Grace

To be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son — it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain.

But when it comes to putting broken lives back together—when it comes, in religious terms, to the saving of souls—the human best tends to be at odds with the holy best. To do for yourself the best that you have it in you to do—to grit your teeth and clench your fists in order to survive the world at its harshest and worst—is, by that very act, to be unable to let something be done for you and in you that is more wonderful still. The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your life against being destroyed secures your life also against being opened up and transformed by the holy power that life itself comes from. You can survive on your own. You can grow strong on your own. You can even prevail on your own. But you cannot become human on your own.

He is Isaac, the beloved Son of the Father who was offered as a sacrifice, but nevertheless did not succumb to the power of death… He is the victorious and noble king David, bringing by his hand all rebellious power to subjection… He is the strong and powerful Samson, who by his death has overwhelmed all his enemies. It follows that every good thing we could think or desire is to be found in this same Jesus Christ alone. For, he was sold, to buy us back; captive, to deliver us; condemned, to absolve us; he was made a curse for our blessing, sin offering for our righteousness; marred that we may be made fair; he died for our life… In short, mercy has swallowed up all misery, and goodness all misfortune.

“Behold the One beholding you and smiling.” It is precisely because we have such an overactive disapproval gland ourselves that we tend to create God in our own image. It is truly hard for us to see the truth that disapproval does not seem to be part of God’s DNA. God is just too busy loving us to have any time left for disappointment.

After All this time The Sun never says to the Earth, “You owe me.” Look What happens With a love like that. It lights the Whole Sky.

Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross… Costly grace is the gospel. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and grace because it gives a man the only true life… Above all it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son… When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.

In any great story there is a deeper story and there is a more profound narrative that breaks through and it brings an other worldly beauty and light beauty that breaks in and shows you a beauty that can change your life But the consolation of fairy tales has another aspect than the imaginative satisfaction of ancient desires—far more important is the consolation of the happy ending, the sudden joyous turn.   It is a sudden and miraculous grace giving a fleeting glimpse of joy, joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief. It can give to child or a man that hears it, a catch of breath, a beat and lifting of the heart near to tears. There is a kind of beauty that can cause us to believe in something good and just and redemptive and hopeful…

The gospel is not that we give God a good record and then he owes us, but that God—through the costly sacrifice of Jesus Christ—gives us a perfect record,which we receive by faith, and then we live gladly for him.

Christlikeness is not produced by imitation, but by inhabitation. We allow Christ to live through us. "for this is the secret: Christ lives in you" (Colossians 1:27)

I have learned to kiss the wave that strikes me against the Rock of Ages.

God gives his gifts where he finds the vessel empty enough to receive them.

What else can save us but your hand remaking what you have made.

Be a sinner and sin strongly, but more strongly have faith and rejoice in Christ.

If we let Him - for we can prevent Him, if we choose - He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long and in parts very painful; but that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what He said.

There is nothing that we can see on earth which does not either show the wretchedness of man or the mercy of God. One either sees the powerlessness of man without God, or the strength of man with God.

Contentment is not by addition but by subtraction: seeking to add a thing will not bring contentment. Instead, subtracting from your desires until you are satisfied only with Christ brings contentment.

The Bible's purpose is not so much to show you how to live a good life. The Bible's purpose is to show you how God’s grace breaks into your life against your will and saves you from the sin and brokenness otherwise you would never be able to overcome... religion is 'if you obey, then you will be accepted'. But the Gospel is, 'if you are absolutely accepted, and sure you’re accepted, only then will you ever begin to obey'. Those are two utterly different things. Every page of the Bible shows the difference.

Forgiveness is the well from which we draw the water to wash

Your friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you.

"The joy of the Lord is your strength." Where do the saints get their joy from? If we did not know some saints, we would say - "Oh, he, or she, has nothing to bear." Lift the veil. The fact that the peace and the light and the joy of God are there is proof that the burden is there too. The burden God places squeezes the grapes and out comes the wine; most of us see the wine only. No power on earth or in hell can conquer the Spirit of God in a human spirit, it is an inner unconquerableness.

The Lord has taken away your sin; you are not going to die.

Love never claims, it ever gives.

