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Years ago, I discovered a love for lifting heavy weights. I think I have been doing it regularly now for over fifteen years. For me, it’s a really cool way to start the day, and I always love it when I can set a new personal record on one of the lifts. Although it feels great and can be a healthy hobby, it can really cause major wear and tear on your body. My knees are a weak spot, so they feel it the most. My shoulders are also letting me know I am not as young as I used to be. We cannot rely solely on exercise to be strong and healthy. Rigorous exercise must be supplemented with adequate rest and a healthy diet. When you are trying to build strength and muscle, something like protein powder might help as well. Sometimes a little Advil doesn’t hurt either!

Grace isn’t earned, but we still want to do something for it.

In our relationship with God, we must rely solely upon His grace (Ephesians 2:8-10). We can neither do anything to earn His love and acceptance nor do anything to drive Him away. In Christ, we are completely secure in a relationship with a Father that never let’s us go. He always pursues us, even when we might think we can do life better our way. Patiently, He waits for us to exhaust all efforts to control our lives and let down our guard. At those moments, we let His love wash over us again. His grace, not our efforts, are what we need to experience the freedom for which we hunger.

In our zeal for wanting to do something (this is a human tendency we all have), we seem to create many supplements to this amazing grace that needs no add-on’s. As Christians, we often fear that if we do not work really hard to please him, He will be disappointed and eventually tire of dealing with us. Either that, or we cannot be as close to Him as possible. Although Hebrews 11:6 states very clearly that our trust in Him is the ONLY thing that pleases Him, we develop supplements to our faith: efforts to make us feel like we are working hard for Him. Some of us work so hard on these things, we add so much to our schedules that we wind up exhausted and still feeling like we’ve not done enough. Other of us tire of this method of trying to “be a good Christian” and just give up, accepting that He is just not going to be as happy with us as He might be with Deacon John Doe. It’s painful, but we just cannot stand all the hard work for nothing approach anymore.

Grace needs no supplements, but we often come up with some anyway.

The truth is, we do not need a supplement to grace. Not one. Trusting in that grace is enough. It’s more than enough. Trusting in His grace helps us to experience the truth about who He is and who we are. He is a good Father who loves us like crazy. We are loved, which is a wonderful identity to have bestowed upon us by our Creator. When we are living loved by this wonderful Father, being loved is a reality for us, and amazing things begin to happen. For those of us who struggle with legalism…where all our efforts to sin less failed us, being wrapped up in His arms actually causes us to sin less. Grace does not minimize sin. Instead, it recognizes it as being SO BAD that we can do nothing about it. We need Him! His power is what we need more than another self-help book, an accountability partner who will guilt us to read the Bible more, or another Sunday School teaching position at church that temporarily makes us feel more holy and acceptable to Him.

Experiencing grace is a personal thing for each of us.

Of course, knowing the truthful words in that last paragraph and experiencing them are different. But how do we experience that grace? How do we engage this love He shares so freely with us? This will look different from person to person and from situation to situation. One woman sees it for the first time when she looks into the eyes of her new born child, realizing the love she feels for her offspring is a reflection of the love her Father has for her. A man might become aware of it when he breaks down and tells a close friend about a terrible, hidden thing he did years ago. He is fully expecting to be told he is a jerk and the friendship is over, but then is met with a bear hug, tears, and forgiveness.

To have those kinds of experiences, we sometimes need only to be willing to see them…because they are undeniably right in front of us when we’ve done nothing to bring them on. Many times, though, we must suffer. We must struggle and take a risk. The risk is a step of faith to trust another human being with ourselves. Our real selves. Sometimes we will, no doubt, be met with heartache. However, there will be those times that His grace comes shining through. And those times overpower the rest, drawing us deeper into the reality of us being loved well by a Father who is pleased with us…even when we fail.

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About 12 years ago, I nervously walked through the glass door of an office in Rocky Mount, NC. Not even the soothing tone of the nice lady’s voice behind the counter could make me feel comfortable. The anxiety was coursing through my body like an out of control forest fire. The appointment was absolutely necessary, or I would have cancelled or simply not shown up. I did not want to do what I needed to do. I was not eager to walk into the office of Dr. Ramsey and open myself up to whatever would happen next.

