A few thoughts

Ahh... "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." That pretty much describes the craziness that is my life. I have to intentionally choose to stop and look around every so often or I might miss some pretty significant parts of it. So after a fun-filled week in Houston (not really), a few final quotes and thoughts from Andy Stanley's book "The Grace of God" that I finished while seeing the sites in Texas (By sites, I mean the parking garage, the hotel, the office... exciting stuff like that.)

• "The story of Jesus is the story of God drawing near to those who had been pulled away by sin and were subsequently pushed away by the self-righteous."
• "As if six hundred laws were not enough, they (the Pharisees) created additional lists of rituals to observe and behaviors to avoid to ensure that the existing laws weren't accidentally broken."
• "We have to give Nicodemus credit for remaining in the uncomfortable light Jesus was shining on his ignorance and confusion. It would have been easy for a leader of his stature to take cover behind his education and pedigree. No one would have blamed him if he had chosen to scurry away before even more of his categories were scrambled by this itinerant preacher. Nicodemus had devoted his entire life to learning, teaching and upholding a religious system that shaped his identity and gave his life purpose; yet he paused to consider the possibility that there was something he had missed."
• "If people aren't following, it's because someone's not leading."
• "What about obedience? What about disobedience? What about repeated misbehavior? What about bad habits? What about justice? What about repentance? But I chose to ignore that little voice because all the what-abouts are irrelevant to a discussion of grace. There's no connection at all... But almost grace is like almost true. If something is almost true, it isn't. It's this tension that makes grace so slippery. There's something in most of us that screams, It can't be that easy! But as much as we want to qualify grace, it can't be qualified. Jesus didn't try to balance grace and truth. He gave a full dose of both."

When was the last time you paused to consider that you might have missed something? Are you arrogant enough to say you have it all figured out? Not that we verbally say that very often, but we often act like it. Our rules, our system, our fill in the blank... let the uncomfortable light of Jesus shine on it for awhile. Yeah, that will scramble things, turn them upside down, and make you pause for just a minute. What is your identity tied to? What extra rules are you creating?

The what-abouts... the details we want explained to suit us... grace throws them out the window. We want to give qualified grace. We want to receive Jesus' grace. It is that easy, but it also that hard. Grace and truth cuts through all of it, but we still have a hard time accepting it and giving it. Are you willing to give it away this week? No qualifications of obedience, repentance or justice... just give grace away? It will be tough and possibly confusing, but aren't most things, if we try to live a life following Jesus. I bet it will be exciting as well. Most dangerous things are. Have an incredible week living in radical grace!