He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

Twas battered and scarred, and the auctioneer thought it scarcely worth his while to waste much time on the old violin, but held it up with a smile; "What am I bidden, good folks," he cried, "Who'll start the bidding for me?" "A dollar, a dollar"; then two!" "Only two? Two dollars, and who'll make it three? Three dollars, once; three dollars twice; going for three.." But no, from the room, far back, a gray-haired man came forward and picked up the bow; Then, wiping the dust from the old violin, and tightening the loose strings, he played a melody pure and sweet as caroling angel sings. The music ceased, and the auctioneer, with a voice that was quiet and low, said; "What am I bid for the old violin?" And he held it up with the bow. A thousand dollars, and who'll make it two? Two thousand! And who'll make it three? Three thousand, once, three thousand, twice, and going and gone," said he. The people cheered, but some of them cried, "We do not quite understand what changed its worth." Swift came the reply: "The touch of a master's hand." And many a man with life out of tune, and battered and scarred with sin, Is auctioned cheap to the thoughtless crowd, much like the old violin, A "mess of pottage," a glass of wine; a game - and he travels on. "He is going" once, and "going twice, He's going and almost gone." But the Master comes, and the foolish crowd never can quite understand the worth of a soul and the change that's wrought by the touch of the Master's hand. Myra 'Brooks' WelchKindly contributed by:

Brennan Manning’s book entitled, “Ragamuffin Gospel.” In it he describes a rather solemn scene between a surgical physician and a young couple. The book reads: I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face postoperative, her mouth twisted in palsy, somewhat clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth, had been severed. She will be this way from now on. I had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh; nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had to cut the little nerve. Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, the moment is a private one. Who are they, I ask myself? He and this wry mouth I have made, who gaze at each other so generously, so lovingly. The young woman speaks. ''Will my mouth always be like this?' she asks. "Yes, I say, it will. It is because the nerve was cut." She nods and is silent. But the young man smiles. “I like it,” he says, “It’s kind of cute. All at once I know who he is. I understand and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with a God moment. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers, to show her that their kiss still works.”

Cheap grace means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as general truth...an intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself sufficient to secure remission of sins. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross. Costly grace is the gospel. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son...it is grace because God did not reckon His Son too dear a price to pay for our life. Costly Grace is the incarnation of God... When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die. That is why the rich young man was so loath to follow Jesus, for the cost of His following was the death of his will. In fact, every command of Jesus is a call to die, with all our affections and lusts.

They don’t just love you. They love loving you. Tattoos on the heart

Never, in peace or war, commit your virtue or your happiness to the future. Happy work is best done by the man who takes his long-term plans somewhat lightly and works from moment to moment “as to the Lord.” It is only our daily bread that we are encouraged to ask for. The present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received.

The price of Christ is something, in a way, much easier than moral effort—it is to want Him. It is true that the wanting itself would be beyond our power but for one fact. The world is so built that, to help us desert our own satisfactions, they desert us. War and trouble and finally old age take from us one by one all those things that the natural Self hoped for at its setting out. Begging is our only wisdom, and want in the end makes it easier for us to be beggars. Even on those terms the Mercy will receive us.

The wood...taught us about survival, about overcoming difficulty, about prevailing over adversity, but it also taught us something about the underlying reason for surviving in the first place. Something about infinite beauty, about undying grace, about things larger and greater than ourselves. About the reasons we were all here.

The best way of casting out an impure affection is to admit a pure one . . . It is only when, as in the gospel, acceptance is bestowed as a present, without money and without price, that the security which man feels in God is placed beyond the reach of disturbance. Only then can he repose in him as one friend reposes in another . . . The only way to dispossess the heart of an old affection is by the expulsive power of a new one.

Where do the saints get their joy from? If we did not know some saints, we would say - "Oh, he, or she, has nothing to bear." Lift the veil. The fact that the peace and the light and the joy of God are there is proof that the burden is there too. The burden God places squeezes the grapes and out comes the wine; most of us see the wine only. No power on earth or in hell can conquer the Spirit of God in a human spirit, it is an innerunconquerableness.

The point of the Bible is that God continually and persistently works with and gives his grace to people who don't deserve it, don't even seek it and don't appreciate it once they get it. The point of the Bible is that the best people who have ever lived have not and will not cannot overcome their own sin and flaws and self centeredness but if they cling to the grace of God to the end of their lives, they will triumph. That's the point of Bible.

