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Grace is What We Live By

Grace is not opposed to effort, but to earning

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If we truly believe something it should produce behavior.  My struggle is has been to balance allowing Grace to pervade my life and realizing that I should put effort into my walk with Christ.  I become like a pendulum swinging to the extreme of thinking grace means I don’t have to do anything, or the other extreme of earning and working.  Trying to do it all by myself.   Grace is God acting in our life to do what we cannot do on our own. Effort is an action of what we believe.  

Grace is not opposed to effort, but to earning. Earning is an attitude. Effort is an action. Grace is not just about forgiveness — if we had never sinned we would still need grace! Grace is God acting in our life to do what we cannot do on our own. Grace is what we live by and the human system won’t work without it. The saint uses grace like a 747 jet burns gas on takeoff! – Dallas Willard

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” – Matthew 11:28-30 (MSG)

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Faith’s Way of Walking

Faith’s way of walking is to cast all care upon the Lord

Faith’s way of walking is to cast all care upon the Lord, and then to anticipate good results from the worst calamities. Like Gideon’s men, she does not fret over the broken pitcher, but rejoices that the lamp blazes forth the more. Out of the rough oyster-shell of difficulty she extracts the rare pearl of honor, and from the deep ocean-caves of distress she uplifts the priceless coral of experience. When her flood of prosperity ebbs, she finds treasures hid in the sands; and when her sun of delight goes down, she turns her telescope of hope to the starry promises of heaven.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Morning and Evening

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Attitude

Learn To Find Contentment

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. – Viktor E. Frankl – Man’s Search for Meaning 

The Apostle Paul said something similar, “for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content”- Philippians 4:11. Many times we can’t control what happens to us, but we can control our attitude and how we respond.   Paul explains how to get to the attitude of contentment.  

  1. Have no anxiety or worry – Trust that God is with you and that He loves you.
  2. Tell God your need – God does love and care for you
  3. Be thankful – Gratitude changes everything… Yes everything.
  4. Focus your thoughts on good – The only thing that can turn the tapes off in our head is the secure knowledge that we are loved and important

6 Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. 7 Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

8 And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. 9 Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you. Philippians 4:6-9 NLT

 

Western culture has things a little backwards right now. We think that if we had every comfort available to us, we’d be happy. We equate comfort with happiness. And now we’re so comfortable we’re miserable. There’s no struggle in our lives. No sense of adventure. We get in a car, we get in an elevator, it all comes easy. What I’ve found is that I’m never more alive than when I’m pushing and I’m in pain, and I’m struggling for high achievement, and in that struggle I think there’s a magic.” – Dean Karnazes

Outdoor Magazine
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Move Toward Life…. Not Away

Life itself still remains a very effective therapist

Hurting people hide.  As I look back over past conflicts and hurts my reaction has been to hide and withdraw.  I either hide in public by serving people, managing them with kindness, or I withdraw away from people and situations I can’t manage or control.  Either one takes me away from relationships, life, community, and intimacy with others.
I have learned that pain takes all of us away from the very things that God designed to bring health and life.  We are designed to life in community, not on an island alone.
Healthy people learn that they need to live in an accountable healthy relationship. All of us are doing 1 of 3 things all of the time:

  • Moving Away – This is either physical or emotional withdraw.  The person who does this feels overwhelmed, angry or anxious and needs to step away to get their thoughts head screwed back on.  This may work in the short run but becomes toxic over time.
  • Moving Against – This is anger, escalation or just aggressive behavior that is designed to move the other person and make the person feel better.  They believe the problem is the other person and they are going to fix them quickly.  The false belief is that if they control or stop someone else they stop the internal feelings of anger, anxiety or feeling overwhelmed.
  • Moving Toward – Hint….. this is what you want / need to do.  Healthy people move toward people or problems.  They interact with the desire to solve the problems.  They are able to process the feelings of anger, anxiety or feeling overwhelmed and move toward people to create solutions.

All three trends are available to us and healthy persons are able to move in any of these directions when needed. What usually happens, though, is that we become comfortable and used to one of the trends and so the other two become less accessible.

Learn to move toward God, yourself and others.  This bring you into life giving relationship.

The concepts in this post come from personality studies using the Enneagram and Karen Horney

 

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The Unexpected Value of Rediscovery

Perhaps love is the process of my gently leading you back to yourself

I have an app on my phone that will send me the pictures I took of 2 to 5 years ago.  Each week I will get an email showing me the pictures small and big events with family and friends.  I am surprised at the emotion that they bring up.  What I thought were small unimportant moments now bring joy as I remember them.

A recent study revealed that rediscovering mundane experiences can make us happier than we think they will.  We generally don’t think about today’s small ordinary moments as experiences that are worthy of being rediscovered in the future.  However, studies show that we are often wrong: What is ordinary now actually becomes more extraordinary in the future — and more extraordinary than we might expect. The research suggests that undervaluing mundane events may actually lead us to forego what would be pleasurable experiences of rediscovery.

People find a lot of joy in rediscovering a music playlist from months ago or an old joke with a neighbor, even though those things did not seem particularly meaningful in the moment. The studies highlight the importance of not taking the present for granted and documenting the mundane moments of daily life to give our future selves the joy of rediscovering them.

This holiday season and into 2016 try to be more aware of the small joys.  Each moment that you have with loved ones will create happier memories for the future to enjoy.

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Live a life of wonder and generosity.  What would it be like if you carried the energy, happiness and kindness of Christmas all year?