Paul's Life: Grace Manifested

James 4:6 says, “But He gives more grace. Therefore, it says, ‘God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble’.”

God gives grace. Giving grace is God’s nature. We don’t have to beg for God’s grace, we don’t have to even ask for God’s grace. He just gives grace.

This verse also says that God gives grace to the humble but opposes the proud.

God gives grace to the humble because the humble are open to receive grace because the humble understand their need for grace.

God opposes the proud because they are unwilling to receive grace. They don’t think they need grace. The proud stand in opposition to the person and will of God.

God by His nature extends grace to everyone. The key is that humble people recognize their need for grace and accept it. Proud people don’t.

The life of Paul shows us the way grace is poured out on the humble.

1 Corinthians 15:9-10

For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.

Paul says that he is the least of the apostles. He sees himself in that context because he persecuted the church before his conversion.

But he is an apostle by God’s grace.

And he is effective in his ministry as an apostle by God’s grace.

It is by God’s grace that we are saved and it is by God’s grace that we are called into God’s service and made adequate in our service.

Did Paul deserve to be an apostle? – No

Did Paul deserve the blessing of effectiveness in his ministry? – No

Paul expresses his knowledge of his unworthiness and inadequacy and acknowledges that it is all by God’s grace.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is knowing that it is God’s grace that makes us worthy and adequate.

Ephesians 3:8

To me, through I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.

Paul sees himself not as the first or most important of all the saints, but as the least.

Paul, who is arguably the most important Christian ever, doesn’t see himself in that way. He sees himself as the least.

Paul acknowledges that is God’s grace that gives him the anointing to proclaim God’s Word to the Gentiles.

Paul did not have the ability to effectively and powerfully proclaim God’s Word. He knew it was by God’s grace that he was blessed to proclaim the truth of God.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is experiencing the power of the Holy Spirit exercising God’s power in and through us.

1 Timothy 1:15-16

This saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display His perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in Him for eternal life.

Paul saw himself as the foremost or worst sinner. But he also acknowledged that because of God’s grace and mercy he was saved from the penalty and guilt of sin.

None of us is worthy of Jesus dying on the cross as our sacrifice. He did it because of His grace.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is realizing the depth of our sin and the hugeness and power of God’s grace.

Ephesians 2:8-9 says that we are saved by faith, not by works, so that we cannot boast that we had anything to do with our salvation.

Ephesians 2:10

For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

We are God’s workmanship or God’s masterpiece.

We were created in Jesus for good works.

God prepared them before we were born.

We live to accomplish the good works to honor God.

Works don’t lead to grace.

Works flow out of grace.

Paul’s life shows us what a life lived in and by God’s grace looks like.

By God’s Grace, Rising the Roof and Removing the Walls,

                                         Joe

Holiness and Grace

In 2 Peter 3:18, Peter tells us to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

In 1 Thessalonians 4:7, Paul tells us that God has not called us for impurity but in holiness.

1 Peter 1:15 quotes Leviticus 11:44 commanding us to be holy because God, who called us, is holy.

What is the relationship between grace and holiness?

Holy means to be set apart. Holiness is the state of being holy or being set apart. Saints are people who have been set apart. It also carries the concept of being morally upright or morally living as God desires us to live.

We have been called and commanded to be holy.

We know that holiness is not a natural state of human beings.

Romans 3:10-12 says, “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”

No one:

Is Righteous

Understands

Seeks God

Does Good

All have:

Turned Aside

Become Worthless

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is recognizing that we are born with a bent toward sin.

This passage makes it clear that no one has a natural bent toward God. We all as humans have a bent toward sin. Our default setting is sin, not holiness.

In Romans 9:31-32, we are told that Israel tried to get right with God by keeping the law, and that never succeed. They tried to get right with God by keeping the law instead of trusting Him.

In Galatians 5:4 it says “For if you are trying to make yourselves right with God by keeping the law, you have been cut off from Christ! You have fallen away from God’s grace.”

These passages make it clear that we cannot by our own ability get righteous by keeping the law because we our incapable of keeping the law perfectly.

James 1:10 says that if we keep all of the law, but fail at one part, we have broken all the law.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is recognizing that we cannot keep the law well enough to become holy.

So, if we don’t have any natural ability to be holy, and we don’t have the capability to perfectly keep the law and thus becoming holy, how do we get to be holy?

