Abused Grace
As I sat in my hotel lobby reading Augustine’s and John Piper’ view on grace, I could not help but overhear a conversation between an elderly woman and her as elderly husband. Part of this is due to the fact that the woman spoke so loudly I believe she was heard across the street at the nightclub so many people were enjoying, and the fact that I was trying to be alone with God. It never ceases to amaze that any time I want to be alone with God there is always an annoying hindrance to the plan. I have no doubt that Satan is crafty and wise beyond what I give him credit for. The elderly couple was playing a simple game of checkers. That is it, nothing more and nothing less. The woman was losing, from the sound of it relatively badly, when her life partner made a move that surprised her. “Why are you doing that?” she said, “I don’t need your gifts, just play the game smart!” I quickly realized what the man had done.
In his compassion to her, in being beaten in a simple game of checkers, he could not bare the pain of seeing his wife loose so badly. He made a “stupid” move and she knew he was doing this to try and make her feel better. Every man out there who has ever loved a woman more than himself has done this move. No matter how competitive you are in a one on one game you never like to see the person you love get dismantled. It is disheartening to the loser but even more so the winner. The man in the other room was simply trying to make the victory somewhat enjoyable and not flat out embarrassing.
He made the move that 99.9 of us would make, and she hated it! She called him out on it right of way and wanted nothing to do with it. She said, “You just finish up this game and I will get you in the next.” I tried to sit there and read and from there she just kept talking. She won the next game and the entire time she kept saying, “You’re just not playing very smart tonight.” And the entire 2 hours I was there she kept talking about how much she loved playing checkers and how he was just not playing smart. She would even tell him his next move if he took two seconds to study the board, and all the while still saying, “Your just not playing very smart tonight.”
I was the only other person in the lobby, but if there were a hundred thousand people in there we all knew he was simply not playing smart for a reason, he was being gracious to someone he loved. She was so focused on what she was doing and what she expected from him that she was missing him love her, she missed him extend a flower of grace because she only cared about what she was doing and the result she expected.
A funny time to be reading a fifteen hundred year old statement on grace. I realized as I got up in frustration over the woman’s loud bickering that I had seen grace abused first hand and this made me wonder how often do we do this to God.
How many times have we been so focused on what we are doing that we miss what God is giving us in return. How often do we expect a specific result of what we do and when it does not come we question God as to why. While the entire time God has given us more than what we expected but we are to blind and selfish to see. How often do we abuse God’s grace in this way?
I hear a lot of people in the church speak about abused grace, but they are always speaking of sinner’s abuse of salvation. They are always focused on the man who claims Christ as his Lord and drinks the night away and sleeps it off with a stranger, and next Sunday confesses and prays for forgiveness and then continues this cycle throughout their lifetime. That is undoubtedly grace abused, but I am speaking about the gifts of God that we let fly by while we expect more.
I just finished speaking at a camp for 5th and 6th grade students; I gave 8 sermons in all and did a run through the bible. We started with creation and the fall of man completed by redemption in Christ. We looked at the life of Christ and the way God changes lives. We learned about the heart of a servant and the rollercoaster ride that life is, we finished with the greatest command to love God and People. It was a great week and I saw first hand God move in young peoples lives. I prayed alone with one camper and heard about many other conversions. Praise God for this! I do not for one second believe that I can take any glory for myself over anything that happened in the lives of the campers. I received praise from the campers and counselors, the team I was with lifted me up and praised the job I had done. Yet I find myself unsatisfied, and I do not know why. Was I expecting more? Did I think that God would have some special reward for me? Were new brothers and sisters in Christ not enough?
I was so focused on what I would get out of this week spent at camp that I missed the grace that God delivered. Saved souls should have been enough, and are, the praise of my teammates and cheers of campers and counselors should have been extra, and were. I sit now looking back on the week and I cannot help but think about the grace that I abused. Looking back now I realize that a saved soul, just one, would have been enough grace in my life to bring me to Joy at the hands of God. Oh how I abused his grace, oh how I missed it at the time. God gave me so much grace that week; I missed it then but realize it now.
