grace-of-god

Christianity now is in crisis, and a large part because people have marketed it as a religion of good people getting better, when in fact it is religion a bad people coping with their failure to be good.

We are all sinners who have been saved by Grace. We have not been saved from sinning, but we have been redeemed despite it".~ R. Alan Woods [2012]

Our weaknesses may never go away but when we give them to God, His grace will turn them into something beautiful...

We are no longer under the 'Law', but rather the Grace of God in Christ."~R. Alan Woods [2013]

To the degree that God gives us the grace to see Him, our lives and our ministries will become fruitful and effective.

Such arguments remind me of a scene from Woody Allen's movie Manhattan, where a group of people is talking about sex at a cocktail party and one woman says that her doctor told her she had been having the wrong kind of orgasm. Woody Allen's character responds by saying, __id you have the wrong kind? Really? I've never had the wrong kind. Never, ever. My worst one was right on the money._ Grace works the same way. It is what it is and it's always right on the money. You can call it what you like, categorize it, vivisect it, qualify, quantify, or dismiss it, and none of it will make grace anything other than precisely what grace is: audacious, unwarranted, and unlimited.

I would say that grace is startling,_ Jean told me as he began retelling the story of how he wound up as pastor of Lagniappe Presbyterian Church, a growing congregation that meets in a glorified metal hangar in Bay St. Louis. __t's just startling. It isn't supposed to work. This wasn't supposed to work.

Why grace? Because some days, it's the only thing we have in common. Because it's the one thing I'm certain is real. Because it's the reason I'm here. Because it's the oxygen of religious life, or so says a musician friend of mine, who tells me, __ithout it, religion will surely suffocate you._ Because so many of us are gasping for air and grasping for God, but fleeing from a kind of religious experience that has little to do with anything sacred or gracious.

This is where Jean's stubbornness and, perhaps, God's stubborn grace came into play. __y definition of grace would be multifaceted, but part of it would certainly be God's passion for brokenness. He does, he really does love brokenness,_ Jean told me. __race doesn't obsess with ourselves. It obsesses with people and with brokenness. This is a hard place to live, but God is bigger than hard places to live.

We're so worried about the legal details of crossing doctrinal t's and dotting sociopolitical i's that we miss the big picture. The love picture. The one thing Jesus was really clear about: LOVE. If we could just get that one thing down, I believe the details would take care of themselves.

Everyone experiences grace, even if they don't realize it. It's kind of like Moby's music. You could ask your average sixty-something-year-old retired banker in Connecticut if he's ever heard of Moby and/or his music and the response you'd receive more than likely would be a resounding, __o__hat's a Moby?_ But if you say, __emember that American Express commercial where Tiger Woods is putting around New York City? Remember the song playing? That was Moby._ __h, then, OK. I guess I have heard Moby,_ our theoretical retired banker in New Canaan might say. __o _ what exactly is a Moby?_ That's like grace. Not that grace is a pretentious vegan techno-rocker, but you get the idea. Grace is everywhere, all around us, all of the time. We only need the ears to hear it and the eyes to see it.

Grace means that God steps into the lives of particular individuals with the purpose and effect of saving them. He needs no permission to do this, nor is He under any obligation to do so.

Grace to me is a little bit of extra help when you're feeling stuck or doomed or, probably, hopefully, out of good ideas on how to save yourself, and how to salvage the situation or the friendship or the whatever it is,_ Anne Lamott once told me. __ wish it was accompanied by harp music so you could know that's what was happening, but for me it's that extra pause or that extra breath or that extra minute's patience against all odds._ On that first trip to Ireland, grace__he kick-in-the-pants, clarifying, cosmic-pause-button kind of grace__idn't just have a harp. It had an entire soundtrack...

When you have nothing to offer, love gives abundantly.

When Annunziata said she loved me or any of her thousands of other friends and beloveds, she was really saying, at least in my mind, __od loves you._ To quote the singer/songwriter James Taylor, she showered the people she loved with love, always showing the way that she felt without holding back. Even as her body could barely contain her soul any longer, she'd open wide the gates of herself with a smile, that giggle, her twinkling eyes, and she'd let the supernatural love flow through her. Walking out of the chapel after her funeral, a woman I'd never seen before stopped me and said, __ou're Cathleen, aren't you?_ __es,_ I croaked, tears rolling off my nose as I fingered the prayer card with Annunziata's picture on it. Slipping an arm around my shoulders, the woman explained that she was one of Annunziata's former students and said, __he loved you so much._ I know.

Let no one take the limited, narrow position that any of the works of man can help in the least possible way to liquidate the debt of his transgression. This is a fatal deception. If you would understand it, you must cease haggling over your pet ideas, and with humble hears survey the atonement. This matter is so dimly comprehended that thousands upon thousands claiming to be sons of God are children of the wicked one, because they will depend on their own works. God always demanded good works, the law demands it, but because man placed himself in sin where his good works were valueless, Jesus' righteousness alone can avail. Christ is able to save to the uttermost because He ever liveth to make intercession for us. All man can possibly do toward his own salvation is to accept the invitation, "Whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely.

All divine power is within you to accomplish great things.

The grace,faith,love and power of God will uplift you to greater heights.