We have received grace upon grace according to John 1:16.

We are saved by grace according to Ephesians 2:5 & 8.

We are to continue in the grace of God according to Acts 13:43.

We are not dominated by sin because we are under grace, not law, according to Romans 6:15.

We behave in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God according to 2 Corinthians 1:12.

We have sufficiency in all things at all times and abound in every good work because God makes grace abound to us according to 2 Corinthians 9:8.

These passages say that we are saved by grace, live by grace, and receive all we need to live as holy people from grace.

We are declared holy because of grace.

We live holy because of grace.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is depending of God’s grace for salvation and daily living.

Yes, we are to be holy, but not out of our natural ability or by keeping the law, but from the grace of God given us through Jesus.

I want to pray for each of you to have a Jesus-filled and Jesus-focused Christmas.

                    By Grace, Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls,

                                                       Joe

Jesus Only Jesus

Matthew 1:21 says, “She will bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.”

It is about Jesus. It is not about Joseph and Mary. It is not about the shepherds. It is not about the wise men. It is not about decorations. It is not about presents. It is not about family.

It is all about Jesus. It is not all about Jesus just at Christmas. It is all about Jesus every day.

Why is it all about Jesus?

It is all about Jesus because “He will save His people from their sins”.

Jesus is the Savior.

He is the one who went to the cross and died there for our sins. Jesus took our punishment.

Jesus is the only means of salvation for all human beings.

I cannot save myself.

My parents cannot save me.

My wife cannot save me.

My children or grandchildren cannot save me.

The church cannot save me.

Only Jesus can save me.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is trusting Jesus and Jesus alone for salvation.

Jesus is the Christ.

Jesus is the Messiah.

Jesus is the Anointed One of God.

In John 1 John says that Jesus is the Word.

Jesus came to proclaim the Gospel. The gospel is the good news. That good news is that God loves us and, through His grace that caused Him to send Jesus, we have forgiveness of sins.

Jesus being the Christ or the Messiah means that He came to proclaim and demonstrate how we can know and please God.

Jesus as the Christ is, according to John, full of grace and truth. He not only came to proclaim that, but He came to share that with us.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is Jesus as the Christ proclaiming truth and grace.

Jesus is the Lord.

Jesus is the absolute sovereign creator and ruler of all creation.

We don’t have anybody in the American culture that is an absolute ruler. But in Jesus’ time on earth the people knew and understood what it meant for someone to be an absolute ruler.

Jesus is the ultimate absolute ruler. He has no one more powerful than Himself or more majestic or with more authority. There is absolutely no being that is above Jesus.

1 John 4:4 says that the One who is in us is greater then he that is in the world. Jesus is the greatest.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is acknowledging Jesus is Lord and living under His authority.

The thing that blows me away is the sacrificial love that Jesus shows by His willingness to give up the awesomeness of heaven and His position as God to become a human in the manner of a servant.

Jesus is the Savior.

Jesus is the Christ.

Jesus is the Lord.

Jesus is all that and yet He chose to go to the cross and die as the sacrifice for our sin.

That is why it is all about Jesus all the time.

Making It All About Jesus, Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls,

                                                   Joe

Three Choices

Little is known about the men who came to worship Jesus as the King of the Jews. They are called wise men or Magi. They came from somewhere east of Israel. But the story of these men traveling to find Jesus is a picture of how, even today, people relate to Jesus.

In Matthew 2:2 these wise men come and ask, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews?”

These men were not Jewish. They had no national, ethnic, or religious connection. They should not have even cared about the king of the Jews.

God had revealed to them through a star that a king of the Jews was to be born and that he would have an impact on them and the world.

In Matthew 2:3 when Herod found out about these wise men and what they were asking, it says that it disturbed him and all Jerusalem.

Herod didn’t want any competition for the throne and title as king of the Jews. Herod had already had a wife and two brothers killed because he thought they were plotting against him.

If Herod was disturbed, then that was reason for the people in Jerusalem and all Israel to be disturbed because he would stop at nothing to secure his position as king.

In Matthew 2:4-6 Herod calls together the chief priests and teachers of the law to see where the king of the Jews was to be born. They inform him it is in Bethlehem.

In Matthew 2:9 the wise men are given the information and they head out for Bethlehem.

The chief priests and teachers of the law don’t go. They don’t even send any representative.

