What is Grace For

From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Matthew 4:17

John the Baptizer came first with the command to repent. His message was slightly different in the way it sounded. He said to baptize in preparation for the coming of Christ. "Prepare the way of the Lord," he said. In my understanding of this, we don't have to be perfect for Christ to work in us, but the sin that we cling on to hinders fellowship with Him. John's simple message was to get away from the rule ridden lifestyle of religion and selfish ambition and take a look at Jesus, who comes to offer forgiveness and salvation and freedom.

Then Jesus shows up, fresh from His stint in the wilderness fasting and praying and, obviously, being tempted. His very first message is similar to John's but with a different qualification. He says to repent because the kingdom of heaven is at hand. If repentance is for preparing the way for Christ, why would the Christ come with the same message?

Jesus' purpose is glorifying His Father by creating and establishing His kingdom made up of broken people in intimate relationship with God. Jesus is saying that we need to repent, not to be perfect, but to be a part of the kingdom.

What happens too often, whether we speak of John's reason for repentance or Jesus' reason, is that we treat repentance as a behavioral thing. If we sin less, we become closer to God. This is a lie. Attempting to change our moral behavior causes stress on our emotions and our spirits that translates into physical stress. It creates legalism that causes the stress to spread like a sickness to others. In time, competition between the so-called saints occurs and you see the divisions in families, friendships, nations, and churches that is prevalent today. We can't change our behavior completely on our own. IF we seem to have done this, we could look inside and see a terrible condition in our hearts and spirits. Jesus called it cleaning only the outside of the cup.

Repentance is never a behavioral thing. Repentance is a heart attitude. It is a turning away from a way of life in our hearts to focus our hearts then on Christ, on God and that relationship. Then behavior changes. Repenting for John's reason helps us turn our hearts to see Christ's offer of grace and forgiveness, not His judgment. When we repent in Christ's way, we are able to see those around us in the kingdom, and to join with them.

You see, we fail in our behavior. This is a given. We sin. We turn from that sin in our hearts, but sometimes the flesh wins. This is what grace is for: from God and from each other. We cannot look at the poor choices of someone and judge them. It could be that their heart and attitude is one of repentance. We cannot know completely, though an unrepentant heart will reveal itself.

Grace is for sinners. If every time we fail behaviorally, we find condemnation from those around us, we will soon give up, even if we have a repentant attitude. This is why grace is enough. It allows us to hold onto Christ even when we fail. It helps us to hold one another up when we fail.

So repent. Turn your heart and your attitude to God. Let Him be the change in your behavior.

I just wanted to write:The Sick Rose

Recently I read this beautiful poem penned by William Blake:
The Sick Rose

O rose, thou art sick;
The invisible worm
That flies at night,
In the howling storm

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy

I am no expert on Blake, or even on poetry, though I fall more and more in love with it each year. Therefore, as you read my words, don't discredit me for what could be a lack of knowledge. Consider my point of view strictly New Criticism.
The rose is beautiful. It is a symbol of many things: love, passion, death. Usually the color of the rose affects the symbolism. The particular rose that is sick here is a red rose, though, lying in its "bed/Of crimson joy." Red roses speak of romantic love. Blake possibly wrote of a love lost to some incurable illness. Interestingly, he spends more time describing the germ-bearing worm than his love. Perhaps this is because of the immediate and powerful image the rose already presents to a reader. The worm is evil, flying under cover of darkness in a "howling storm," feeding on anxiety and fear. It finds out the rose's bed, a place of intimacy and safety and presents a form of love that is both dark and somehow secret. Obviously, that which destroys the rose is deceiving.
As I consider a deeper meaning for myself in the lyric, I am reminded of the Church's beauty. To the Son of God we are a bride. As his bride, he sees us as a rose of sorts, beautiful to behold. Like the rose in the poem, though, we are sick. A dark presence has bought our love and seduced us away from our place as the bride. Look with me at Ezekiel chapter 16.
To paraphrase God's word, he told the Jews that their heritage was like a baby whose cord had not been cut, who had not been washed but had been tossed away like garbage. Then, the heavenly Father found the crying child and adopted it as His own. He raised it as cared for the nation, but they, when they considered themselves mature, began to prostitute themselves. Their bodies and innocence were sold, or even given away.
The rest of the chapter details the sacrifice of their children, their passing on of the dark perversion of love to their children, and God's lament over them of, "Woe to you!" It isn't easy reading. God ends, reminding them of His atonement for them, but he tells them that their shame will follow.
I may be stretching it, but I believe that The Sick Rose speaks like this chapter of Ezekiel, only kinder. We are the apple of God's eye, the beauty that he saved from certain damnation and eternal death. Yet we despise him. Daily I see it, and I take part in it. I go my own way and look for things that satisfy immediately, sacrificing a glorious relationship. The worm of idolatry and sin does my life destroy.
Blake offers no solace, but God does. He has given his son for us. He has mad atonement and killed the vile invisible worm we tend to "love" so much. For this we should be thankful and return to our marriage bed of crimson joy with Christ our groom, savior, friend, and God.

