Without exaggeration a couple weeks ago I was within inches or seconds of four major car accidents on the freeway all within an hour and a half of each other, each of them not my fault, FYI. This said three things to me. One, that God was most definitely looking out for me in this hour of uncanny “coincidence”, two, I see this as an allegory to the intense spiritual battle we have been in and although the enemy has sought to derail us God continues to show Himself faithful and keep us on track, and three, I really need to get a notebook and begin tracking every glimpse of God I see in my life.
The other day I was considering the fact that my wife and I have not had a child yet. I realized that what in the past very well would have fostered confusion and a litany of questions within myself, and her, lasting weeks or months, only took a few seconds to process. I have seen God’s faithful hand far too many times to doubt anything now. Judging by how he has prepared me for a specific calling in my past, brought me the wife He did, how He did, when He did, for the purpose He did, leaves me little room to question His timing and plans. I am certain that when He brings us children we will look back and see how perfect the timing was and how He made our hearts want to be used by Him more so than having children. Just like I said to Him about five years ago, “Lord if keeping me single will bring more glory to your name, let’s do that! And if bringing me a wife will glorify you more, let’s do that.” Talking to my wife about our potential future children I see clearly He has done the same work in her heart. So, we are perfectly content if God does not bring us children, although in a future season we would seriously consider adopting to capitalize on another opportunity to paint a picture of the Gospel with our one short lives.
I really am going to get that notebook and I am going to log every glimpse of God and every evidence of grace I see in my life and in others. There’s a quote I love which goes,
“God is always doing 10,000 things in your life, and you may be aware of three of them.” — John Piper
This will go in the front of that notebook, and for every three I will know there are at least 10,000 more to be thankful for.
Something God has shown me recently was the importance of having a reputation for extending grace. I was doing an online study of one on one accountability groups. Here and there I ran across articles of people criticizing accountability groups that caught my attention.
Their criticisms were actually well founded, but then I also ran across a few sites that seemed to have good approaches for accountability in a healthier more Gospel driven way. I won’t go into everything here but if you like you can read my blog on it (link below).
In a nutshell, the remedy involved looking more to Christ than we do to our sin. This began to make sense to me. The more we look at our sin, the more we fuel these faulty identities we form, the more we look to our sin the more we encourage our performance based and legalistic tendencies, the more we look to our sin the more hopeless we see ourselves. Yes, we need to be aware of our sin and ready to confess it, but if killing our sin comes by the Spirit and sanctification comes by beholding the beauty of Christ (2 Cor 3:18), then we need to be looking at Him twice and thrice for every one time we look at our sin.
Then it dawned on me. God is so gracious to us and it is His kindness that leads us to repentance. Yes, the Bible is full of laws, imperative commands, practical instruction, etc, but if all of this isn’t couched in a robust Gospel context then it is all deadly. If God’s kindness and grace toward me is something I can count on each and every day then I need to be a lot slower to criticize others and by default extend grace. If I am going to correct or guide others in their faults it should come from a person who has a reputation, relationship, history of first and foremost extending grace. Yes, we are to judge with righteous judgment, we are called as teachers, to admonish, exhort, and rebuke but all of that leads to mere religion if it is not second place to grace, love, understanding, compassion, encouragement, and so on. Rather than having a talk with someone about some idol I have sniffed out in their life why don’t I just do all I can to help them see some of the ten thousand thousand glories of Christ?
God showed me how much my habits have caused me to fail in this. Yes, many of my criticisms of the Church or Christian people may be true, but I want to show them the same grace God has shown me. Forgive me world, and forgive me you, if I have not done that for you.
This is not a habit I will form overnight, but I want to be a lot less critical and a lot more gracious with everyone. I want to see evidences of grace everywhere and signs of Christ working in others more so than I see fault. Of course, when you have your radar out looking to see Christ in people and how He is working, then even people’s faults become places for God to shine. When you are looking at people through these eyes, when this is your inner world, I believe they will intuitively feel less judged and more safe.
Last week we were watching Veronica Mars – don’t laugh. And Veronica mentioned a friend whose best trait was always noticing the positive things in others. I wondered to myself if that was a good thing, being as we are such depraved sinners. Then I remembered when Paul said, “we know no man after the flesh.” And another quote, “You hear most truly who a man is when you hear him pray.” There is a lot of grace in those phrases.
May God give us eyes to see glimpses of Christ and evidences of grace working in other’s lives. The other day I stumbled across an article by John Piper. I looked everywhere for it and can’t find it, but he speaks of a missionary woman who had a knack for looking at people and picking up on evidences of grace in their lives.
Evidences of grace are all around us. Lera and I are seeing them in the ways God continues to provide for us. For over four years now we have decided to continue stepping forward by faith, with utmost certainty this is what God was calling us to do, and rather than focus on the people who don’t come on the journey with us we kept moving forward, focusing on who was there. When people weren’t there (or the resources) we went forward anyway, and God brought them, as He continues to do now. All praise and glory to our infinitely awesome and Sovereign King!
Current MIA Projects and Praises
-
The website is finally near done. At least done enough I can set it aside and move forward with other things. A young man in the Portland area who’s going to school for web stuff has been voluntarily helping me out on the site too. Thanks so much David!
-
We are reworking the scripts for our promo video project and presentation and those should be ready soon, so we can begin setting up appointments to share with churches. Let us know if we should come visit!
-
The Lord provided us a professional bookkeeper to serve on our board who has lots of experience as an accountant for missions and Churches. Thank God for Anna Marie!
-
Soon we should know the dates for our upcoming summer outreaches in Ukraine. If you are interested in going to Ukraine on a short-term trip in the summer of 2016, visit here for more information.
DOG EARS – Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God
I’m only through 25%, 2 of 5 parts, of this book but it’s one of those you don’t want to put down. Long ago I loved Richard Foster’s book on prayer. Later I learned some of the issues with Foster and regretfully had to stop recommending it. Then I fell in love with two of E.M. Bounds books on prayer, classics to say the least. However, Keller’s book has addressed questions I have had all my life. I read it with great anticipation and excitement, looking forward to grow in the hotness of my personal prayer life. As a full time missionary I view this as a grave responsibility, and a great joy!
Read this short excerpt Lera and I found very motivating:
“…my wife urged me to do something with her we had never been able to muster the self-discipline to do regularly. She asked me to pray with her every night…she said something like this:
Imagine you were diagnosed with such a lethal condition that the doctor told you that you would die within hours unless you took a particular medicine— a pill every night before going to sleep. Imagine that you were told that you could never miss it or you would die. Would you forget? Would you not get around to it some nights? No— it would be so crucial that you wouldn’t forget, you would never miss. Well, if we don’t pray together to God, we’re not going to make it because of all we are facing. I’m certainly not. We have to pray, we can’t let it just slip our minds.”
You and I have been diagnosed with this lethal condition, or at least things are so serious as though we have been.
Read my entire collection of dog ears summarizing what I’ve gained from reading Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God
What do you think about looking for evidences of grace inn people’s lives as opposed to noticing their flaws?