Keep in mind, the wise men were Gentiles.

The chief priests and teachers of the law were Jewish.

Herod tells the wise men to find the child and get back to him when they do so that he can go and worship him. Herod also gets all the information about when the star appeared to the wise men.

We know he is doing that, not so he can go and worship the child, but so he can kill the child.

What is God revealing to us in this story of the wise men?

We see in the wise men, Herod, and the religious leaders three responses to Jesus.

The religious leaders were ignoring Jesus.

They told Herod where the king of the Jews or the Messiah was to be born. They knew scripture. They knew the importance of the Messiah.

In knowing all this, they had no desire to go and find and worship Him.

There are many people who know about Jesus. They know the facts of His birth, life, death, and resurrection but it is not important to them. They live their lives with knowledge but no relationship.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is living based on a relationship with Jesus, not a religion of rituals.

Herod was afraid of Jesus and wanted to destroy Him.

Herod was king, and to hear that another king had been born was intimidating to him. Herod’s way of dealing with fear was to eliminate the source; in this case, it was Jesus.

Many people seem either to hate God or be mad at God.

They may feel that God has failed them or that He can’t be trusted.

God understands those feelings. We can express any feelings of doubt, fear, and anger that we have. That will not surprise or anger God. He will love us in the midst of those feelings and, by that love, transform our doubt.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is trusting God’s love for us in the midst of trials.

The wise men were seeking Jesus.

Jeremiah 29:13 tells us that when we seek God, we will find Him when we seek Him with our whole hearts.

Matthew 7:7-8 tells us that when we seek, we will find, when we knock it will be opened, and when we ask, we will receive.

The promise is clear: When we really seek God, we will find Him and experience the reality of His presence.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is seeking God and finding Him.

We will either ignore God, be fearful of God, or seek God. Each of these will result in certain consequences.

God’s desire is that seek Him, find Him, and experience His love.

Seeking God and Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls,

                                            Joe

Foundations

Living in a relationship with Jesus must never be a life that stands still. If we try to stand still in our relationship with Jesus, it will go backward. A house that is not maintained will fall apart. We are created by God for life and to grow in that life. If we are not busy being born then we are busy dying.

Jude 1:20-21

But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.

We are to build ourselves up.

The foundation for life with Jesus is our holy faith.

This is faith in Jesus, not just faith in faith.

Things just don’t “work out” because we have faith in some cosmic good fortune. God in His grace and mercy works in and through us.

So, what can we have faith in?

We can have faith in God’s love.

Romans 8:37-39 tells us that nothing can separate us from God’s love in Jesus.

I can have faith in God’s presence in my life.

Hebrews 13:5 tells us that God will never leave us or forsake us.

Isaiah tells us that Jesus is Immanuel or God with us.

I can have faith in what the Bible says.

The Bible reveals to us the:

Nature of God

Character of God

Mind of God

The Bible reveals to us all that we need to know to have real love and a trust relationship with Jesus.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is having faith in God and His Word.

How do we develop faith in Jesus?

Spend time daily in God’s Word.

When we ignore the Word of God, we are unfruitful and ineffective in our life with God.

Spend time daily with Jesus in prayer.

The key to prayer is being radically honest with God and radically dependent on God.

Honesty frees God to graciously provide what I need.

Dependence shows God that I know it is all about Him.

When we pray in the Holy Spirit, it means we pray according to the leading of the Holy Spirit.

We never pray alone. According to Romans 8:26-28 when we don’t know what to pray, the Holy Spirit intercedes for us. He also takes all the circumstances of our lives (good and bad) and works them for our good.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is allowing God to build the foundation in our lives through the Bible, prayer, and the Holy Spirit.

We are to keep ourselves in the love of God. 

We receive God’s love and we dispense His love to others.

The love God gives us is for us to experience and for us to share with others.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is experiencing God’s love and giving His love to others just as He gave love to us.

We also build the foundation by receiving God’s mercy.

Mercy is not getting what you deserve.

You and I deserve, by our actions toward God, death and hell. God, in His mercy, provides a way for us to not experience death and hell.

Romans 6:23 tells us that the wages of sin is our death. The very best we can earn by our actions is death. The second part of that verse tells us that the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is relying on God’s mercy and receiving by grace eternal life through Jesus.