“They say the best men are born out of their faults and that they often improve later on, more than if they’d never done anything wrong,” she’d said gently.

“Loving someone is like moving into a house,” Sonja used to say. “At first you fall in love with all the new things, amazed every morning that all this belongs to you, as if fearing that someone would suddenly come rushing in through the door to explain that a terrible mistake had been made, you weren’t actually supposed to live in a wonderful place like this. Then over the years the walls become weathered, the wood splinters here and there, and you start to love that house not so much because of all its perfection, but rather for its imperfections. You get to know all the nooks and crannies. How to avoid getting the key caught in the lock when it’s cold outside. Which of the floorboards flex slightly when one steps on them or exactly how to open the wardrobe doors without them creaking. These are the little secrets that make it your home.” Chapter 37. A Man Called Ove and a Lot of Bastards Sticking Their Noses In

But pity stayed him, THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING

‘Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With Pity.’

‘A great Shadow has departed,’ said Gandalf, and then he laughed, and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days upon days without count. It fell upon his ears like the echo of all the joys he had ever known. But he himself burst into tears.

For, unlike some other identifications of human trouble, a diagnosis of sin and guilt allows hope. Something can be done for this malady. Something has been done for it.

What’s devastating about it is that when we lack an ear for wrong notes in our lives, we cannot play right ones or even recognize them in the performances of others. Eventually we make ourselves religiously so unmusical that we miss both the exposition and the recapitulation of the main themes God plays in human life. The music of creation and the still greater music of grace whistle right through our skulls, causing no catch of breath and leaving no residue. Moral beauty begins to bore us. The idea that the human race needs a Savior sounds quaint. Introduction Page 1 · Location 168 In pondering the twenty-third psalm, Joseph Sittler once observed that though we walk through the valley of death just once, we spend our whole lives in the valley of the shadow of death. Middle-aged people notice that shadow more often than they used to. Page 2 · Location 178 The whole range of human miseries, from restlessness and estrangement through shame and guilt to the agonies of daytime television —all of them tell us that things in human life are not as they ought to be. Page 2 · Location 184 The reason is that sin distorts our character, a central feature of our very humanity. Sin corrupts powerful human capacities —thought, emotion, speech, and act —so that they become centers of attack on others or of defection or neglect.

both in creation and in graceful restoration of creation.

Still, the two evils remain distinct because sin is a spiritual and moral evil and disease a physical one. Sin makes us guilty while disease makes us miserable. We thus need grace for our sin but mercy and healing for our diseases. 21

They are desires, beliefs, and attitudes over which a person may have little or, at best, only variable control. Faithful warriors against these sins thus experience familiar failures, slight improvements, backslidings, painful conquests, Pyrrhic victories, broken treaties, and humiliating compromises. The Scriptures claim that human beings need powerful outside intervention to control and eventually conquer their faults, but all veterans of the sin wars know this by personal experience as well.

Her motives include faith —a quiet confidence in God and in the mercies of God that radiate from the self-giving work of Jesus Christ. She knows God is good; she also feels assured that God is good to her. Her faith secures her against the ceaseless oscillations of pride and despair familiar to every human being who has taken refuge in the cave of her own being and tried there to bury all her insecurities under a mound of achievements. When her faith slips, she retains faith enough to believe that the Spirit of God, whose presence is her renewable resource, will one day secure her faith again.

When her faith slips, she retains faith enough to believe that the Spirit of God, whose presence is her renewable resource, will one day secure her faith again.

Ideally, by repentance and renewal of mind and heart —that is, by the grace of God working through spiritual disciplines and the support of others.

Like some mad charioteer, we now run our lives with more speed than direction. We become off-track racers, amateurs who have lost sight of the finish line. 66 Even in little ways we keep corrupting others and ourselves. Worse, unless arrested by the graces and disciplines of God, we tend to gather momentum in this program: sinners who lose spiritual purpose and control eventually descend into a spiral of increasingly grave assaults on civic and personal integrity.

