See to it that no one misses
the grace of God. (Heb. 12:15)
Christ lives in me. (Gal.
2:20)
I’ll remove the stone heart
from your body and replace it with a heart that’s God-willed, not self-willed. (Ezekiel
36:26)
Catheter ablation – an
invasive medical procedure used to destroy abnormal tissue from the interior of
the heart of patients
with cardiac arrhythmia. In other words, it’s a medical procedure designed to
restore a healthy heart rhythm, and the procedure works like this: an
electrophysiologist (a specially-trained cardiologist) inserts two cables (catheters)
into the patient’s heart via a blood
vessel – one is a camera, the other is an ablation tool. An electrical impulse
is then used to induce the arrhythmia, and the ablation tool, using that same
electrical impulse, destroys the abnormal tissue causing the irregular
heartbeat; it does so, generally, by burning the tissue – as in cauterizing,
singeing or branding. If all goes well, the doctor successfully destroys the
“misbehaving” parts of the patient’s heart, and a potentially fatal, future
heart attack is avoided.
A friend of mine had a
catheter ablation and relayed to me the pre-procedure conversation he had with
his doctor. It went something a little like this: “So, you’re going to burn the
interior of my heart, right?” “Correct.” “And you’re going to kill the
misbehaving cells?” “That’s my plan.” “Well, as long as you’re in there, could
you take your little blowtorch to some of my greed, selfishness, superiority,
and guilt?” “Sorry, that’s not in my pay grade.” The doctor’s right, of course
– that’s not in his pay grade. But it’s in God’s because he’s in the business of
changing hearts.
Of course, we would be wrong
to think this change happens overnight, like catheter ablation. But we would be
equally wrong to assume that change never happens at all. It may come in spurts
— an “aha” moment here, a breakthrough there. But it comes. “The grace of God
that brings salvation has appeared,” Paul wrote to his young protégé, Titus (2:11).
In other words, the floodgates are open and the water’s out, but you just never
know when grace will seep in. For example, you stare into the darkness
while your husband snores. In
fifteen minutes the alarm will sound, and the demands of the day will shoot you
out of bed like a clown out of a cannon into a three-ring circus of meetings,
bosses and baseball practices. For the millionth time you’ll make breakfast,
schedules and payroll. But for the life of you, you can’t
make sense of this thing called “life.” Its beginnings and its endings; cradles
and cancers. The why of it all keeps you awake. So he sleeps, the world waits
and you just stare.
Or,
you open your Bible and look at the words. But you might as well be gazing at a cemetery – the
words are lifeless and stony. Nothing moves you, but you don’t dare close the
book. So, you trudge through your daily reading in the same way you power through
prayers. You don’t miss a deed for fear that God will miss your name. Or,
you listen to the preacher.
Well, sort of. Your dad makes you come to church, but he can’t make you listen.
At least, that’s what you’ve always told yourself. But this morning you listen
because the preacher is talking about a God who loves prodigals, and you feel
like the worst kind of prodigal. The preacher says God already knows, and you
wonder what God thinks.
The meaning of life; the
wasted years of life; the poor choices of life. God answers the mess of life
with one word: grace.
And to hear us talk you’d think we really understand the term. Your bank gives you
a grace period. A politician falls
from grace. Musicians speak of a grace note. We describe an actress
as gracious, and a dancer as graceful. We use the word for
hospitals, baby girls and pre-meal prayers. We talk as though we know what grace means. Especially at church. Grace graces the songs we sing and
the Bible verses we read. Grace
shares the
church assembly with its cousins: forgiveness, faith and fellowship. Preachers explain it. Hymns
proclaim it. Seminaries teach it. But do we really understand it?
Many of us have settled for a
wimpy grace. It politely occupies a phrase in a hymn, or fits nicely on a
church sign. It never causes trouble, or demands a response. When asked, “Do
you believe in grace?” who could say “No”? But have you been changed by grace?
Shaped by grace? Strengthened by grace? Emboldened by grace? Softened by grace?
Snatched by the scruff of your neck and shaken to your senses by grace? God’s
grace has a drenching about it. A white-water, riptide, turn-you-upsidedownness
about it. Grace comes after you. It rewires you. From insecure to God-secure.
From regret-riddled to better-because-of-it. From afraid-to-die to
ready-to-fly. Grace is the voice that calls us to change, and then gives us the
power to pull it off. It’s not like some nice compliment from God; it’s a new
heart. Give your heart to Christ, and he returns the favor. “I will give you a
new heart and put a new spirit within you.” (Ezek. 36:26) You might call it a
spiritual heart transplant, and Tara Storch understands this miracle as much as
anyone, maybe better.