I can’t help but think about how much I learned from this experience. I sat listening to a man offer a woman, someone he loved, grace and she was shooting it down because she wanted more or she wanted it in a different way. I pray that we, believers in Christ, do not do the same when God offers us his grace. When we realize that all glory belongs to him and that we can take none for ourselves, all which is leftover for us is the grace of God. And may we realize that grace when it brings its head out of the water and may we enjoy it.
In his compassion to her, in being beaten in a simple game of checkers, he could not bare the pain of seeing his wife loose so badly. He made a “stupid” move and she knew he was doing this to try and make her feel better. Every man out there who has ever loved a woman more than himself has done this move. No matter how competitive you are in a one on one game you never like to see the person you love get dismantled. It is disheartening to the loser but even more so the winner. The man in the other room was simply trying to make the victory somewhat enjoyable and not flat out embarrassing.
He made the move that 99.9 of us would make, and she hated it! She called him out on it right of way and wanted nothing to do with it. She said, “You just finish up this game and I will get you in the next.” I tried to sit there and read and from there she just kept talking. She won the next game and the entire time she kept saying, “You’re just not playing very smart tonight.” And the entire 2 hours I was there she kept talking about how much she loved playing checkers and how he was just not playing smart. She would even tell him his next move if he took two seconds to study the board, and all the while still saying, “Your just not playing very smart tonight.”
I was the only other person in the lobby, but if there were a hundred thousand people in there we all knew he was simply not playing smart for a reason, he was being gracious to someone he loved. She was so focused on what she was doing and what she expected from him that she was missing him love her, she missed him extend a flower of grace because she only cared about what she was doing and the result she expected.
A funny time to be reading a fifteen hundred year old statement on grace. I realized as I got up in frustration over the woman’s loud bickering that I had seen grace abused first hand and this made me wonder how often do we do this to God.
How many times have we been so focused on what we are doing that we miss what God is giving us in return. How often do we expect a specific result of what we do and when it does not come we question God as to why. While the entire time God has given us more than what we expected but we are to blind and selfish to see. How often do we abuse God’s grace in this way?
I hear a lot of people in the church speak about abused grace, but they are always speaking of sinner’s abuse of salvation. They are always focused on the man who claims Christ as his Lord and drinks the night away and sleeps it off with a stranger, and next Sunday confesses and prays for forgiveness and then continues this cycle throughout their lifetime. That is undoubtedly grace abused, but I am speaking about the gifts of God that we let fly by while we expect more.
I just finished speaking at a camp for 5th and 6th grade students; I gave 8 sermons in all and did a run through the bible. We started with creation and the fall of man completed by redemption in Christ. We looked at the life of Christ and the way God changes lives. We learned about the heart of a servant and the rollercoaster ride that life is, we finished with the greatest command to love God and People. It was a great week and I saw first hand God move in young peoples lives. I prayed alone with one camper and heard about many other conversions. Praise God for this! I do not for one second believe that I can take any glory for myself over anything that happened in the lives of the campers. I received praise from the campers and counselors, the team I was with lifted me up and praised the job I had done. Yet I find myself unsatisfied, and I do not know why. Was I expecting more? Did I think that God would have some special reward for me? Were new brothers and sisters in Christ not enough?
I was so focused on what I would get out of this week spent at camp that I missed the grace that God delivered. Saved souls should have been enough, and are, the praise of my teammates and cheers of campers and counselors should have been extra, and were. I sit now looking back on the week and I cannot help but think about the grace that I abused. Looking back now I realize that a saved soul, just one, would have been enough grace in my life to bring me to Joy at the hands of God. Oh how I abused his grace, oh how I missed it at the time. God gave me so much grace that week; I missed it then but realize it now.
I can’t help but think about how much I learned from this experience. I sat listening to a man offer a woman, someone he loved, grace and she was shooting it down because she wanted more or she wanted it in a different way. I pray that we, believers in Christ, do not do the same when God offers us his grace. When we realize that all glory belongs to him and that we can take none for ourselves, all which is leftover for us is the grace of God. And may we realize that grace when it brings its head out of the water and may we enjoy it.
posted by palmercat at 4:33 PM
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