We want to hide.

Before that first appointment with a man that would eventually become one of my dearest and most trusted friends, I was a wreck. I really did not even have a clue as to how messed up I truly was. What I did know was I could not take it anymore. I had exhausted medical treatments, herbal remedies, self-help books, and other possibly fixes as a way to make myself feel better. Whatever was wrong with me, the root cause was not being addressed by those methods. I would have found some relief in one of them if it was.

One critical piece of the puzzle would come out quickly in my counseling sessions: I was hiding. In fact, I had been hiding a very long time. Because I was hiding, nothing of significance was ever truly being addressed. Rarely would people catch a glimpse of the real Neil. I would hide him behind fake smiles and laughs, the use of big words to make myself sound “smarter”, outright lies to cover up mistakes I was ashamed of, and a deceivingly flippant, carefree attitude that made it seem like my life’s soundtrack must be on repeat of the song “Don’t worry, be happy”. I wanted to hide the things I did not want others to see. The truth was, I was scared, miserable, depressed, and feeling very much alone. Since there were few moments in which I let people see the real Neil, most social interaction was between others and a false version of myself. I could not receive or embrace any of it because I wasn’t being myself.

We really need to be known.

For me, the beginning of authenticity (being real) was with a counselor. For some, that may sound cold and impersonal. In my experience, the opposite was true. God dropped me into the office of someone I discovered to be exceptionally trustworthy. He accepted me from the beginning and legitimately wanted to get to know me. He was not phased by the “bad stuff” I began to tell him. The more I realized this, the more I opened up. Mask after mask fell on the floor. Dr. Ramsey was seeing the real me. I was seeing the real me, as well. And most importantly, I realized God was, too, and was also unconditionally accepting of me. It is often surprising just how desperate we are to be known because we often do not realize we have been hiding all along.

This relationship with Dr. Ramsey was profoundly healing, in and of itself. As I opened up and shared with him, dark corners of my life were having a light shown into them. Some corners hurt more than others. Some took more time than others to look around and see exactly what was going on. However, one by one, the wounds were being healed in a relationship where the goal was to trust and be real. There was no rush to get to the finish line. Each moment was treated with priority, care, and concern. The best relationships work that way. They are more about keeping nothing hidden than trying to fix things. They are more about living in the moment rather than trying to rush through to the “next big thing”. At their core, these wonderfully satisfying relationships are more about trusting God to work in and through them rather than us trying to control them.

Coming out of hiding is scary! Is it worth the risk?

While my life’s path carried me through a counselor in order for God to show me the need for authenticity, many of us will discover this all-important truth in other ways. Potential friends that we can trust are out there. I have spoken with many hurting people that were having trouble locating trustworthy friends. The desire and desperation to find them can be a major struggle. Then there’s the times that people let us down, potentially leaving us to want to pull away and hide even more. So is it really worth the effort and risk?

Although I would be lying if I said I am always open to finding new people to trust myself with, I do believe it is worth the risk. When I lose sight of the necessity of authentic relationships, it seems God finds a new way to remind me of the life-giving connections He wants to make with the people I cross paths with. Just recently, a couple of meetings with a small group of people refreshed this truth for me as I shared some things about myself. They shared some things as well, and suddenly it turned into much more than we could have planned. A room for a lecture turned into a room of God’s love and grace.

Scripture tells us that Jesus is building a Church, which is also referenced in others ways, including His people, His bride, Christians, and God’s children. As we embrace His grace, and trust Him, we can trust ourselves with others, allowing Him to cross our paths with each other along the way at exactly the right times. There always will be the potential for rejection and hurt. However, there’s also the blessing of finding freedom and healing when we meet others who reciprocate.

 

My friend, Dr. Michael Ramsey, has an awesome blog. Check it out HERE.

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5 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. 8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. (1 John 1:5-10)

“Walking in the light” might not mean what we think. 