The last ingredient is obedience to the word and will of God.

We can believe God and His word.

We can spend time with Jesus.

We can keep our lives in God’s love.

We also have to obey.

Jesus says that obedience is our way of showing our love for Him.

Obedience is important to God because all of His commands are for our good. God wants our good, and obedience to His commands will bring us good.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is obeying Jesus.

The three graces of faith, hope, and love enable us to grow in our relationship with Jesus. We are able to build on a solid foundation with materials that will not decay. Merely professing with words will not cut it with Jesus.

In Matthew 7 Jesus says that not everyone who says to Him, “Lord, Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the person who does the will of the Father.

In Matthew 7 Jesus also tells the parable of the two men who built houses. One built on sand and the house fell; and one built on the rock and that house stood. He makes it clear that it is essential that we build lives on the person of Jesus.

Building the Foundation by Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls,

Joe

Thanksgiving

Psalm 100:4 says, “Enter His gates with thanksgiving, and His courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless His name!”

Thanksgiving is not something that we have invented. It is something that God has given us by His grace.

We have the privilege of thanksgiving because Psalm 100:5 says, “For the Lord is good; His steadfast love endures forever, and His faithfulness to all generations.”

We have thanksgiving because of God’s

Goodness

Love

Faithfulness

My favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. Christmas was for years my favorite but over the past several years Thanksgiving has become my favorite.

Thanksgiving is a quiet time I can spend with Jesus and my family.

Psalm 131:1-2

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me.

There need to be times of being quiet in our lives. Jesus periodically took His disciples away from the pressures of ministry to spend time with Him so they could recharge.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is spending quiet moments with Jesus.

Thanksgiving is a reflective time.

James 1:23-24

For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.

Thanksgiving is a time to reflect on where I am with Jesus.

It is a time for me to reflect on where I have been and where I am going. In these times of reflection, I look intently at myself and Jesus. I am not looking at my faith family or my wife or my children or my friends and Jesus. I am looking at and listening to what Jesus is saying to me and seeking His Spirit to understand how I need to respond.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is looking in the mirror and seeing what I really look like.

Thanksgiving is a time for expressing thanks to God.

There is not enough room for me to list all I have to be thankful for. I will list some.

I am thankful:

That Jesus has forgiven and saved me

That I have a wife that loves me and lets me be who I am

That my children love Jesus

That I pastor a church that wants to a Jesus’ church

That I live in a small town that doesn’t really have Black Friday

That I have an awesome view from my deck of the beauty of God’s creation

That I live in a town with hot springs to soak in

That I am loved and accepted by Jesus

I treasure a time to just rest and express my gratitude to God for who He is and all that He has done.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is expressing gratitude to God.

Thanksgiving is a time to hear from God.

Psalm 130:5

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His word I hope.

I wait on God, not to do something, but to hear from Him.

Psalm 106:13

But they soon forgot His works; they do not wait for His counsel.

Waiting and listening for God is essential for us to know God and to know His will. When I know God and His will, I know how to live.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is hearing God and obeying Him.

The older I get, the more I understand that it is not about the “doing for God”; it is the “being in God” that He values. I am also learning the value of letting God do His work through me in His timing.

Jesus was never in rush but He never lagged behind. He was always where He was supposed to be and doing what He was supposed to do because He lived in the flow of the Holy Spirit.

Thanksgiving gives me the opportunity to reflect and adjust my life to live in the flow of God’s Spirit.

With Thanksgiving Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls,

Joe

What Kind of Follower Are You?

In Matthew 4:19 Jesus invites Andrew and Peter to follow Him.

In Matthew 9:9 Jesus invites Matthew to follow Him.

In John 1:43 Jesus invites Philip to follow Him.

Being a Christian means following Jesus.

It does not mean following:

Rules

Rituals

Religious Duty

Traditions

It means following the person of Jesus.

I am leading a study based on the book Not a Fan. We are not called to be fans of Jesus but followers of Jesus.

The question is: What kind of follower of Jesus am I?

In 3 John we are shown three pictures of a follower of Jesus.

The first picture is found in 3 John 1-8.

