obedience – Page 24 – Broken Believers

Working in the Time of Grace

“These men who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.”

Matt. 20:12, NIV

Matthew 20 irritates me. People are working the entire day, and along comes people who have only worked for one hour. This discrepancy drives the believer nuts. How in the world could such a thing take place? It is foolishness to us who insist on a ‘grace of appropriateness.’ We want grace to be fair, recognizing the person who has worked very hard.

The problem is that God is outrageous with His grace and love. He completely expands us to a point where we must embrace a grace that is completely beyond us. We have to break down and accept what is available to us. Grace completely dumps us upside down.

We can only proceed if we accept His definition of Grace.

Those who have labored the least are made equal to those who work the hardest. This seems incredibly unfair and we revolt against such extravagance. It strikes us as outrageously unfair. How can those who worked only an hour receive the exact same amount as those who have labored a full eight?

The miracle of this shockingly outrageous grace is that we are confronted by a profound freedom. We basically get brought to the point where we get stripped of these illusions and need to walk out the scripture. It has the tendency to eliminate the issues that could block us and bring us to a most receptive position.

“But he replied to one of them, ‘My friend, I’m not being unjust to you. Wasn’t our agreement for a silver coin a day? Take your money and go home. It is my wish to give the latecomers as much as I give you. May I not do what I like with what belongs to me? Must you be jealous because I am generous?’

¹⁶“So, many who are the last now will be the first then and the first last.”

Matthew 20:13-16

We must admit that God’s grace reaches out to everyone.

That He has the deep, deep desire to see that each of us connect with His love. This is indeed the radicalness of the gospel. It is outrageous and astonishing. That He would love us who have hated Him. Our sense of equity is completely undone. His grace completely turns us upside down. I think that is a good thing.

On Being Loved

⁹“The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?”

Jeremiah 17:9

⁷For the sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God’s laws, and it never will. ⁸That’s why those who are still under the control of their sinful nature can never please God.”

Romans 8:7-8

The reality is that we are in a real fix. The grim news isn’t changed simply because we graduated from a ‘charm school’ or become Eagle Scouts. We are fundamentally flawed, our hearts throughly contaminated. Any good we try to do is a ‘freak of nature,’ and astronomically beyond our ability. The race of men has failed. (Maybe that’s why history keeps repeating itself.) Without the presence of God, we would destroy ourselves. And each other.

The word “hostile” is used. That sort of sums it all up, doesn’t it?

God’s Constant Love for You

^{8 “}But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.”

Romans 5:8

Although we’re in active rebellion, “God so loved the world…” His love for us is called ‘agape,’ it is a word used in the New Testament, and it’s a love marked by consistency and selflessness. God loves without any conditions or merit on our part. Agape is love undeserved. The word is full of mercy, a concept very hard for us to grasp.

God’s love for us the way the universe is run. Love is what empowers Him to save us from our sins. It is the Lord’s love that draws us to Himself. Love is like a magnet that pulls us out of darkness into the light. His love for you is infinite.

“In math, if you divide an infinite number by any number, no matter how large, you still have an infinite quotient. So Jesus’ love, being infinite, even though it is divided up for every person on earth, is still infinitely poured out on each one of us!”

Charles Spurgeon

You can trust the Lord to be fully loving you right this minute. It is a full and constant love— there is scarcely a human parallel. The ‘prophets’ exhaust language seeking a metaphor to explain God’s love to a doubting and disobedient people. I imagine they are frustrated; they can’t explain what they’ve seen. They try, and end up explaining God’s love by type: marriage, and motherhood.

Over and over, these two metaphors are used extensively. And over and over you can see the love of God for people (flesh and blood, like you and I) for us. He loves us like a husband loves his straying wife. He loves us like a father loves his struggling child. We stray and struggle, and we will find no peace apart from His love. After all we are His, and we really can’t ‘work right” apart from His guiding presence.

Look at His heart. See His hands.

