Afraid of grace.

I was going to see Explosions In The Sky tonight.

God had other plans.

The band had to cancel due to adverse weather conditions coming down I-5. Benjamin and I were sorely disappointed, defeated even. So obviously the only things to comfort us were coffee and wings. As we chatted over a few capps from The Hub and some wings from Slice, I shared about a situation in my life where God had begun to bless me, and could continue to bless my socks off in the future, and I begun to confess that I was scared about this. I was scared of being a disappointment, scared of not living up to the moment, scared of not being good enough. My wise and faithful brother then pointed out, "Jordan, you're scared of God's grace." He continued, "You feel that it's safer to not believe that God wants to bless you because then you can be in control."

That wrecked me.

It wrecked me because I know the Gospel, and that is most certainly NOT the Gospel. There was a schism between what I knew and what I actually believed. Does this happen to you? I think it happens to everybody. We are all unbelievers in some aspect. Our Christian vernacular makes this dichotomy between "believers" and "unbelievers", like there is ANYBODY out there who believes completely and perfectly all that the Scriptures say to us. We all have areas of our life where the good news of Jesus has not touched, areas we hide from God's grace. I say, "ok God, you can have all theses things, just don't touch this. Move along God, nothing to see here...

Here is where I am an unbeliever. I don't believe God really wants to bless me. I actually believe that God is impressed with my suffering and misery, and that somehow my ability to take a punch makes me more holy in His sight.

Isn't that a bunch of hogwash? It sounds ridiculous when you actually say it out loud, but that is how I think ALL THE TIME. Many of us can see the dangers of so-called "prosperity theology", where as one pastor put it, "God is like a piñata, and faith is like a stick, and if you whack Him hard enough, money, candy, and a Bentley with rims will magically fall out." Every discerning Christian can see how absurd that is, and yet no one ever talks about the other side of the pendulum. There is another end of the spectrum, where if you are poor, suffering and sick, then God will really be impressed with you and might let you into heaven. Here's the problem; our right standing before God has nothing to do with us. For those that believe in Jesus, God only sees Him. You take on the very quality that Jesus has, and because of the cross, all that Jesus is before the Father is imputed to you. You are as secure as Jesus is.

Wait.

Stop.

That can't be true, can it? It can't be that good. It just can't.

And there is my unbelief. I am an unbeliever. I want to shirk off God's grace because I don't think He is that good, and I don't want to be disappointed in the end. What I have done is because I don't believe in grace, I become the disappointment that I so fear. I always will. I can never achieve what I want. I can never accomplish what I really want to happen, and because I cannot do it, I think it can't be done (or more specifically, I must not deserve it).

This is where the Gospel comes in.

Benjamin sat across from me, picking meat off of a gnarly chicken wing, and he begins to gospel me. What I mean is that he begins to shine light on the dark areas of my unbelieving heart. He begins to tell me, "Of course you can't make things happen, YOU'RE NOT GOD. God is way better than you Jordan. You make a terrible God, so let Jesus do His job, and you do yours. I ask him, "and what is my Job"? "Receive", he said, "Just receive." He continues, "You are afraid to receive Jordan. You're scared because receiving puts you in the passenger seat, and you want to be the driver. The problem is, you're a terrible driver. You're blind, with no arms and one leg. Now tell me, do you want someone like that driving?" He was right. I am afraid of receiving God's grace. I can't imagine it being as good as it is, so I ignore it and try to do it myself. I suppose that is the difference between my religious, unbelieving heart, and God's gospel heart. My heart says "DO". the Gospel says "DONE". My heart says "try harder". God's heart says "receive".

I am not writing this because I have this all worked out or I have fixed this problem. I am still afraid of grace. But somehow, I am beginning to see that there is grace for that too.