As Hendrikus Berkhof says, personal goodness cannot lick them. In fact, their force has the feel of inevitability. 110

According to traditional Christian wisdom, a main problem with pride is that it recognizes neither sin nor grace; in fact, pride hammers them flat and discards them.

expressing and acquiring them —cross, resurrection, Spirit, justification, baptism into Christ

The reason is that sin is a parasite, an uninvited guest that keeps tapping its host for sustenance. Nothing about sin is its own; all its power, persistence, and plausibility are stolen goods. Sin is not really an entity but a spoiler of entities, not an organism but a leech on organisms. Sin does not build shalom; it vandalizes it. In metaphysical perspective, evil offers no true alternative to good, as if the two were equal and opposite qualities. “Goodness,” says C. S. Lewis, “is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness. And there must be something good first before it can be spoiled.” 135 Here Lewis reproduces the old Augustinian idea that evil “has no existence except as a privation of good.” 136 Good is original, independent, and constructive; evil is derivative, dependent, and destructive. To be successful, evil needs what it hijacks from goodness.

We are all broken, that is how the light gets in.

We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.

Religion operates on the principle 'I obey—therefore I am accepted by God.' The gospel operates on the principle 'I am accepted by God through Christ—therefore I obey.'

The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time.

To love a person means to see them as God intended them to be.

It is hard for us to grasp, let alone to feel, how completely the verdict seemed to have gone against Jesus when he died, and how in consequence the apostles' past hopes had been extinguished. Jesus had been condemned in a Jewish court for blasphemy by duly authorized legal procedures. He was then sentenced and executed for sedition by the Romans. Worse, he had been 'hanged on a tree' and therefore (according to Dt. 21:22-23) had died under the curse of God. After that, he was taken down from the cross and buried, which was the final touch in disposing of him. The public rejection of Jesus could not have been more thorough. At every dimension he was finished - judicial, political, spiritual and physical. Religion, law, God, man and death had all conspired to wipe him off the face of the earth. It was all over now. The verdict was as decisive as it could possibly have been. No power on earth could ever rescue or reinstate him. But the apostles had left out of account the resurrection power of God. Small wonder that their earliest proclamation could be summarized in the words, 'You killed him, but God raised him'. And in raising him, God reversed the verdict which had been passed on him ... In other words, by raising Jesus, God was making a declaration about him, and in particular was turning all human opinions about him upside down. Condemned for blasphemy, he was now designated Son of God by the resurrection. Executed for sedition, for claiming to be a king, God made him 'both Lord and Christ'. Hanged on a tree under the curse of God, he was vindicated as the Saviour of sinners, the curse he bore being due to us and not to him.

To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God.

And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.

They refused seconds and I insisted. And the division of thirds was put on the basis that there wasn't enough to save. And with the few divided drops of that third there came into Rocinante a triumphant human magic that can bless a house, or a truck for that matter — nine people gathered in complete silence and the nine parts making a whole as surely as my arms and legs are a part of me, separate and inseparable. Such a fabric cannot be prolonged and should not be. The patriarch gave some kind of signal. My guests squirmed out of their squeezed-up seat behind the table and the adieux, as they should be, were short and formal. They went into the light, their way home lighted by the chieftain John carrying a tin kerosene lantern. They walked in saline among sleepy stumbling children and I never saw them again. But I like them.

In 'Beauty and the Beast,' it is only when the Beast discovers that Beauty really loves him in all his ugliness that he himself becomes beautiful. In the experience of Saint Paul, it is only when we discover that God really loves us in all our unloveliness that we ourselves start to become godlike. Paul's word for this gradual transformation is sanctification, and he sees it as the second stage in the process of salvation. Being sanctified is a long and painful stage because with part of themselves sinners prefer their sin, just as with part of himself the Beast prefers his glistening snout and curved tusks. Many drop out with the job hardly more than begun, and among those who stay with it there are few if any who don't drag their feet most of the way. But little by little—less by taking pains than by taking it easy—the forgiven person starts to become a forgiving person, the healed person to become a healing person, the loved person to become a loving person. God does most of it. The end of the process, Paul says, is eternal life.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain, But am betroth'd unto your enemy; Divorce me, untie or break that knot again, Take me to you, imprison me, for I, Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe. To him all good things—trout as well as eternal salvation—come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy.

To the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.'The Lord is my portion,' says my soul, 'therefore I will hope in him.

But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.

Apart from me you can do nothing.

Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God.

...I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.

And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, 'The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.

And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.

The LORD is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made.

I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you.

Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.