Grace Is Opposed to Earning and to Owing.

Noah, “by his faith”— as a result of his profound trust in the justness of God’s justice upon an unjust world and in the majesty of God’s mercy by warning it for 120 years {Gen. 6:3}— “condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which comes” {and can only come, I might add} “by means of faith” {Heb. 11:7b}.  This anonymous testimony about an ancient hero of faith leads us back to an eternal reality, one deeply imbedded in the hearts and minds of the 1^st century Faithful: that there is a righteousness revealed by God and given by God, which men and women on their own could never conceive and never achieve!  This “righteousness” you cannot work for, labor over, or sweat under; you can’t give enough, do enough or be enough to earn it on your own.

Why?  Because grace is opposed— inherently opposed, by its very nature— to earning and to owing.  And if you could earn it, Abba would owe it!

This is the righteousness Abba gives, graciously and eternally, to those who believe on the name of His Son.  As the ultimate Account Holder, Abba credits to our bankrupt accounts the perfect righteousness of His only Son.  To use the theological language, He ‘imputes’ to each and every one of His Children the righteousness His Son possesses.  This is the basis for how He views us; this is the foundation of our Eternal Identity; this is the reason our souls are secure!  It didn’t, doesn’t, and never will depend on you.  The determining factor of your heavenly Citizenship {Phil. 3:20a} is your faith, your trust, your belief in the full and finished Work of Jesus Christ {cf. Gospel of John}!

Now, here’s the dilemma… and it’s a big one.  Those who feel they’ve worked hard enough and long enough minding all their ‘p’s and q’s,’ holding themselves to a rigid and relentless morality— regardless of its Scriptural validity— to earn their place in Abba’s Kingdom, who by virtue of their superior ‘virtue,’ are worthy of this perfect righteousness, are now robbed of the entire complex upon which they’ve built their lives and based their behaviors.  And paradigms like this don’t shift easily.  For one’s worldview to be radically realigned means the ‘old world’ has to fade so the new one can come into focus.  When you’ve built your foundation on the sand of self-righteousness, and it suddenly shifts …into the breach you go.

Legalists the world over, from antiquity to post-modernity, start to sweat when there’s no ‘fear’ associated with our redemption— no whip to crack, no stick hiding behind the carrot of the Cross, no sweating and straining to secure our self-worth, no laboring for and earning our standing before God!  You can imagine the inner turmoil.  “How are we going to herd people into our particular pen?  How are we going get them in line and keep them in line!?  If there’s no fear or worry or anxiety over their identity, how will we ever control them?  How will we— or, how will God, rather— get them to behave!?”

With infinite grace, tons of Truth, and limitless love.  That’s how.  We live and love as the Royalty we are, in response to these precious gifts, or we don’t.  You see, control is our crutch, not God’s.  Listen to me closely.  The Freedom of Jesus’ Followers is not in our hands, or under our authority, and never will be.  On the flip side, Scripturally ‘saving faith’ is not, and never has been, mere passive assent to an intellectual idea.  It is actively staking one’s life— all we have and all we are— on the claims of Abba.  And this, my friends, is a certainty and assurance sufficient to radically rearrange our scale of values and to alter eternally the course of our lives!

This is what I would call the ‘stark raving reality’ on both ends of the equation.  That [i] You’ll never control people— no matter how much fear and intimidation you push their way.  And [ii] Those who believe in the God of Love and the love of God will serve Him faithfully… because they long to, not because they have to.  Amen?  Anybody want to shout ‘Hallelujah’?

HJC	Ric Webb  |  Shepherd Heart’s Journey Community 9621 Tall Timber Blvd. |  Little Rock, AR 72204 t +1.501.455.0296
hjcommunity.org
Heart’s Journey – Live Generously and Love Graciously

Seeking the Son of God.

In his powerful testament to Enoch’s faith in and intimacy with the Lord of Glory, the unnamed author of Hebrews writes, “Without faith it is impossible to please God....”  There’s our verb euaresteo once again.  “Without faith it is impossible to delight God, to satisfy His heart.”  Why?  “Because anyone who comes to Him must believe [a] that He is [NAS], He exists....”  This sphere of God-consciousness, of Abba-awareness, can only be entered by faith.  I’m going to break this down very simply for you.  Our Journey with God begins at a place of rock-solid recognition, that ‘There is a God ...and I’m not Him.’  That recognition is an immaculate blend of faith and humility.  “And [b] that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him,” v. 6.

That Jesus is the “Rewarder, the One paying the wages, of those earnestly seeking Him” is as factual a statement as has ever been uttered.  Our verb is ekzeteo meaning to ‘seek out’ and ‘search for oneself’ with diligence and ‘desire,’ and the form in which it’s found pictures action in progress, ongoing, unceasing.  You with me here?  It’s a lifestyle of trusting God, a lifestyle of seeking God, a lifestyle of passionately pursuing God.  Ek is a preposition used to intensify the meaning of the root verb zeteo, which already implies a thorough examination of the subject at hand, a rigorous philosophical investigation into the matter in question.  In this case, the only Matter worth knowing when Eternity comes calling— the Ultimate Matter, the Abba of Heaven and Earth.

