Grace and such

Obedience is the offspring of a deep and intimate relationship between our own hearts and the God who embraces us and who shares with us a joyous delight in and passionate concern for all of creation. When God is the one in whom we live and move and have our being, then our spirits will reverberate and our lives echo that limitless love. - Joan Puls

I don't know that I understand "grace". Christians toss that term around quite often and while thinking about it on this trip I realized I haven't really understood or lived it that much. Grace. It seems to me if you do something wrong there are ramifications for that wrongness. That ramification is often accompanied by guilt. Guilt I understand. You do something wrong, you should feel sorry for what you've done. Guilt should cause you to change. Grace on the other hand seems to me an easy solution for a guilt-free life. Its as if the wrong we have done or will do mean nothing because, why, we are saved by grace! While I don't understand it, I cannot get away from the fact that my bible is littered with the term, and that indeed, I am saved by "grace" as Ephesians 2:8-9 tell me, and that this saving isnt anything I can earn so that no one can boast.

It is about this time my mind realized that my guilt is the result of boasting. Or perhaps would be if I could somehow learn enough from my guilt to save myself. Guilt comes from this desire deep within me to be perfect which I suppose is a good desire. The only problem is I never will be, and I can never learn enough from my mistakes to save myself.

My reading of a book Insurrection told a beautiful story that I think puts this in perspective. I have since lent the book away, so I shall do my best to recall  what I can...
In this story a man lives a wicked life cheating in his business practices and exploiting his workers and such. This man turns his life around. He gives birth to a son.Though his son admires his father and his changed ways, he falls into the same wicked pattern his father had. This father does not know what to do with his son. He tries to coach him, be gracious with him, help him to see the error of his ways and change. The son cannot.
One day the father is praying and asks God what he can do to help his son change. The response he hears is to love him as he is, not how he wishes he was.
The father then changes his mindset. He decides he loves his son for who he is, despite his wickedness. The son sees the grace of his father and only then is able to change from his ways.

This story illustrates what I think I have learned and what I have found to be true: guilt cannot change me, but grace can.

I would rather be changed by love than by trying to live up to the law. I may even abuse grace, failing over and over again, but in the end I will be more fruitful than had I lived feeling what I "should" feel under guilt.

"O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need of further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I "pray Thee, that so I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me... give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long. In Jesus’ name, Amen." - The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer.

In this beautiful prayer at the end of one of Tozer's chapters I was met with an odd phrase I had to ponder. Painfully concious of my need of further grace. In my head this sounded like a mish-mash of the two concepts. Talking with my friend David Morgan about this the other day he brought up something that gave me a new perspective, that something being the importance of knowing when you are in need of grace. Perhaps it is in this knowledge that true change happens. We are the son in the story, given grace by our father so we are then free to change. We are loved no matter what we do, but because there is some mutual love going on, we are then motivated to change.

Anyways, its hard to write this post without going on a tangent about many other things, but I'll leave it here. May you truly know that you can have grace. May you be motivated by love and forgiveness above feelings of failure.