Journey On

For a long time in life I believed that my responsibility was to faithfully live out the reality of the biblical truths I had learned throughout my lifetime. I had a sense of security in knowing that because of a solid background in church and a sound education in college and seminary, I was equipped to live the lifestyle inherent to being a good follower of Jesus Christ.

So that’s what I did. With sincere determination I resolved to live out my faith with integrity and consistency in the best way I could. I believed that the journey in faith consisted of conducting myself in a way that would allow me to hear the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant” when I saw my Savior face to face one day.

In 1990, everything changed for me when I came to see that my journey through life involved much more than simply living in a way that was consistent with what I had understood thus far. Like a Damascus Road lightning bolt, the truth of my identity in Christ and what it means to live outside the domain of the Law hit me and knocked me off the religious horse I had been riding since I was a child. I wrote about that experience in my first book, Grace Walk. I will forever be thankful for what happened to me that year. It literally turned my thoughts and my lifestyle around one-hundred-eighty degrees.

I had friends who thought I’d lost my mind when I began to speak of this newly discovered understanding of the grace of God. Words like “passivity” and “antinomian” and “sinless perfection” were often used against me when they were coupled with charges of having “gone off the deep end” and of “embracing error” and even of having “fallen into heresy.”

While the criticism was unpleasant and the rejection was painful, I couldn’t help myself. The problem with believing that God’s Spirit has caused you to know something is that once you know it you can’t “unknow” it. And to make matters worse, (or better –depending on your perspective) you can’t shut up about it either. I remember a leader in the church where I served then as Senior Pastor saying to me, “We understand how important this grace thing is to you, but can’t you move on to other things in your preaching?”

I tried. I really did, but I just couldn’t. Like Balaam trying to open his mouth to curse Israel only to find a blessing pouring off his lips, I sought to “find balance” in my messages but despite my efforts, what kept pouring out was grace. God’s grace has that effect on a person, you know.

In the years that have followed I have continued to seek out the depths and breadth of my Father’s grace. The Apostle Peter admonished us to “Grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” There is always more to know when it comes to the grace of God. Show me somebody who has a closed-end understanding of grace and I’ll show you somebody who has turned the grace of God into a new religion.

Like our Father’s nature itself, the bounds of grace are without limit. We all have the opportunity to be growing, to be learning and coming to a deeper understanding of that grace all the days of our lives. In fact, I believe we will still keep plumbing the depths of His grace throughout eternity. After all, His loving grace is “fathomless” and is thus without a bottom. The Apostle Paul used words like “unsearchable” to describe it, meaning you can explore it all you want but you’ll never fully figure grace out because it’s just too big and overwhelming.

The Psalmist once said, “Blessed are those whose strength is in You, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage” (Psalm 84:5). You and I are on a pilgrim walk that involves growing spiritually. That growth means more than that we simply behave better and better as we go forward. It means we know more about our Triune God than we used to know. It means we grow as we go. And to do that, we change. We see things about Him that we haven’t seen before and we embrace those things.

Your Father’s loving grace is infinite. The nature of the flesh is to want to take the truths He has revealed to us and misinterpret them. He reveals Himself to us, not just information. Please consider that statement again, for it has great importance. Your God reveals Himself to you, not just information about Himself.

The approach of the flesh that causes us to misinterpret what we have seen of His Self-Disclosure is the inclination to take what we have seen of His Person and turn it into mere propositional truths that can be categorized and filed away as another part of our belief system. In other words, what He has shown of us Himself becomes a doctrinal viewpoint instead of a Living Reality.

When this happens in the realm of grace, we may find ourselves in a place where we become Grace-Pharisees who think we finally have the official understanding on the subject of grace. We believe we have arrived. Our present understanding becomes the measure of what it right and what is wrong with views that don’t’ perfectly coincide with our own. And in the process, we become legalists all over again. We once again morph into the very thing we thank God that we have been delivered from. We no longer dialogue about grace. Instead, we dictate what grace is and is not to those who differ.

Stagnation is a threat to all living things. A muscle that stops being exercised atrophies and can no longer be used. A stream teeming with life that is dammed up into a small pool can become stagnated to the point that every fish in it suffocates and floats to the top. A mind and heart that comes to believe it is filled with absolute and final knowledge of grace stops being a conduit of Living Water and becomes a religious reservoir that exists to preserve and protect what is already there. The ebb and flow of giving and receiving authentic grace stops and what we have known becomes stale and stagnant to the point that nobody can be refreshed by it anymore. Not even ourselves.

As you move forward in your own grace walk, I encourage you to keep an open heart and mind toward God’s grace. When it comes to understanding it all, we won’t ever cross the finish line. Certainly not in this life.

Don’t be gullible. Test the things you hear by the Scripture and the witness of the Spirit within you. Don’t be gullible, but do be teachable. Know that just because something you see in Scripture doesn’t fit what you already know and believe is no reason to skip right past it as if it weren’t there. Consider that there may be another way to understand some things than the way you do right now that are perfectly consistent with what the Bible says.

Life is a journey. Don’t worry about the enemy causing you to get off track and miss the truth. We have the personal word of Jesus Himself that His Spirit “will guide you into all truth.” Trust Him and do not be afraid. He is indeed “able to keep you from falling.” God’s truth isn’t dependent on the vote of your friends. Trust the Spirit and the Scripture to guide you. You have a mind and He is honored when you use it. There’s nothing spiritual about being a religious lemming that simply follows the crowd we happen to live among at the time. The body of Christ is bigger than the handful we’ve surrounded ourselves with. There is diversity of thought about biblical matters in that body.

Sometimes, to “go on with God” we have to be willing to rise up above our backgrounds, our traditions, our underlying religious viewpoints, the opinions of others and embrace a “where He leads me, I will follow” attitude. Some people will celebrate with you and join you in the journey. Some will criticize you and distance themselves from you. But the One who leads you holds you heart, your head and your whole life in His hands. Trust Him. Follow Him. Don’t follow Religious Pied Pipers but listen to the Inner Voice that directs you and boldly step out to follow Him deeper into The Journey that ultimately leads you home.