Category: Conversion

but then, grace

© Scott Mitchell

 

Jesus said we must be first drawn to the gospel of salvation by the will of the Father (John 6:44). We don’t come on our own; we are invited. I once heard a renowned Reformed preacher explain the word “drawn” in that passage as being dragged along against our power and will, even kicking and screaming, if necessary.  

Okay, I get it that God must make the first move, and that we are found in a place where we want nothing to do with him. True. However, I don’t think people come into the Life of Christ kicking and screaming. That just doesn’t have the ring of new life to me.

For sure, when the gospel first intrudes upon our well-defended lair of sin and autocracy, we flail and curse and spit and strike out. Yes to all of that!

But then, grace does something to us.

It holds us like a mother holds on for dear life to an unruly, flailing child, and the spirit of compassion causes that rebel heart to melt into submission, then surrender, and, finally, finding rest (Matthew 11:28).  Yeah, I’m pretty confident we’re not dragged into the kingdom. We come happily; skipping and leaping, like calves released from their confinement. 

“The favored souls [who respond to the gospel of Christ] are not compelled by an unwelcome force to embrace salvation, but are sweetly and lovingly inclined through the soft influences of heavenly grace to choose, delight in, and appreciate the work and service of Emmanuel. They are made willing. Their whole heart goes forth towards the Savior…

“They love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. They embrace him as their only Savior and

his precepts as their only rule,

his promises as their only support,

his cross as their only glory,

his righteousness as their only boast,

his heaven as their only home.

If, then, I  belong to this happy number, I must be willing to be saved on God’s terms, to delight in his salvation, to choose his ways.”

– Thomas Reade*, (1776-1841)

* A Reformed guy 

Father’s Day From A Prodigal’s Perspective

Today I propose we do a little what if-ing. Let’s “what-if?” the story that contains the prodigal son. It pretty much leaves us with some open-ended questions, I know.

Did Dad ever want to wring the son’s neck? Ever?

Where was Mom in all this?

What happened six weeks or six months later?

Did the kid suffer a relapse?

Questions.

So…let’s pretend.

Imagine if Father’s Day fell a week following the prodigal son’s return. No, check that. Let’s pretend it occurred about six or seven months later. On that morning, the father—let’s call him Chanan (Hebrew for gracious)—awakens from a dreamless sleep and rubs his eyes so as to roust them from their hours of inertia. It is still dark, but an oil lamp casts a coppery glow inside the master’s bedroom, and he looks at the pleasing, sleeping form of his wife—oh, may as well: Chana. Hannah. Grace. Continue reading Father’s Day From A Prodigal’s Perspective

Fire and Joy

The following manuscript was found sewn inside a dead man’s clothes. The owner of the document had a long history of depressions and had just barely escaped death in a harrowing carriage accident. While alive, his existence was a study in hardship: awful, wracking  pain from a disease ravaged his bowels, legs and feet. So bad was his circulation, he wore stockings soaked in brandy so his feet could stay warm. One month after his brush with death, Blaise Pascal encountered God in what seems to be a Damascus Road way.

This is how he described it:

The year of grace 1654,

Monday, 23 November, feast of St. Clement, pope and martyr, and others in the martyrology.

Vigil of St. Chrysogonus, martyr, and others.

From about half past ten at night until about half past midnight,

FIRE.

GOD of Abraham, GOD of Isaac, GOD of Jacob

not of the philosophers and of the learned.

Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.

GOD of Jesus Christ.

My God and your God.

Your GOD will be my God.

Forgetfulness of the world and of everything, except GOD.

He is only found by the ways taught in the Gospel.

Grandeur of the human soul.

Righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you.

Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.

I have departed from him:

They have forsaken me, the fount of living water.

My God, will you leave me?

Let me not be separated from him forever.

This is eternal life, that they know you, the one true God, and the one that you sent, Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ.

I left him; I fled him, renounced, crucified.

Let me never be separated from him.

He is only kept securely by the ways taught in the Gospel:

Renunciation, total and sweet.

Complete submission to Jesus Christ and to my director.

Eternally in joy for a day’s exercise on the earth.

May I not forget your words. Amen.