I’m super grateful for the opportunity to share my story of God’s healing grace and power through weakness to a wider audience in just a few days. My new friend, and all-around great guy, Lou Lepore, hosts a podcast featuring stories of those who have met life’s challenges through Christ’s overcoming power, and have come to know Jesus in a more intimate and meaningful way. And, bless him, he saw my video our church’s production team put together for our Easter service and asked my sister Susan (they attend the same church) if I’d be interested in telling my story for More Than Conquerors with LouLepore. Boy would I!
We recorded that interview for his More Than Conquerors podcast a couple weeks ago. Lou and I enjoyed a stirring conversation over the phone (Lou makes it so easy!) and I was just informed it will hit the airwaves later this week.
Check out a sampling of that interview by clicking on the link just below. When the full interview is broadcast, I will leave a link for you at that time. The podcast can be found on multiple platforms, including Apple, Spotify, and Buzzsprout, among others.
But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love that he had for us, made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by grace! He also raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might display the immeasurable riches of his grace through his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
Ephesians 2:4-7
I’d like to share something with you I heard this morning:
“Grace simply means that God moves toward us in love.”
It’s beautiful in its simplicity, isn’t it? Grace isn’t something we “catch” if we happen to be in the right place at the right time. Grace is God moving toward us — focused on us — His hands and heart brimming with love.
I will never forget a pastor’s conference I attended years ago where I was enthralled by one of the speakers — Joe Stowell, former president of Moody Bible College. As I waited in line to greet him and tell him what his sermon had meant to me that morning, people kept pressing in around me and standing over me. I was invisible, certain he couldn’t see me through the crowd. But then he bypassed everyone, came straight to my wheelchair, and went down on one knee to look me directly in the eye. He introduced himself and asked me about myself — and everything in his face and manner told me he meant it. He was entirely present. As far as either of us knew, there was nobody else in the room.
This is how God’s grace operates. He is always the initiator, finding us where we are, and He lowers himself so as to be reachable. Just as Jesus crossed the distance between Himself and a man who had been paralyzed for 38 years (John 5:5) — once God gets us in His sight, we can’t escape. We are His. And we want to be His.
Paul tells us in Ephesians 2 even though we were spiritually dead God already loved us. Against all odds, with everything stacked against us, God moved in and let us know we were His kind of people. He didn’t decide to love us only after we said yes to Jesus; He had already been moving toward us, setting His sights on us long before we turned toward Him. So how can we think that on our worst days — when we don’t feel our best, when we’ve blown it badly — God has stopped loving us? Impossible. Even at our most broken, on our darkest day, God was already moving in our direction, getting down on one knee, looking us straight in the eye, giving us His full attention — choosing us, singling us out, setting His affection upon us. His mercies never end; they are new every morning! (Lam 3:22, 23)
He sees us even when we feel invisible to Him.
Hagar knew a little something about invisibility and zero agency. Forced to run away, Abram and Sarai’s handmaid-turned-concubine escaped to the wilderness, driven there by Sarai’s jealousy and abuse (Gen 16:6). Alone and desperate, the Angel of the Lord (the pre-incarnate Lord Jesus) found Hagar in that desolate place and ministered His loving grace to her. Overwhelmed by the Almighty seeing her, Hagar gave the Lord a name no one had ever called Him before: El-roi. The God who sees (Gen. 16:13).
Thirty years have passed since that pastor’s conference, but I still remember when the man of God got down on his knee and engaged me. He saw me — picked me out of the crowd — and said, “What’s your name?”
I’m coming out of a season of great bodily sickness and one of the things I’ve been occupying my time with is memorizing scripture. One passage I’ve committed to memory is from Job 37:22–23: “Out of the north he comes, shrouded in a golden glow, awesome majesty surrounds him. The Almighty — we cannot reach him — he is exalted in power!” ‘We cannot reach Him’ sounds like a locked and double-bolted door, to loosely borrow a phrase from C. S. Lewis. We are too small, too insignificant, too hidden in our humanness to imagine He can see us. And yet — the way opens. The Red Sea parts. The curtain, torn from top to bottom. There He is, down on one knee, smiling warmly, eyes sparkling, and He says, “I saw you here. I’m Jesus, and your life’s about to change.”
Thanks so much for reading, friend.I pray this post opened a pathway into your heart today.
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; grief, crying, and pain will be no more, because the previous things have passed away.
Revelation 21:4
My wife shared something beautiful with me some time ago that made me think of this passage. She said, “As time goes on, I’m able to feel less and less grief about Graham‘s passing. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still there, but less so as the years go by.”
I thought deeply about what she said and told her she helped me see something I’d given so little thought to. At the end of time, when Christ comes and makes all things new, the pain and heartache of our earthly years will be erased. While we will surely remember each other, we won’t remember our sorrows and sadnesses.
“Pain will be no more.” Every grief, all our tears, and the hard sting of pain will be wiped clean in that New Day.
The grace of Sandy’s lessened grief is a foretaste of the new heavens and new earth. Whatever you’re going through, Easter reminds us it’s not always going to be this way.
The resurrection means we can look forward with hope to the day our suffering will be gone. But it even means that we can look forward with hope to the day our suffering will be glorious.
On the Day of the Lord – the day that God makes everything right, the day that everything sad comes untrue – on that day the same thing will happen to your own hurts and sadness. You will find that the worst things that have ever happened to you will in the end only enhance your eternal delight. On that day, all of it will be turned inside out and you will know joy beyond the walls of the world. The joy of your glory will be that much greater for every scar you bear.
– Timothy Keller, Jesus The King
Joni Eareckson Tada attended a convention during which a speaker invited the people to kneel and pray. Everyone did except, of course, Joni.
“With everyone kneeling, I certainly stood out. And I couldn’t stop the tears.” Her emotional moment wasn’t out of self-pity; she was crying at the sight of hundreds of people on their knees before God. For Joni, it was a preview of heaven!
Sitting there, I was reminded that in heaven I will be free to jump up, dance, kick, and do aerobics. And…. sometime before the guests are called to the banquet table at the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, the first thing I plan to do on resurrected legs is to drop on grateful, glorified knees. I will quietly kneel at the feet of Jesus.
I was blessed to be interviewed for the video at the top of this post that was shown in this morning’s Easter services. Full disclosure: I felt a bit awkward sitting there watching it with everybody else! Plus, it’s not easy to see yourself up there on the big screen. Why didn’t I sit up straighter? Gracious me, I thought I was losing more weight than that! Wow, I’ve really gotten old. Aside from all my wood-hay-and-stubble vanity, I’m very pleased with how it came out.
Those opening words were so important for me to share, and I’m delighted they made the cut. Every morning I wake up, I tell Jesus two things: it’s my honor to do this for You, and please allow me to suffer well — in a way that brings You all the glory.
I don’t love paralysis, but I love Jesus. One day my eyes “will see the King in His beauty, and I will see a vast land…I will no longer see the barbarians…but I will see Jerusalem, a peaceful pasture, a tent that does not wander…for the Majestic One, our Lord will be there…and none there will say I am sick.” (Isaiah 33:17-24, CSB)
I’ll be easy to spot; you’ll find me at the feet of Jesus.
