Tag: Salvation

grace down on one knee

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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.

Selah, beloved.

what started out as a barn

Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?

1 Corinthians 3:16

Christmas is nearly upon us. We can be certain we will be treated to all forms of ‘baby Jesus in a stable’ scenes and meditations (mine included). While a barn may have housed the babe of Bethlehem, it will not do to accommodate a reigning King.

That’s you and me, friend. We are God’s house. For better or for worse, Jesus makes his abode in us.

The cave or lean-to in which Jesus was born gives a certain charm to the incarnation narrative but is quickly discarded for a house when the Magi show up.

Here’s a question: does our life say ‘barn’ or ‘temple’? Maybe we think we’ve got a dream house going on when really we’re just unstable structures built on sand.

Early on the tabernacle of God was a mobile tent. It sufficed for a time, but it really bothered David.

“Here I am inside a cathedral, while God is out there in a cardboard box!” he groused. David intended to do something about it, but God gently withstood him. We know the reason why, of course, but I think that story reveals something about how we approach life.

Put simply, we aren’t meant for this world. We are called to something more permanent, ever more glorious. Like David, we should be bothered. There should be in us a “holy restlessness” until God gets all that he rightly owns. Us. His temples.

In one gospel story, Peter and his boys had just watched a rich young ruler foolishly walk away from Christ, unwilling to liquidate his assets for the kingdom. What just happened, they wondered.

The disciples couldn’t believe what they were hearing, but Jesus kept on: “You can’t imagine how difficult. I’d say it’s easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye than for the rich to get into God’s kingdom.”
That set the disciples back on their heels. “Then who has any chance at all?” they asked.

Mark 10:24-26, The Message

The disciples were dumbstruck. They’d been brainwashed to believe since birth that the rich and powerful were fast-tracked into God’s kingdom. Jesus upended that heresy by exposing the hypocrisy of the religious elite. That those (air-quote) other guys (end air-quote) wouldn’t gain entry they understood.

But this guy wasn’t a hypocrite. He wasn’t combative. He was sincere, respectful, even desperate. I mean, he actually ran up to Jesus and fell to his knees! If that’s not an altar call I don’t know what is.

Only he went away lost, owned by his wealth. Eugene Peterson helpfully writes, “His possessions were his millstone strangling the very life from his soul – that is why Jesus touched on the topic of what he owned. ‘It’s killing you man, it’s owning you!’”

The young aristocrat preferred his bigger barn portfolio to the Savior of the world.

Characteristically, Peter just had to inject himself into the uncomfortable silence.

See, we have left everything and followed you.

Mark 10:28, ESV

Except…

…much of what Peter and the others thought to be important was not really so, and that what they thought to be of no importance was often of great significance before God.”

Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, p. 121

If you’re out here just doing stuff to get reimbursed, rewarded, or recognized — even in the name of Jesus — forget it. That stuff’s just gonna get burned up.

Praise God, we know how the disciples’ story ends. Their faith in — and obedience to — Christ made their lives a fit habitation for King Jesus. They certainly did their share of slumming from time to time, but in the end they were temples.

One day we shall thank God we built with enduring material. It is so easy to let up here and there and work in a little wood or stubble, but blessed is the man (and woman) who will not substitute even the good for the best.

—Vance Havner

Jaroslav Pelikan, Yale scholar and historian of religion, observed:

Jesus of Nazareth has been the dominant figure in the history of western culture for almost twenty centuries. If it were possible, with some sort of super magnet, to pull up out of that history every scrap of metal bearing at least a trace of his name, how much would be left?

—Quoted from The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard, p. 12

Setting aside the meta narrative of human history for a second, let’s address it on a more cellular level:

how much of ‘Jesus’ will be left in us when the fire purges from us everything that is not him?

That’s really the question. Are our respective ‘inns’ so crowded all we can offer Jesus is a mucked-out stable? Is he worthy of more?

As I’m writing this, I’m listening to the pounding of hammers on the other side of the house. For the past 251 days (yes I’m counting!) we’ve been temporarily lodging in a converted garage without a single window. All that pounding and sawing and drilling is sweet music to our ears; it means we will be moving into a spacious suite of rooms with plenty of windows through which the Florida sun can shine all the live long day!

You might say our living situation is a metaphor. I don’t want my life to be a garage without windows. I want to be a wide-open, well-lit, fully-accessible house for my Jesus.

Selah, beloved. Until next time.

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good tidings of great joy to those who aren’t feeling it

If you’re at all familiar with the sitcom Friends, you know Chandler. The likable character, played by Matthew Perry, captured fans’ hearts through his youthful innocence and memorable lines. But his celebrity cost him dearly. Opioids and alcohol have very nearly done him in. In the opening lines of his memoir he writes, “I should be dead.”