3 John 1-8

The elder to the beloved Gaius, whom I love in truth. Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, as it goes well with your soul. For I rejoiced greatly when the brothers came and testified to your truth, as indeed you are walking in the truth. I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth. Beloved, it is a faithful thing you do in all your efforts for these brothers, strangers as they are, who testified to your love before the church. You will do well to send them on their journey in a manner worthy of God. For they have gone out for the sake of the name, accepting nothing from the Gentiles. Therefore, we ought to support people like these, that we may be fellow workers for the truth.

Gaius is described as beloved.

We are beloved by God as His followers.

We see two huge things about Gaius as a follower of Jesus.

He walked in the truth.

Truth is an essential for followers of Jesus.

Jesus is the truth. – John 14:6

We are to put on the belt of truth. – Ephesians 6:14

We are to speak the truth. – Ephesians 4:25

If we, followers of Jesus, don’t speak and walk in the truth, then we are not being like Jesus and we will never impact the world.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is walking in the truth as we follow Jesus.

He walked in love.

We love not only our friends and family, but we love those who are strangers.

Our love is to look like Jesus’ love. God is love and I am empowered to love like Jesus when I surrender myself to Jesus and become filled with the Holy Spirit.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13 that without love I am nothing. Love is that important.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is loving as Jesus loves.

The second picture is 3 John 9-10.

3 John 9-10

I have written something to the church, but Diotrephes, who likes to put himself first, does not acknowledge our authority. So, if I come, I will bring up what he is doing, talking wicked nonsense against us. And not content with that, he refuses to welcome the brothers and also stops those who want to and puts them out of the church.

This pictures a person who claims to be a follower of Jesus.

He showed an attitude of:

Harshness

Pride

Ungrace

This is an example of the truth that we have to continually surrender our wills to Jesus. We can never reach the point where we think we have arrived and don’t have to submit to Jesus any more.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is being humbly submitted to Jesus.

The third picture is found in 3 John 11-12

3 John 11-12

Beloved, do not imitate evil things but imitate good. Whoever does good is from God; whoever does evil has not seen God. Demetrius has received a good testimony from everyone, and from the truth itself. We also add our testimony and you know that our testimony is true.

Followers of Jesus live good.

Followers of Jesus treat others with good.

Good means we live morally upright lives. We live lives that reflect the goodness of Jesus in our every day actions.

Treating others with good means that we relate to others with compassion, mercy, and grace.

Goodness is not done by self-effort but the work of the Holy Spirit.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is reflecting the good of Jesus.

Positively followers of Jesus:

Walk in Truth

Live Based on Love

Act Out of Goodness

Negatively followers of Jesus:

Refrain from Being Harsh

Don’t Act Based on Pride

Dispense Not Ungrace But Grace

As Followers of Jesus, Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls,

Joe

Truth, Love, and Obedience

In 2 John 1:4-6, John writes, “I rejoice greatly to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as we were commanded by the Father. And now I ask you, dear lady – not as though I was writing you a new commandment, but one we have had from the beginning – that we love one another. And this is love, that we walk according to His commandments; this is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, so that you should walk in it.”

To walk in the truth means to obey it, to permit it to control every area of our lives. It is much easier to study the truth, or even to argue about the truth, than it is to practice it!

In verse 4 John expresses joy that people are living their lives in obedience to God’s will. It brings great joy to the Father when He sees His children obeying His Word. It should bring great joy to us as well when we see other followers of Jesus obeying Him.

It should conversely break our hearts when see other believers not obeying Jesus. It should break our hearts when we see anybody not obeying God.

Jesus is not angry when people disobey His Word or His will. It breaks His heart. What breaks Jesus’ heart should break our hearts.

I see it many times that when we who are followers of Jesus see those who disobey God, our reaction is anger, not sadness.

Jesus wants people to obey Him because it is the best thing for them if they do and He wants the best for us. He is for us, not against us.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is living in obedience to God and being broken when others don’t.  

In verse 4 John reminds us that walking in the truth is what God commands.

God’s commandments are expressions of His love. They are not meant to burden us down with needless restrictions or useless laws. Each commandment shows us the best way to live and relate to God. They again are for our benefit.

God’s will reveals His heart and God’s heart is always centered on us. We are the apple of His eye. We are His treasured possession.

Many try and make God’s commandments appear harsh. They present an alternative to God’s commands that they claim leads to freedom.

Jesus says in John 8 that abiding in God’s Word leads to being His disciples and that His disciples know the truth and that the truth really sets us free.