In the spring of 2010, a
skiing accident took the life of her thirteen-year-old daughter, Taylor. What
followed for Tara and her husband, Todd, was every parent’s worst nightmare: a
funeral, a burial, a flood of questions and tears. They decided to donate their
daughter’s organs to needy patients, and few people needed a heart more than
Patricia Winters. Patricia’s heart had begun to fail five years earlier,
leaving her too weak to do much more than simply sleep. Taylor’s heart could
give Patricia a fresh start on life, and Tara had only one request: she wanted
to hear the heart of her daughter. So, she and Todd flew from Dallas to Patricia’s
home in Phoenix to listen to Taylor’s heart. The two mothers embraced for a
long time. Then Patricia offered Tara and Todd a stethoscope. And when they
listened to the healthy rhythm, whose heart did they hear? They heard the still-beating
heart of their daughter. Oh, it was in a different body mind you, but the heart
was still the heart of their child. And when God hears your heart, does he hear
the still-beating heart of his Son?
As Paul said, “It is no
longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” (Gal. 2:20) The apostle sensed
within himself not just the philosophy, ideals or influence of Christ, but the
person of Jesus. Christ moved in. And he still does. Christ enters. “Christ in
you, the hope of glory,” Paul told the church in Colossi. (Col. 1:27) I don’t
know about you, but somewhere along the way I think I’ve missed this truth. Oh,
I fully believed all the other prepositions like, Christ for me, with me, ahead of me. And, relationally, I knew
about working beside
Christ, under Christ and with Christ. But I never imagined
that Christ was actually in
me. And I
can’t blame my deficiency on Scripture because Paul refers to this relationship
216 times. John mentions it 26 times. They describe a Christ who not only woos
us to himself, but “ones” us to himself. “Whoever confesses that Jesus is the
Son of God, God
abides in him,
and he in God.” (1 John 4:15)
No other religion or
philosophy can make such a claim. No other movement implies the living presence
of its founder in
his
followers. Muhammad does not indwell Muslims. Buddha does not inhabit Buddhists.
Hugh Hefner doesn’t inhabit the pleasure-seeking hedonist. Influence? Yes. Instruct?
Sure. Entice? Absolutely. But occupy? No. Yet Christians embrace this
inscrutable promise. “The mystery in a nutshell is just this: Christ is in you.”
(Col. 1:27) The Christian is a person in whom Christ is happening. We are Jesus
Christ’s; we belong to him. But even more, we are increasingly him. He moves in and
commandeers our hands and feet, and requisitions our minds and tongues. We
sense his rearranging – debris into the divine; pig’s ear into the silk purse.
He repurposes bad decisions and squalid choices. Little by little a new image
emerges. “He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him
along the same lines as the life of his Son.” (Rom. 8:29)
Grace is God as heart
surgeon, cracking open your chest, removing your heart — poisoned as it is with
pride and pain — and replacing it with his own. In other words, rather than
telling you to change, he creates the change. But do you have to clean up so he
can accept you? No, he accepts you where you’re at and begins cleaning you up.
His dream isn’t just to get you into heaven, but to get heaven into you. And
that makes all the difference. Can’t forgive your enemy? Can’t face tomorrow?
Can’t forgive your past? Christ can, and he is on the move, aggressively budging
you from graceless to grace-shaped living. The gift-given giving gifts.
Forgiven people forgiving people. Deep sighs of relief. Stumbles aplenty but
seldom despondent.
Grace is everything Jesus.
Grace lives because he does, works because he works, and matters because he
matters. He placed a term limit on sin and danced a victory jig in a graveyard.
To be saved by grace is to be saved by him — not by an idea, doctrine, creed,
or church membership, but by Jesus himself. And he does so but not in response
to a finger snap, religious chant, or a secret handshake. Grace can’t be
stage-managed, and I’ve got no tips on how to get grace.
But the truth is, we don’t get grace; it gets us. Grace hugged the stink out of
the prodigal, scared the hate out of Paul and pledges to do the same in us. And
if you fear you’ve written too many checks on God’s kindness account, or drag
regrets around like a broken bumper, even huff and puff more than you delight
and rest, and, most of all, if you wonder whether God can do something with the
mess of your life, then grace is what you need.
And grace is what he has to
remove the “misbehaving” parts of your heart. And in the process, he saves you from
an otherwise incurable heart disease.
Grace,
Randy
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