Luke 15:20b,28 - Grace

As I mentioned several posts ago, my small group is studying Luke 15: 1-3, 11-32 using a book and study called Prodigal God. The title of the study is one of the things that really captures me. Traditionally, we think of the younger son as the prodigal, but this study directs you to think of the Father as the prodigal. Crazy...until you examine a definition of prodigal:

1. recklessly extravagant
2. having spent everything

 ...so maybe you are still thinking that fits the son and not the father, but I want you to consider these two verses.

“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him." (20b)

 “The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him." (28)

What the Father is recklessly extravagant about is love. He abandons all dignity and lifts his garment to run to and embrace the younger son who has returned and he again abandons dignity to leave the celebration to beg the older son to come in and celebrate too. This is grace! Neither son deserved this reckless love, but the father gives it to him.

Grace is a tricky concept for us to grasp. We want to insist on making restitution, as the younger son wanted to or we stand proud as the older son, holding onto our righteousness, and not receiving the gift, as the older son does. We struggle with receiving something that we don't feel we deserve...and yet we want it...but we can't accept it. We feel we need to do something to earn it. 


The idea of grace has become the topic of many songs and messages in an effort for us to understand and grasp the reality of grace. God has been giving grace for a long time though and as this video from the Skit Guys points out, even the disciples struggle with grace. The bible tells so many stories that involve grace and we see so many receive this and yet we continue to struggle with it in our own lives.

Click for Video

In fact, the struggle to accept grace impacts the way we approach God. In my small group this week, as we watched the Prodigal God video in its entirety again, Tim Keller made a statement that caught my attention. He expresses the idea that Jesus uses this story to tell us that we need to reexamine everything we ever understood about how to approach God. This week I latched onto that and started looking at how I approach God...

Think about that for a moment. How do you approach God? Are you heavy with the mistakes you have made? Are you confident that you have been good and can stand up tall with God? Are you ready to receive an absolutely free gift, knowing that you can not EVER balance the scale between you and God? Can you just BE with God?

Our understanding of grace has a big impact on how we approach God. Until we can fully wrap our head around grace, we will come to God with baggage. The good news is, that God is ready and willing to take that baggage from us. Like with the sons in the Luke, God is ready to willingly, extravagantly, and recklessly love us until we understand and embrace grace.

This week, I am reexamining my understandings of grace and how I approach God. Will you join me?

John 15:1,2 - Pruning: Painful Process to Perfection

Last night, at our small group, we were reading John chapter 15, which opens with this set of verses (1 &2),

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful."

The key to understanding this fully is in understanding how growing fruit works from a gardening sense. At the time, Jesus was talking to people who were familiar with agriculture and this illustration would have been meaningful to them.

Consider a fruit vine. There is the long vine that connects the roots to the branches.  When the person who cares for the vine inspects it, they are looking at the health of the branches. If a branch is dead or dying and bears no fruit, they remove it completely so that it is not draining the resources of the vine as a whole and taking away energy and food that the other branches could use to create fruit. Now if the branch is living, it is pruned back closer to the vine. This again reduces the energy needed to keep the branch alive so that all that energy can go into producing fruit. 

Now if you  consider that is a people sense. Jesus is the vine and we are the branches.  Jesus is saying that energy will not be wasted on those who do not bear fruit, but for those that do, they will be pruned so that they may bear more (sweeter and better) fruit. If you think about it, the process is not painless,  because pruning is involved for this to happen. As good as we are, and as good as the fruit is that we are producing in the world and people around us, we will be pruned. God is removing the parts of us that drain our resources and ability to bear good fruit: pride that holds us back from fully embracing another in love, anger that is used in the wrong way, stubbornness that prevents us from saying or doing what could turn a situation around. God is working to remove those from our character, and bring us closer to the person we were created to be.

As we were discussing this idea, I had to hijack my own lesson to share a video created by the Skit Guy called God's Chisel. This humorous and moving skit talks about the idea of God shaping us to improve us, but also reminds us that God does not create junk. We are worthy of God's time and effort to mold us into the persons we are created to be.
  
As you consider all of this, remember that being shaped and molded sometimes is painful, but the end result is better. Perhaps God is working on you in a way that feels painful and you wish you wouldn't have to suffer in the process. Think about the end result and how much better it will be. God promised that life with God would be better...not easy.

How is God pruning you today? Are you resisting or are you letting God take away the things that hold you back? 

P.S. I just couldn't resist the alliteration in the title...no apologies :-)