There’s a lot wrapped up in these six verses. It’s easy for many of us to simply derive from the passage that “walking in the light” might be referring to doing good works, while “walking in darkness” might simply be referring to living in sin. Perhaps that’s part of the message. Regardless, there is something else here that I believe is important for us to take in.

What if our relationships are less about doing something to fix each other, and more about nothing being hidden?

I’m borrowing those words from something I read recently (The Cure). In relationships, there is often a strong desire to fix or be fixed. We do not like to struggle. Fixing each other’s problems seems like the answer, so we place our hope in that mission. Disillusioned with unsuccessful bouts of attempts at a fix, others of us run from that way of thinking. For instance, I recently heard someone say out of frustration, “What good does it do to talk about my problems?! All the talking in the world will not fix them!” I know this person was feeling overwhelmed and angry about his circumstances, and because of that he was missing the highlight of 1 John 5-10, just like many of us who are seeking a fix.

In 1 John 1:7, it is stated that “we have fellowship with one another” when we “walk in the light”. It goes on to say that, through true fellowship, Jesus cleanses us from all sin. How is this possible? Perhaps “walking in the light” is actually referring to the true key to healthy, healing relationships. And, perhaps, those types of relationships are actually the key to getting to the root of our problems. First, we need to “walk in the light”. Second, we need true fellowship. Lastly, somehow…Jesus handles our inner-most problems.

Authenticity, fellowship, and healing are inseparable.

So, what might “walk in the light” mean for us? When we are struggling, we feel no small amount of shame. Often, it is enough to cause us to want to hide it as best we can, leaving so much of ourselves “in the darkness”. In contrast to that approach, I think “walking in the light” has a lot to do with making sure nothing is hidden. We might call it “confession”, being authentic, or getting real. This approach to relationships is not easy and requires faith. We let the light (being known) into the darkness (where we like to stay hidden), which can be uncomfortable. Of course, part of our trusting God with this process includes the faith that He is building a community around us (His Church) for love and support. Many times that means certain people are removed from our lives, while others are being added (or so that others can be added).

Instead of remaining hidden and seeking a quick fix, perhaps what we truly need is the confidence to take off any masks we are hiding behind which invites God’s grace and healing into the midst of our deepest struggles. He can do it through a book or a sermon, but He really loves doing it through people. He enjoys creating, developing, and working in and through relationships, both with Him and others.

True fellowship is derived from “walking in the light”. When we are being authentic, with a devotion to coming out of hiding so that others can see our true selves, relationships are formed that are built on trust. We are blessed to truly get to know each other, with celebrations as well as the sharing of our heartaches and loss. Simultaneously, our relationship with God does the same. All of a sudden, we are seeing things that we had hidden not just from others, but even from ourselves! Seeing things more clearly, we are then able to fully surrender core problems over to Him, rather than settling for a temporary fix for a surface issue. Instead of finding a 10 step solution, we walk unashamedly hand in hand with God and trusted friends as we are led through the tough times and enjoy the good times. Realizing the reality of unconditional love and acceptance, along with never being alone, we are able to develop hope and confidence in the midst of the most extreme, dire circumstances.

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In front of the growing crowd, a woman stands, trembling. She makes no eye contact with the scowling faces in front of her. She is on display, as individuals in the crowd take turns criticizing her. She knows they are right about what they are saying. She had been doing a bad thing…a very bad thing. She had been secretly engaging in her wrongdoing for a while without others knowing. Only this time, she had been caught. Now others knew her secret, and they were making a scene out of it.

Unable to force herself to look up, too ashamed and afraid to make eye contact with anyone, she just stares at the ground. All of a sudden, one of the men grabs her arm and begins dragging her away, and the crowd follows.

This is it, she says to herself. They will surely kill me now for what I have done.

Instead, the group heads to the temple. Upon arriving there, the woman realizes there is some kind of event being held. There is a speaker, and a crowd has gathered to listen to him.

Great,” she thinks, still looking downward, more people to watch me at the epitome of my worst day. Oh well, I do deserve the ridicule, and whatever else they decide to do with me.

One of the men, the one firmly grasping her arm, finally pulls her up front to where the speaker is. “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now (the Law) commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?”

