon series on the Five Points of Calvinism.   (Now there's a hot topic for a California audience!!)   Actually, it's been a really intriguing experience, and the theater's been pin-drop quiet through much of the series, except for the time when the theater accidentally started to play their canned music just as I was picking up steam on Limited Atonement.   But, I digress.

Here's what I love about this whole area: it gives us the chance to see the Relentless God who pursues his people even before they start seeking him.   Our "personal relationships" with Jesus Christ are not deals we've brokered after careful comparison shopping in the spiritual version of QVC, they are love stories in which a jilted God turns around and seeks out the very loved ones who'd just hurt him.

It all goes back to Eden, really.   That haunting call echoing across God's freshly-ruined creation:  "Adam--where are you!?"   Now Adam and Eve ultimately had to choose whether to accept the grace that God was offering, but I find it stunning to realize that our whole history of salvation was based on God turning around first.

He's relentless, and that's one of the things I love most about the Reformed faith.

How about you?  Have you ever been pursued by that relentless God?

The Unfairness of God

I don’t think the Prodigal Son’s older brother gets a fair shake. 

In Luke 15 Jesus tells a story about a father with two sons.  The younger son proves to be a scoundrel, eventually imploding into a scandal that gutted the family’s net worth.   The older brother held his ground, remaining at home, pouring himself into the family business.  It’s safe to say that without him the place would have fallen apart.

If you’ve read the parable you know, of course, that this loser brother comes home, repents and is welcomed back with the family’s best bottle of Dom Perignon. The old father seems to forget all about the disgrace and wasted inheritance and simply throws his arms around the filthy shoulders of his homeless son.  The older brother sees his father cave completely on his boundaries and he stomps outside.  “This jerk has undone everything we’ve worked for and you slaughter the fatted calf!  I’ve slaved for you all these years and you’ve never even offered me a goat to barbecue with my friends!”

He has a point.  What good is it to work your gluteus maximus off when your slacker brother gets a better reward that you do?   Doesn’t all your work even matter? 

I’ve felt that way at times.  I’m dedicated my entire adult life to serving faithfully as a pastor, to being the best husband and dad that I possibly can…surely that’s got to count for something, right?  Certainly God could cut me a break on some of the struggles of life.  Yet there are all too many times when God seems to miss some great opportunities to make my life easier.  

At times like that, I find the older brother’s complaint feels pretty natural:  “Look, I’ve slaved for you all these years, and you’ve never even given me a goat (or break on car repairs, or a sudden surge in church attendance or some other fantasy come to life)!

When it comes right down to it, God has a strange sense of fairness.  The grace that led the father to welcome his runaway son is the same grace that leads him to offer a place in his family to spiritually-confused people like you and me who often have little clue just what He’s done for us.  And it’s the same grace that leads him to stoop to use quirky, sin-tainted folks like me to announce his good news to others who need it as badly as I do.

The point:  I thank God that He’s not fair.  His unfairness is our only chance. 

The issue for me is not really unfairness:  it keeps getting easier for me to see how much I benefit from God’s unfairness.  The issue for me is usually control.   I wish God would exercise his unfairness in a way that would conform more closely to my expectations.   I often wish He would work out his lavish grace in a way that would match what I happen to have on my Christmas list right now.

How about you—what does it take for you to settle into God’s grace?

Good for Nothing

Grace can really mess with your head if you if you take it too seriously.   A little grace is good: it gives a reason why Jesus had to die on the cross and a place to turn for comfort when we fail.  

But if you pursue grace much further than that it can really start to mess with your head.    After all, what good is there from going to church every Sunday if God is going to grant the same salvation to someone who loves Him but loves the Sunday paper even more?  What's the benefit of resisting the urge to cheat on your exams or even on your spouse when God's only going shower the same forgiveness on every repentant liar who comes groveling back to him when the regrets start to hit? 

If you allow too much grace into your life it starts to erode things.  Pretty soon even fine upstanding church-folks (like you and me)  find we don’t have a leg to stand on.  Things start to crumble.

And. from the Bible's point of view, that's probably good.  In the book of Romans the Apostle Paul is pretty clear on the fact that everyone is going to crumble towards something.  He calls it being “slaves” either to sin or slaves to God.  Keeping our distance from grace means keeping our distance from God.  Some of God’s greatest blessings come when He leads us to crumble before Him, whether we want to or not, as the seedlings of His new life begin to shoot through the dirt in our hearts.

If being good is really good for nothing, then most of us probably don't have a leg to stand on.  But then again, maybe we don't need a leg to stand on.  

The gospel of Jesus Christ has always been based on the outrageous idea that God loves us more than we can, uh...stand.  We want to put our best foot forward to make a good impression in heaven's eyes, but God seems to have arranged things so we never really get the chance to get that best foot in the door.  Instead He reaches out to draw us...with a nail-scarred hand.  The church of Jesus Christ has always been a haven of people who limp in without a leg to stand on.  That's why I seem to fit in, for instance.

When was the last time you felt crazy-loved by God?