Any teaching that opposes God’s Word leads to slavery and death, not freedom and life.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is experiencing freedom and life through obeying God’s Word.

Then in verses 5 and 6 John reminds us that we are to love each other. This is not a new command. The Mosaic Law commanded that the Jews love their neighbors in Leviticus 19:18 and 34. Jesus commands His followers to love one another in John 13.

When God tells us to love others that is not an act out of our emotions, but an act of our wills. I cannot always control my emotions, but I can allow God to control my will and how I act and react.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is loving others out of a Spirit-controlled will.

In this passage John blends together three things; truth, love and obedience. It is by believing the truth – in Christ and in the Word – that we are saved. The evidence of that salvation is love and obedience. Love and obedience are strengthened as we grow in our knowledge of truth. We speak the truth in love and obey God’s commands because we love Him. Obedience enables us to learn more truth, and the more truth we learn, the more we love Jesus who is truth.

Instead of living in a vicious circle, we live in a victorious circle of love, truth, and obedience.

In Love, Truth, and Obedience Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls,

                                                        Joe

Grace in the Middle Suffering

In Ephesians 3:1 Paul says that he is a prisoner and in Ephesians 3:2 he refers to the grace that God has given him.

Most of us would not connect being a prisoner with grace. Paul spent a lot of time in prison. He saw his time in prison because he was serving God as neither punishment nor discipline. He saw it as the natural consequence of serving Jesus in a fallen world. He saw his whole life as defined by God’s grace.

Grace according Philip Yancey is the “last best word”.

Grace is seen in all areas of life.

We say grace before a meal to acknowledge God’s provision.

In England the queen is referred to as “your grace”, acknowledging that as the queen, she shows love for all her people.

There are grace periods for credit cards, rental cars, and mortgages, meaning that there is a period of time after the payment is due when there will not be any penalties if the bill is paid.

In music there are things called grace notes. These are notes that are not essential to the melody but add to the impact and enjoyment of the music. If these notes are not included, they are missed.

Grace contains the essence of the gospel.

The great Christian revelations come not by the discovery of something that was not known before. They happen when somebody takes radically something that was always there.

Grace is not something invented by God at the cross. Grace was always there because God is grace. He shows His unearned love, mercy, and favor to every human being.

I love the grace moments we see clearly in scripture.

God appearing to Jacob at Bethel and promising to be with him, protect him, and return him to his home.

God taking care of and providing for Ruth and Naomi and giving them a kinsman-redeemer in Boaz.

God choosing David to be king even though David’s brothers were much more outwardly impressive than he was.

God dealing with Israel and Judah over decades of them obeying and then falling away and serving other gods.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is seeing God’s grace in the everyday things of life.

In the New Testament we have awesome pictures of God’s grace.

Four of them really speak to me about the extent of God’s grace.

The first is in Luke 19 where Jesus encounters Zacchaeus.

Zacchaeus is a much-hated and dishonest chief tax collector. The people hated him and saw him as a traitor to his own people. Jesus saw him as a man who was lost and needed to be reconciled to God. Jesus invited Himself to Zacchaeus’ house for lunch and reconciled him to the Father.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is experiencing reconciliation to the Father through His grace.

The second is in John 4 where Jesus encounters an unnamed Samaritan woman.

Jesus engages this woman in public, breaking down barriers so that she can came to know Him as Messiah, Savior, and Lord. Grace breaks down human-made barriers so that salvation can occur.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is experiencing God’s grace breaking down barriers so that people can really know God.

The third is in John 8 when a woman caught committing adultery is brought to Jesus.

Jesus sees the repentance and brokenness of the woman and does not do as the religious leaders did and condemn her. Jesus intercedes for her and then forgives her and releases her from condemnation and shame.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is experiencing the removal of condemnation, shame, and guilt through God’s grace.

The fourth is in John 21 where Jesus asks Peter if he loves Him. Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves Him and three times gives him instructions to take care of God’s people.

Jesus restores Peter and removes the hurt of Peter’s denial of Him.

We all fail and Jesus knows that, so grace restores us.

Raises the Roof and Remove the Walls is being restored to friendship with Jesus.

The root of the Greek word for grace is charis which means “I rejoice” or “I am glad”.

Grace should make us rejoice and be bold as we live.

What does the world learn about God’s grace when they watch us as the followers of Jesus?

In and With Grace, Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls,

Joe