They both bear us witness of a supreme love. He loves you right now— wrecked and ravaged by your sin. I don’t know where you are at this very moment, but I do know He loves you intensely. Sin may have destroyed you, but His love never, ever vacillates. God is passionate about you— He won’t let you go. But you must risk being loved.

“See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! But the people who belong to this world don’t recognize that we are God’s children because they don’t know him.”

1 John 3:1

Sheepy Wolves

“Beware of false prophets who come disguised as harmless sheep but are really vicious wolves.”

Matthew 7:15, NLT

The old King James Version says, “which come to you in sheep’s clothing.” There is something to be said about both translations.

Being aware. Jesus commands this awareness, this discernment that our world is a dangerous place and dark things come out of it. Deception is always working, the true believer must keep learning. We must identify sheep, who are not really sheep after all. They look like sheep, unless you get close. They smell like sheep. They appear gentle and kind.

But inside they are malignant and treacherous. Jesus chose the word, “dangerous.” We pretty much avoid anything dangerous. If there is a sign on the beach, and if it says “Dangerous Undertow,” most of us will comply and our time in the water is alert and quite aware.

There are people in the world who should have that sign, as they are treacherous and deceitful. They say many things, and there is enough there to seem authentic. As simple believers, we feel we should trust without questions. We avert our eyes to anything unseemly or aberrant. Isn’t this what a loving Christian is supposed to do?

Jesus never told us to be tolerant, at least not like this. He understands that wolves will tear apart sheep, ripping them into ribbons, if given half the chance. He commands us to exercise caution. But already there has been way too much “sheep dismemberment” in our generation. The flock has been chased and separated, many have already been devoured.

Jesus is encouraging us to become discerning and aware, and teach it to our children and friends. We shouldn’t be paranoid, or frightened by the world that swirls around us. And there will always be people with mixed motives and confusing thoughts. If we are honest, we ourselves have these same things, as we are His work in process.

Exteriors are always a big question mark. The main issue is the delicate art of observation. The more we get to know Jesus, the more we will identify what is a lie, a trick or a deception. The Secret Service of our country, in learning to understand counterfeiters will study at length the real currency. It’s interesting, they don’t study the false bills, but the real ones.

Be encouraged. He is standing right in front, making intercession for you before the Father. The Word is ours also, and there are pastors and teachers, who are shepherding the flock. You are targeted, but never forsaken. Our enemy is defeated. Do not fear, never ever fear. We have angels in high places who are our friends.

The One Percent Solution (brokenbelievers.com)
Time to stop playing church (therisingmuse.com)

Satan Wants Christians to Be Unholy

Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord:

Hebrews 13:14

There is a simple holiness about a believer that Satan hates with a passion.

There should be a joy and peace in any holiness, and if there isn’t then you’ve got the legalistic version. And Satan delights in that. His ministry is to destroy that which the Holy Spirit has instilled within you.

Satan is disgusted with the real thing. It intensely bothers him when he detects the real thing that is within you. Holiness is the flag which he wants to shoot down. Satan is incredibly experienced at this, he has been at this for several millenia.

“You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.”

1 John 4:4

In this toxic environment Jesus gives us His grace. We have been given the power to overcome the strategies of the devil. He are commissioned to resist him. All of heaven is watching us. Angels stand by to assist us. God’s Word helps us.

It is the simple believer who overcomes hell’s fearsome blasts, for he rests exclusively on the Blood of Jesus. “And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb (Rev. 12:11). Jesus has given us His very blood to save our souls.

My illness was never meant to be an excuse tor ungodliness. I may be disabled but He leads me down “the paths of righteousness for His name sake.” I honestly want to follow Jesus (even if I don’t it so well).

“Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age.”

Titus 2:12, NKJV

“There is no neutral ground in the universe; every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counter-claimed by Satan.”

—C.S. Lewis

Category: obedience

Working in the Time of Grace

“These men who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.”

We can only proceed if we accept His definition of Grace.