God's Grace
Dear Champions,
The short excerpt is from Tim Keller, and the scripture is 2 Peter 3:8-9 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
God's grace tends to flow from the hard places. Things that God did for us 30 minutes ago feel like 30 years ago in our hearts. Disappointments we've had 30 years ago feel like 30 minutes ago in our hearts. Because of that we're always freaking out. We do not have a bird's eye perspective showing that God is continually being patient with us.
Ultimately, my heart will not remember what it should remember. The theme of my life is God's patience with me, and the more I see His patience, the more I relax. The more I meditate on His patience, the more poised I can be. To the degree we can grasp His continual patience with us, we'll have poise and peace in the circumstances of life.
Imagine a five-year-old girl, and you're her mommy. She's been looking forward to going to a birthday party with some of her friends all week. But on the night before the birthday party, for the first time in her little life, she says a very big, fat lie, and you catch her on it. This major deception has never happened before. You say, "Honey, you're going to have to be punished for that lie. You can't go to the birthday party tomorrow." And she screeches a cry of despair, and she says, "Why?
And yet out of this, in her little mind, will flow a transformed character. As you know, it's life and death for her. That has to be stopped now. But she doesn't get it. And it's from the hard place that this change in character is going to come and flow. And I want you to know that you and I are considerably further behind the wisdom of God than a 5-year-old is behind her mother. God's grace tends to flow from the hard places because the ultimate source of God's grace was the ultimately hard place, the Cross.
God wasn't punished for His sins. He wasn't punished for this bad person or that bad person. He was punished for you.
Champions, have a great week!-David Vining
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