The price tag on his trying to get sober has topped $9 million. Tragically, he has yet to find salvation in either drugs or their prevention.

In his recently-released memoir, 53-year old Perry confides to the reader:

That beatific moment is something I still seek. . . . I want that connection to something bigger than me because I’m convinced it’s the only thing that will truly save my life. I don’t want to die. I’m scared to die.

Matthew Perry, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir

The “big terrible thing” in Matthew Perry‘s life might be substance abuse, but his heart-twisting confession reveals an even more terrible thing. How awful it must be to be so close to the door of salvation and not be able to find the door knob.

Not Chandler Bing, I thought. God, send a gospel preacher to him! Who has his ear? Who could tell him about the healing love of Jesus? But then: maybe he has heard it and didn’t choose Door Jesus. If so, well that’s a whole other “big terrible thing.”

What is needed here is a Christmas miracle.

The Christmas story is set against the background of night. Joseph was visited by an angel in the night. The shepherds watched their flocks by night. Mary and Joseph welcomed their little bundle into the world in the middle of the night.

But, suddenly, like the opening verses of our Bibles, there was light. And it was good.

Recently, I discovered that the tiny book of Haggai casts some of that light. Looking at it in a certain way, one might catch a glint of Christmas cheer.

Let’s take a look.

Haggai preached three short sermons to the people of God over three months, but he was given yet a fourth — really a sermonette — for a single individual. At the beginning of what is now our traditional Christmas week, Haggai gave Zerubbabel a gift-wrapped message from heaven.

I am about to shake the heavens and the earth, and to overthrow the throne of kingdoms. I am about to destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the nations…On that day, declares the LORD of hosts, I will take you, O Zerubbabel my servant, the son of Shealtiel, declares the LORD, and make you like a signet ring, for I have chosen you, declares the LORD of hosts.

Haggai 2:21-23

“Your ministry isn’t finished quite yet, Haggai. I have one more sermon for you to preach. It’s a sermon for a specific person. Go to him and let him hear the gospel of grace.”

That guy’s name is Zerubbabel, meaning “birthed in Babylon.”

What a beautiful story of grace. Like Zerubbabel, we each come into the world, citizens of ‘Babylon,’ steeped in sin. God’s mercy finds us there and gives us a new story, a new identity, a new home.

God called a man, whose name means “festival,” to go and cheer up a man who’s wearing all the weight of Babylon on his soul.

In this Christmas season, is the Lord perhaps sending you to someone who needs some good news? Could you possibly be their own personal angel at Christmas?

Sandy and I have a friend on social media. I’ll call her Cindy. Cindy has been our prayer warrior for years. Recently she entered a contest online hoping to win an expensive winter sweater. Turns out, she won the sweater. She shared the good news with us immediately.

I’ll be honest the last week or so have really been difficult! I can feel the black cloud of deep, dark depression settling in like it does every year at the holidays!! I’ve been praying & pleading that this year it not happen! That this year the holidays would be different! I’m trying so hard to be joyful & happy!! To believe they will be different!! To not let the depression settle in again! This win really helped!! I wanted that sweater so badly!! I hope that doesn’t sound crazy! It was like a hug from Jesus! Telling me it’s going to be alright!!

I shot off a message to her right away:

This doesn’t sound the least bit crazy! Anything that comes into your life that we can turn into praise to our Father is a gift from heaven. You know that “every good and perfect gift is from above, from the Father of lights” — even sweaters! This beautiful sweater delights your heavenly Father even more than it brings happiness to you. The Father knows how much you needed this win! He is for you, he is for you, he is FOR you!

Someone you might know is secretly afraid of dying. The stink of Babylon is on them and they need to hear it’s not their destiny. He or she needs to hear that God wants to shake their world in a good way.

In a recent interview with the Washington Post, Matthew Perry self-diagnosed his soul’s great wound:

I have a never-ending need for attention, but it’s never the right kind of attention. It didn’t work. It didn’t fix that hole in me…

Do you have an incurable wound on your soul? Do you know someone who thinks — or you think — they are beyond salvation?

If Christmas tells us anything, it says GOD IS LOVE. He’s in a festive spirit and is eager to give you himself. People may fail you but he’s a true “Friend.” If you’re crying while everyone else is caroling, the Savior is sitting in that corner with you and whispering,

I’ve chosen you. You are a jeweled ring on my finger. I’ll never pawn you or throw you away. You are mine. Just watch and see what I’ll do. It’ll be epic.

Selah, beloved of God. I hope this has been a welcome message to you in this season of Advent. If I can pray for you, don’t hesitate to email me.

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