Oh no, it’s true. They do plan to end my life today! The woman is terrified and begins shaking uncontrollably. She can barely continue standing as her life flashes before her eyes. Her feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness overtake her.

The speaker bends down and starts writing something on the ground with his finger. Not amused, men in the crowd begin badgering him to give some sort of response to their inquiry. Does he back the Law or not? Should this woman die today for what she has done?

Finally, the man at the front stands up from his crouched position. He stares directly at the crowd, who simply cannot wait to take vengeance on the woman they have already condemned in their minds.

The teacher says, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” After saying this, he crouches again to write on the ground.

The woman prepares herself for a sudden barrage of stones. She braces herself, still shaking violently. A few moments pass, but no stone hits her. She realizes she has closed her eyes tightly, so she slowly opens them to see the crowd. Each person seems to be pondering what the teacher has said. One by one, they lower their heads, dropping the stones they were ready to throw only a few moments earlier.

The woman’s thoughts are racing. What is going on here? I don’t want to die, but I know I deserve to! They cannot just walk away from this, can they?

She suddenly realizes the teacher has not left. She cautiously turns her head to glance at the teacher crouching near her, still drawing on the ground. Her heart sinks even further. So, he will be the one to carry out the punishment.

Before she can brace herself for the certain attack, he slowly stands to face her. It’s as if he knows she is scared, so he is carefully avoiding any sudden movements that might startle her further. Although she expects him to have a scolding voice, she is taken aback as he places his hand on her shoulder and gently says to her, “…where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

She can only get out a whisper of an answer in response to him, “No one, Lord.” The man then says to her, with a tone more tender and loving than she has ever heard, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.” 

Many of us have a flawed perspective when reading Scripture.

The above story (John 8:1-11, ESV) has been retold from a different perspective than the one I used to have when reading or hearing it. For a very long time, when I heard that final line, “go, and from now on sin no more”, I automatically pictured Jesus saying: “You need to try harder Neil! I saved your butt this time, but now you need to get back out there and make sure you do not sin anymore! I may not be so forgiving next time!”

When we read the last line in John 8:1-11 or any other portion of scripture, many of us hear God saying something He is not. I would often picture Him saying to “work harder to sin less” or pointing out how bad I’ve messed up, with an arrogant, condescending scowl on his face. Other times it was with an overwhelmingly disappointed look.

How we view God and what we picture Him saying is crucial to how we experience everything in our lives. Our perspective of Him has a direct impact on how we relate to others and react to our circumstances. Sometimes our perspective is truthful, sometimes it is flawed causing us to miss who He really is and what He is really saying. Too many times, we misinterpret Him telling us to work harder to be a better Christian so that He will accept us. God knows we cannot manage or control our sin on our own, so why would He ask us to try to do that? He wouldn’t!

Jesus offers us something far more powerful and life-changing than a better self-management plan for sin.

If Jesus is not merely telling the woman to try harder and to do better, what is he really saying? We can attempt to see Jesus’ message by putting ourselves in her shoes. In the midst of my own fears, guilt, and shame, I picture myself in the same predicament the woman found herself in. I am in awe of the fact that Jesus is not scolding me. He is choosing not to condemn me at all. He is choosing not to identify me by the bad choices I have made. So, in the end, when I picture him looking at me and telling me that he does not condemn me and for me to go and sin no more, I realize what is really happening.

What the woman experienced…what I am able to picture myself experiencing, is His grace!

Jesus was not preaching self-effort…He was teaching dependence on Him. Instead of condemnation, He was offering unconditional love and acceptance. That experience with grace is what would give the woman the power to move forward in her life, with sin losing it’s power over her. No longer would she have to constantly seek attention from men who would wind up using her. Instead, she could rest in the eternal affection of a loving Lord. She was finally free! It would not be her efforts that would cause her to overcome her sin, but the grace of her Heavenly Father working in and through her to accomplish it every step of the way. She only needed to experience it to embrace it, and Jesus’ loving act of rescuing her did just that! He didn’t just rescue her from stones, but from a life of bondage and emptiness. Just like her, the more I embrace His grace in my life, the more freedom I experience in everything, including the bondage of sin.

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