Reaching

Originally posted June 16, 2009 by Serena Woods

Human beings need to have purpose. We need to have something to reach for that is beyond our grasp. Most of us can bounce from effort to effort for years without realizing that we’re reaching for things in the ‘here and now’. It takes a long time for some of us to realize that our drive is telling us to reach for something altogether spiritual. 

In an attempt to make their lives more meaningful, religious human beings enter into superstition and sensationalism. They may say that they are on a journey of learning, that their lives of faith have some growing yet to do. Yet, their chest becomes a brick wall to any information coming to them that unravels the faith system they’ve devised or have been lead to believe. 

They set themselves up as examples for the rest of the world. Examples of completeness and happiness. Shining and bright in hope that the world will look at ‘Christians’ and want in. They stand in front of them like pageant contestants with Vaseline on their teeth and cuffs around their ankles.

We’re human beings who are wracked by pain and uncertainty. We fail our marriages, our employers and our children. The internal war that rages in our hearts is that we don’t believe Christians have internal emptiness and they most certainly don’t fail. 

We’ve made ‘more than conquerors’ mean something it never meant. We’ve made ‘joy unspeakable and full of glory’ look like something it never intended. We’ve turned the ‘new creation’ into an animal that enslaves lambs. We have taken spiritual truths and put them in physical boxes.

‘We’re not meant to be seen as God’s perfect, bright shining examples, but to be seen as everyday essence of ordinary life exhibiting the miracle of His grace.’ - Oswald Chambers

A life that ‘grows in grace’ and puts the glory of Jesus on display cannot do so without being open about their sin and imperfection. We can’t show contrast without comparison. God’s grace does not manifest itself as a life without sin. God’s grace is the glaring and almost infuriating contrast living within a life of unquestionable sin. God’s grace is a freedom from sin that should be damning.

You learn the truth of the Gospel and accept grace to get you started. Then you turn and show the rest of the world the facade that the ‘new creation’ you’ve become is one that does not stumble. Setting yourself up to maintain your salvation by self control and rule keeping is an absolute denial of Jesus. 

‘It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. … Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God’s grace. If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily.’ - Galatians 2:19

Faith is a belief that what Jesus did on the cross was enough. Perseverance is hanging on to that truth even when others demand that your salvation requires something more. You are more than conquerors because you’re playing a position in a game that has already been won. Your unspeakable joy is full of glory because you have been set free from the peer pleasing religion chain gang. You are a new creation because what Jesus did has made you alive in a way that your physical understanding cannot grasp.