Update

For anyone following this to keep up with what the Roberts family is up to, this blog is for you. Over the last month or so I have been reading a book called Total Truth by Nancy Pearcy. The material covered in the book has created a change of heart and mind that cuts deep into what I have thought about myself for so long. The book discusses the split of the Christian mind and the absence of Christian thought in the world. The big catch-word in the book is worldview, and this is expounded for the reader in an easy-to-understand way that clarifies the role and power a worldview has as well as the way we practically ignore its existence. After discussing worldview, the author applies the Christian worldview to family, education, and politics to give the reader an idea of how to analyze the world around us.
This is where I felt the pull. My four measly years in education have shown me a lot, espeacially this last one in the public school. What is taught in most educational philosophy classes is that human beings are stimulus response machines that can be manipulated into behaving certain ways, when the truth is that we all have autonomy as beings made in the image of God. The pervasive presence of mere psychology in our school systems has conditioned us to behave that way. Think of a system like the one in the movie The Matrix. We have to wake up and realize that "warm bodies...are not machines that can only make money." We were created for relationship and to have dominion over the earth. That is the point of education, the family, Christianity, and our lives.
That being said, here is what I want you all to know. I am going to take steps soon to earn a master's degree in either education or religious education so that I can be in a place to bring positive and real change to the education system. Whether this will be in public school or private education, I do not know. My desire is for your prayers and for you to read the book, Total Truth.

Unanimous Individuality (pt1)

Let them praise your great and awesome name! Holy is he! Psalm 99:3

This is less a devotional, more an attempt to put my thoughts in order to help make sense of them. I have been attempting to talk to God more than I have been with a desire to close the gap between Him and me. As a part of that, I have been listening to some worship music from the IHOP in Kansas City. Misty Edwards' new album, Fling Wide, has truly opened my eyes with its desperate longing for Christ's return. There is such an honest pouring out in the live recording that I have found my own soul crying out, grateful for the hunger and thirst God has allowed me to have for Him. I find my heart swelling, my eyes turning heavenward, my life breaking open to receive what He has to give. In response to His recent mercy to me, the word holy came to mind.
The widely accepted meaning of holy is set apart. Something that is unique in such a good and complete way that nothing is comparable. This is God. He alone is holy. In each of us is a longing for something that good and true. We want to be part of what is above all other things. Sadly, we have grown weary in waiting for the return of the Holy One and have begun grabbing our own great things to make us feel less alone. The most common examples are the role models in our lives: the athletes, musicians, politicians, and actors. Still others look to institutions or philosophies. Our hearts cry out for individuality and unanimity at the same time. We long to be part of something big without being a face in the crowd.
This desire is the symptom of our cry for God. Only God is holy. Only he is set apart enough and good. Only God can adopt us into something pure, true, and larger than life itself; for only His kingdom will outlive our mortality and all it includes. Yet, in this collective of souls, we are still individually made, gifted, and called to do something no one else can. In God we have the individual unanimity our souls seem to cry for. In Him we are made whole.
We praise so many things. We laud and extol and cheer and lift up the names of so many and are so often let down. Personally, I long to cry out the name of something that will not fail, something that cannot be overcome, something that already is victorious. I am tired of depending on my own judgment or on the judgment of other men.
As I write, there is a selfish tinge to my words. My desire is that I would become so engrossed and close to Jesus that my decisions are made by His judgment, my praises are for Him. My soul cries for Him for my own sake, and it does not cry for me. His name is lifted by my life when I hunger for Him, when I praise Him, when I recognize Him in this world as the only thing that is truly holy. Let us pray for one another that we would have eyes to see the true and holy goodness that exists in God alone and that we would become unanimous in our seeking and longing and loving of God and God alone above all things. For only He is Holy.