Grey hair and God's Glory

While I do have some grey hair, my hair was pretty much white after sanding down 8 walls with a pole sander. Thankfully I was able to borrow an electric sander that connects to a shop vac from a friend doing some work next door. This sanding portion of the project has been by far the most difficult and messy. I think there is a 1" layer of dust that has settled throughout our entire house. Though it has been the hardest, it has been a fruitful time for the Lord to stir my heart to realize spiritual truths that related to this task.

I had a young man, who is about to go off to college, over to help me apply the first layer of texture (2 whole boxes worth). The Lord had impressed on my heart that I needed to discharge the duties of my ministry in this young man's life. The Lord had blessed me with the relationship and the vantage point to be able to speak truth though windows that the Lord had opened to me. I feared for my friend that the desire for independence and the desire to be respected by his peers had blended with pridefulness and was blinding him to even greater dangers that lie ahead on the college campus.

How cool was it to hear that God had already begun revealing many of the very things I felt led to discuss with him. It truly was a blessed time of conversation, that left my friend humbled and truly desiring to take steps to seek forgiveness for many acts of pridefulness that had impacted the relationships in his life. He even desired for his parents to be a barometer helping him recognize pride in his life before it ran out of control. An 18 yr old seeking to humble himself before God and his parents is truly a miracle!

I thought that was all the lessons for the day, but I was wrong. As I put in my ear plugs to run the sander and shop vac to smooth out a few "blemishes" that I couldn't get with the pole sander, God began to teach me about my own pride. I looked over MY walls with pride having finished texturing 8 walls and having sanded them down with the pole sander. I almost made up the texture to be blown in 'cause this should be quick. Well as I got good lighting, and really began inspecting the walls, I was amazed that whatever wall was right in front of my face was covered in bubbles, scratches, grooves, bumps, divits, and ripples. When only a few feet away I didn't see any of that. I couldn't see the places where I had failed to have a smooth surface without blemish, until I looked at it carefully and up close.

As I had spent time helping my friend to see the areas that pride had created blemishes in his life and relationships, I was confronted with the question, "When was the last time you really looked at the walls in your life slowly, carefully, and with the Light of God revealing your pridefulness and sin? Would you pray for me and consider joining me as I let God shine His Light on the walls of my life and reveal any (better said ALL) of the blemishes and bubbles, scratches, grooves, bumps, divits, and ripples of pride that Christ desires to sand down and cover over with His blood and His holiness. Just as sanding the walls took hours and get messy, I am sure this will take some time and looks to be pretty messy as well. Praise to the Glory of His Grace that He answers such prayers!

Ro 7:24-25 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

I know what would fix you up

I can't believe I have never been able to see this. If I went up to you and informed you that I already had what you needed and then tried to convince you of your need. You might be a little resistant to agree with my better than you posturing in the sales pitch. The further I got away from my own need for the cross, the more one sided the sales pitch for Jesus became. I am so past needing the cross, but you on the other hand need the cross to get your life right.

The more I have become aware of my ongoing deep need for the gospel of Jesus Christ in my own life, the more I realized my pridefulness had to be a turn off when I shared the gospel. In fact it was my pride that led me further away from the cross, and thus if I was talking about that cross way over there that you need. Would I not only be able to communicate about this subject in a prideful way.

Here is the beauty of my growing in my need for the cross and the good news of the gospel in my own life. It has made my words less offensive and have allowed Jesus convicting of sin to be the only part that is offensive. I read this week that we are not permitted to be offensive in any way in sharing the gospel, but are to allow only the conviction of sin to be the offense. If I say that I need to respond to Jesus dieing on the cross and paying for my sins by turning away from my sins in repentance and trust in Jesus Christ. I can humbly say to the other person, that they need the same exact thing that I need. They may not agree to trust Christ, but they won't feel as though I was judging them and preaching down my nose at them. By including myself. By agreeing to the same great need. I remove my pride as the offensive part of the gospel.

I am reminded of when I had the opportunity to share the gospel in a barbecue restaurant in Richmond one Sunday after I had preached on the message of grace. The lady said at the end, "How you said, what you said, has really challenged me." Should we not be humbled by the cross as we talk about the cross? Should we not acknowledge our own need for our sins to be forgiven when we talk to others about their need for their sins to be forgiven? Should we not be moved by the gospel of grace when we desire to see someone else moved by the gospel of grace?

Lord, I do pray that my brokenness by the cross and the gospel would cause others to consider their response to the cross of Christ and the good news of the gospel!! That I would be given the privelege of saying, "Come follow me to the cross." Amina!

How did I get so far from the cross?

I wrote in my last blog that I was broken by the gospel. It seemed as a surprise to me that it would be what God would use to break me. I began to see that there is no pridefulness at the foot of the cross. Looking up at Jesus with his face bloodied, with the thorns beaten into his skull, with the wounds open on His back, with His hands and feet nailed to the cross, it is impossible to not be gripped by the fact He endured all of this for me. He not only did it for me, He actually received all of what I deserved, that I might receive what only He deserved..eternal life, fellowship with the father.