Ekzeteo is used in precisely this way in Acts 15:17, Romans 3:11, and our present passage {as well as many of the Pss.}, for actively ‘seeking to know the Lord of Glory’— to know Him, believe Him, befriend Him and serve Him.  It makes no logical sense to seek the Son of God if we’re not also going to serve the Son of God {since there’s no promise in Scripture of monetary gain or a trouble-free existence for merely knowing Him, or knowing about Him, in some casual, off-handed way, nothing which would satisfy a mercenary soul}.  As in so many things which are momentous in our lives, pivotal to our progress in the Path of Grace and the Kingdom of God {like our faith in Abba, our love of others, our forgiveness of wrongs}, this doesn’t happen by accident!  We seek and we search to know the ways of our Warrior-God, to watch Him war for the sake of those He loves, and to know His heart by heart, the heart of a King, the greatest King to ever rule.  Jesus is the embodiment of wisdom, of justice, and of mercy: One worthy of our worship.

Just a brief flash of Light here, but you will never see this place of communion with Him, of intimacy with the Almighty, accidentally and haphazardly.  We don’t stumble and stagger our way blindly into the Arms of Grace.  They are ever open and always welcoming— to those who long for them.  If you don’t love God, if you don’t desire God, if you have no interest whatsoever in knowing Him by faith in His Word and faith in His works, then it’s a sure bet you won’t.

Can I just say it plainly?  Jesus wants to be wanted; He waits to be longed for, to be desired above all else.  He loves to be loved with all the passion and fervor and sacrificial spirit with which He first loved us.  And don’t we who are made in His image want the same things from those we love?  Don’t we want to be wanted?  Don’t we wait to be longed for, hoping it’s not too late?  Don’t we love to be loved, with selflessness and sacrifice... or as much of this as another is capable of giving?  You bet we do.  As does the great King of the Universe.  He not only desires it, He deserves it.

HJC	Ric Webb  |  Shepherd Heart’s Journey Community 9621 Tall Timber Blvd. |  Little Rock, AR 72204 t +1.501.455.0296
hjcommunity.org
Heart’s Journey – Live Generously and Love Graciously

Why Not Get Your Glory From God?

In an astounding number of ways, the Fall has made monkeys of us all.  Even we who’ve been rescued out of it still seem to find a plenitude of paths right back into a cosmic culture.  Like chimps in a cable commercial come to life, we’re running around trying to get the other ‘walking wounded’ to clap for us, trying to manipulate the masses into proclaiming us ‘normal,’ or ‘healthy,’ or ‘beautiful’ or ‘brilliant.’  There’s nothing wrong with any of those things, but those are gifts in life— extras in the scene and not the scene itself.  They are not the means of redemption the world would like us to believe.

One writer put it this way.  “What we commonly think of as love is really the desire to be loved,” which is universal, and entirely natural.  In fact, it’s hardwired into us by our Creator.  This is true for the majority of us and has been most our lives.  When we want others to like us, what we’re really wanting them to say is, “You know, you’ve got a pretty good act.  You’re not really a loser after all.  You get to stay in the lifeboat.”  Consider the enormous weight of having to decide who gets to stay in the lifeboat and who has to go, who gets to live and who has to die.  There’s a section of Scripture in Galatians 5:19-21 which sums up rather effectively the ruthlessness and resentment of this fallen world’s ‘lifeboat mentality.’  Here’s how it sounds in The Message:

“It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community.  I could go on.”

What you and I must know in the here and now is that a life lived at the opposite end of this sinful spectrum {a life of merciful love and redeeming grace} can only take place inside a real relationship with Abba, one full of passion and intimacy.  For He is the Father who cares for all our needs, and who has the power to tell us who we truly are if we would only trust Him enough to let Him do it.

Imagine how radically a man or woman’s life would be changed if they trusted deeply that they were loved by God, their final Father.  She “could interact with the poor,” the dirty and the downtrodden, and “not show partiality;” she could love her husband freely and respect him at the same time because the validation of her soul would flow through Jesus and not him; she could be slow to anger, to resentment, and to nurse the bottle of bitterness because her image in the eyes of others was no longer at stake {i.e., all fear of being tossed from the lifeboat would be gone for good: nothing left to prove}; she “could be wise” like Abigail— giving and gracious with her money and resources because materiel no longer represents points in the game of life.  She “could give up on formulaic religion, knowing that checking stuff off a spiritual ‘to-do’ list was a worthless pursuit.”  She “would have the confidence” to laugh at herself, and she could love others “without expecting anything in return.”  This would be an indescribably beautiful woman, or an amazingly attractive man.

There is phenomenal freedom in this process of purification from a life stained by the ‘soil of self.’  It’s the freedom which comes from an ongoing redemption, as our hearts are healed, our souls restored, by the validation we received from God— the affirmation and affection of Abba— and not from man.  Donald Miller describes it this way:

“Jesus is saying, ‘Look, you guys are running around like monkeys trying to get people to clap, but people are fallen, they are separated from God, so they have no idea what is good or bad, worthy to be judged or set free, beautiful or ugly to begin with.  Why not get your glory from God?  Why not accept your” sense of identity “because of His pleasure in you, not the fickle and empty favor of man?  And only then will you know who you are, and only then will you have true, uninhibited relationships with others.”1  {Italics Mine}

HJC	Ric Webb  |  Shepherd Heart’s Journey Community 9621 Tall Timber Blvd. |  Little Rock, AR 72204 t +1.501.455.0296
hjcommunity.org
Heart’s Journey – Live Generously and Love Graciously