A chance to interview yourself

Listen along here:  https://www.pastorwoman.net/podcast/episode/2792d218/a-chance-to-in...

Words have power. Power to heal and power to destroy.

Power to build up and also tear down.

There are a few powerful words in the last verses of Acts chapter 11 that speak volumes, and make me wish I could step into the setting and experience it.

Here is the context--Because of persecution, the Jewish believers flee Jerusalem, going all the way to Antioch, taking the gospel with them, spreading the Good News. Antioch of Syria, about 300 miles away, is a big city of commerce known for its off-the-rails immorality. Nonetheless, upon hearing the gospel, many believe in Jesus! [this is like a revival breaking out at Times Square in New York City where anything can happen on a given day--especially if it has prurient appeal]

In this unlikely setting, the great news of the Gospel hits its mark. Why?

'The hand of the Lord was with them.' Words of life ... Words to ponder.

Luke writes, "The report of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose, for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a great many people were added to the Lord. So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people. And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.1

Our friend Barnabas, is sent by the Jerusalem church (the mother ship) to check out what in the world is going on in that notoriously wicked city, only to observe that God is indeed at work. Luke describes it this way: he came and saw the grace of God.

What does that mean? What did Barnabas see?

And if you encountered the grace of God, would you know it?

When I think of the grace of God, I see faces - the faces of many people I have met and known over the years in varied settings, like this man Marcus. “I know that the grace of God is alive because I am a living example of it,” he said, after I had taught a lesson on God's grace to a large basement gathering of street people.

He came up after to tell me his story, “I was a rough gang-banger, I dealt drugs, then I started doing drugs to cover all the bad feelings I had inside, then everything started going bad. . . I was shot on Easter, and then sent to jail for three years for something I didn’t do. Jail is a really bad place, but I was able to be still there. I was able to think there. I met God there. Now I’m free from all of that—I’m forgiven . . . I don’t do that stuff no more--that is the grace of God…” Marcus said. A real-life example of this thing called grace.

It makes no sense—almost no sense at all--this thing called grace.

One thing I know for sure--I am very attracted to it.

'I know nothing, except what everyone knows —if there when grace dances, I should dance.'2

Scripture says, “For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift— not from works, so that no one can boast. .”3 Aye, that is grace dancing.

God reaching down for imperfect man, costly though it was to him. God’s very language is the language of grace, and he is in the business of extending it to us, even though we do not deserve it. God is not concerned with fairness in the way we are; actually, grace is strange because there’s absolutely nothing fair about it. hmmm.

And then I remember, "I don’t think the way you think. The way you work isn’t the way I work." God decrees. "For as the sky soars high above earth, so the way I work surpasses the way you work, and the way I think is beyond the way you think.”4

What’s your experience with grace?

Have you known and accepted God’s grace?

Has the infinite grace of God changed you, set you free?

Do you flow in grace – giving and receiving it easily?

Hmmm . . . can’t really know love without grace

For love ‘believes all things’, bears all things,5

and gives the benefit of the doubt . . .

That is grace.

The drippings of grace … longing for a scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.6

Ah, the great grace of God is one of the distinctives of Christianity. Jesus Christ, Son of God, dies on our behalf to pay a bill we cannot. Every other religion is about what man has to do to be good enough, sure of eternity, free from guilt. No grace in doing.

One person who has captured my attention and admiration for her courageous testimony is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born Muslim woman, who knows the life-changing power of grace.

Her story is riveting. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fnreFhL0ws.

Please do yourself a favor and take the time to watch this. Come back to it--whatever it takes.

I suppose if I look honestly at large sections of my life, I have been grace challenged. But God is different than all of that. And God doesn’t wait for me to come to him . . . he runs to me, with arms outstretched. And in his arms, I remember how to dance again. Now that is amazing grace. Interview yourself: how are you doing with grace?

Listen...consider:http://www.youtube.com/watchv=jbXbvvBH7ck&list=RDjbXbvvBH7ck&am...

Where are you on the grace spectrum?

Christine - PastorWoman.net

Acts, no.32

1 - Acts 11.22-26

2 - W. H. Auden

3 - Ephesians 2.8-9, CSB

4 - Isaiah 55:8-9 (MSG)

5 - 1 Corinthians 13.7

6 - C.S. Lewis