I was broken by the devastating effects of my sin that would lead Jesus to suffer this way to pay for my sin. I am convinced that if Jesus would of enabled his disciples to understand fully what He was doing on the cross, they would have pleaded with Him to not do this as they were not worthy! Even though the implication would mean that we would have to pay the consequence of our sin ourselves. There is not a person who would feel worthy to have Jesus suffer and die on the cross in their place, as the only person ever who didn't deserve death.

I became convicted by the Lord that I had traveled too far away from the cross is why I was not broken by the sight of Christ on the cross. As the reason why I was no longer broken by the gospel message that died to purchase my forgiveness of sins. If it was impossible to look at Him on the cross and remain unmoved by it, then I must not be looking "closely" to the cross.

I am left pondering the question, "How did I get away from the cross?" How did I travel away so far that the gospel message breaking my heart would come as a surprise? I think I can see where my tracks traveled. I became uncomfortable looking at the cross because it reminded me of my sinfulness and I took a step away. I wanted to believe that sin is a minor issue in my life that I had under control, and I took a step away. I believed I was a pretty good guy and needed to look to the deeper things of Christianity. Things that could satisfy a good guy like me wanting to "go deeper." Another step away. A few more times of judging others for not having it together as much as me...a couple more steps. It was my pridefulness that wanted to move away from the most humbling place in the world. Clinging to the cross with the blood of Jesus Christ pouring down and covering my sin and shame. That he was dieing even for the good works that I would do in my own strength seeking my own righteousness. That he became sin that I might in Christ become His righteousness.

2 Cor. 5:21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Grace opposes pride as it leaves no room for pride to stand, because you receive that which you don't deserve. But pride opposes grace as we seek to receive what we believe we deserve. It was my prideful steps that caused me to walk further away from the cross.

It is also not surprising that I have been in the middle of reading and studying the book, Humility: True Greatness by CJ Mahaney when I began the journey of taking steps back toward the cross as God has humbled me.

May our prayer be that God would lead us back to the cross. So close in fact that we would know that it is by His blood that our sins are forgiven. That we would feel the heaviness of the cross opposing the pridefulness in our hearts. That we would feel our hearts burning inside of us by the magnitude of what He has done for us. So close that the gospel would be on our lips when given a chance to speak. PTL, Amina!


Enjoy these songs by Matthew Smith that blessed me as I sought the Lord to bring me close to the cross.

Our greatest friend and foe

If you are like me, you struggle with being self reliant throughout the course of your day. It is easy to hit the ground running and not be fully dependent upon Christ working in and through me each day. Especially when I am doing something that I have done many times before and I pretty much know what to expect. Maintaining a mindset and lifestyle of dependence on Christ is a struggle for me.

It is cool when pieces of the puzzle come together. I started reading C.J. Mahaney's book, "Humility: True Greatness" and started to see more of my struggle as being the symptoms of pride. In the book Mahaney quoted John Stott's definition of pride as being "contending for the supremacy of God." God has used that to reveal how my pride tries to separate me from the Lord and His Grace as I contend for the supremacy of God in my own life. Isaiah 66:1-2 Thus says the Lord: "Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest? All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the Lord. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word. My greatest foe really is my pride and my greatest friend is humility before Christ.

I had already seen that God's grace eliminates the opportunity for pride. If we receive that which we don't deserve, then how can anyone but the Lord receive the credit and glory. Pride and grace cannot coexist, and thus Grace eliminates pride. I thought I understood this, but I didn't see the other side of the coin, that my pride was trying to eliminate grace. As I contend for the supremacy of God I am also trying to eliminate my "need" for grace. When I begin my day self reliant and not trembling at His word, I am trying to eliminate my "need" for grace. When I attempt so many things in my own strength I have already eliminated my "need" for grace. That is probably why every religion that has every been created by man is based on works not grace. Our pride works deceptively on our hearts and minds to lead us down the path where we seek self sufficiency and satisfaction apart from the grace given fellowship with Christ. No wonder Paul writes in Romans 7, what a wretched man I am, who can save me from this body of death. He saw clearly all that he was able to take credit for was his pride.

That brings me to the next 2 by 4 that I was hit with. I recognize that I struggle with pridefulness that shows itself in different ways when "real sin" shows up in my life. So often I determine that the solution to this sin problem is ME doing more, trying harder, doubling down on my efforts. What a joke! My pride of self reliance and contending for the supremacy of God in my life is going to be solved by.....greater self reliance and determination? It is like having a major cut on my leg that was a self inflicted wound and trying to solve this problem by making a bigger cut higher up the leg with the same knife to stop the bleeding. Well the lower cut will stop bleeding, but I now have a bigger problem that is an even greater threat to take my life. I am in desperate need of God's grace and my pride often places God in the position of opposing me instead of giving grace. Opposing my spiritual adultery/self worship that separates me from the very thing that I need the most.....The Grace of God working to conform me more into the image of Christ.

I am left with the words of John the Baptist that I must decrease and he must increase! By God's grace, I pray that there would be less of me and more of Him for the world to see today to the praise of His glorious grace...........that none may boast.