God’s Grace in Inperfection

We all get it once and awhile…That reminder of how not perfect we are. How much we’ve sinned and how much we are in need of God’s grace and forgiveness….Mine came earlier this week. I was asked to join a friend who had something to talk to me about. This friend doesn’t just randomly say things like that, and I suspected something was up, and on my end, so I agreed. We had a very long conversation…It was very good. She called me out on how I’d been acting while interacting with some mutual yet very unsaved friends. It was terribly convicting. You see, in trying to win them, I had been sliding and talking like they were, loving, indulging in that which they were involved with…This is nothing short of sinful and wrong albeit, I didn’t realize how they were taking it.

Basically, I was telling them one thing, but living another way and they saw it fast. One said, “Don’t tell her the truth because we’re having too much fun.” That’s absolutely horrible. I’m not kidding. I don’t remember when I hurt so bad. To think that I had dishonored my Savior that way…It cut me to the quick. My girlfriend and I talked about what it was I needed to do to get back on the right path and the first thing was to get me into God’s Word. To get me to read it and meditate upon it, and ingest it. Praying and making Jesus my complete focus. Not those I’m speaking with, not how they will take what I say…But living above reproach before my Savior Jesus Christ. Yes it’s a high calling. Yes, I’ve royally screwed. But I pray that they will see me more as an example of David—the man after God’s own heart who sinned greatly and yet who was so in love with God it didn’t matter. That’s the kind of person I want to be. Unconditionally loving yet not condoning the sin of my friends….I’ve failed so many times, and yet I know God is faithful and I’m praying He will take this and use it for good. Because GOD never makes mistakes…and GOD can take the worst failures and use them to glorify His name…That’s what I’m asking for. It was a long, hard battle today. I felt myself coming to a place where God was asking me to give Ben up. Yes, you read that right…I had to come to the place where I told God if He didn’t want me interacting with my adopted little brother at all…If He wanted me to give him up, I would. It was a long painful battle. It took every ounce of sanctified energy not to text him today. But I didn’t. I had to remind myself, “resist the devil and he will flee”. That does not mean that I automatically cut off all contact, refuse to speak with him, etc. But I put the ball in his court. Either he would respond to a post from his favorite band that I put on his wall, or he wouldn’t….If he didn’t, I wasn’t going to say anything…But he did! Yes, he did! We had a long talk about standards and why I believe I am accountable to a higher being even when I stumble and make a mess of things…Such grace! I don’t know why God chose to do that…but He did. I was prepared to give it all away. But God didn’t call me to that. He was gracious.

God was gracious…Even after I’ve failed, He’s giving me another chance to be a light…Another chance to make His name greater and glorify Himself…Another chance to make my Little Brother wonder what makes me different. Same with my roommates. God is giving me another chance…I didn’t believe it was possible…But God has made it so. To be fair, I don’t think they see it near as much as Little Brother did…But I still see ways for improvement…I still see ways I need continue to conform myself to His image and actually take a stand..

Forgiveness & Love

It never ceases to amaze me what the power of forgiveness will do. It is even more amazing what happens when we not only forgive, but actively pursue restoration through that forgiveness. Even as a child, I loved stories of people who didn’t let bitterness cripple them, but rather chose to extend unmerited mercy, grace, and support to those whom they forgave. I remember in about fifth grade listening with rapt attention to the story of Corrie ten Boom forgiving the concentration camp guard who mocked her and her sister while they were supposed to stand naked in line for the showers. The man was later saved and asked Corrie to forgive him…she said it was the hardest, yet most liberating thing she’d ever done. The longer I live, and nearly twenty four years is not necessarily that long, the more I have come to see and marvel at the wonder of forgiveness.

Last night I had three different conversations, and in each of them the common theme was forgiveness tied to love. It got me thinking and reminded me of a conversation I had with a dear friend awhile back. I was in one of my fluxes all worked up about someone and crying over it all. My friend was gracious enough to tell me, “Sister, [the person you’re so concerned about] has been forgiven much, thus she has the capacity to love in an amazing way. Do you think for a minute God would bring her all this way just to leave her? Of course not!” Not only did that stop my crying and calm me down for one thing, but it really got me thinking. That idea of God using those who had been forgiven much to love others in a special way….My brain was whirling. It made complete sense, but I’d never seen the connection that clearly before…

I was reminded of it all again last night. I had received an email from someone who extended forgiveness to me when I was in one of my most unlovable times. It made me smile and reminded me of Luke 7:47: “Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little.” In this story, Jesus is speaking of a woman who came and poured oil on His feet and wiped them with her hair as a sign of her love for Him. The woman of course, was the social outcast. A prostitute who had whored herself to any man who passed by. It is likely this was even still obvious by the clothes she wore. Imagine—a prostitute walked into the dinner party of a Pharisee! The looks, the whispers, the glares, must have been nearly unbearable. But she knew Jesus had forgiven her. Out of His great love for her, He would take her place. He was going to die for the sins she had committed. Yes, she had sinned greatly. He didn’t smooth over that reality. He didn’t excuse anything. But what Jesus told the condemning crowd was “her many sins are forgiven—for she loved much.” This woman loved Jesus much! She loved Him so much she was willing to suffer through the looks, the gestures, the stares, and the rejection to run and anoint His feet. It was the greatest outward expression of her transformed heart.

The next clause in the verse is frightening: “But he who has been forgiven little, loves little.” Jesus is giving the reality that love and forgiveness are inner-twined. For fallen humanity, one can rarely—albeit maybe never really experience one without the other. You see this on all levels of relationships. Even if the words “please forgive me” are never actually used between the two parties, at some point, each will sin against the other. It can be as simple as two children playing on a playground and having to work things out between themselves. There is give and take, yes, but there’s also acceptance and forgiveness if the relationship carries on for very long. True unconditional love is a forgiving and accepting love. The group Jesus was rebuking in that story was the religious hot-heads of the day. The people who thought they had little, or nothing to be forgiven of. They had it all right. They knew all the answers. Religion was a perfect system of dos and don’ts which all made perfect sense to them. Anyone outside that box was a religious whore who deserved nothing more than to be rejected and scorned. They were some of the most unloving people of their day. They thought they had little to be forgiven and thus they loved very, very, little.

I don’t want to be someone who loves little. I don’t want to be someone who assumes I have little to be forgiven of. Oh when I look around and compare my life to those around me its easy to say, “I don’t have much to be forgiven of.” But people comparison should never be the way I determine my need for forgiveness. When I look at God Himself and what He has forgiven me, I know I have been forgiven much. This in turn should elicit a chain reaction: great forgiveness eliciting great love.

Christening

In blogsphere these days, it is deemed appropriate to give a reason for the christening of your blog.

The reason for my title is acutally quite simple.  One of my favorite literary works of all time is Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.  Of the four girls, it seems that my career choices fall most in line with Jo–the literary mind of the family.  Growing up, whenever I would get into one of my writing modes, my mother would pop her head in the door and ask,  “Does genius burn, Jo?”  This was a direct reference to  what the authoress’ favorite sister would do, while Jo holed herself up in the attic with russets, pen, and paper.

Thus my blog name.