It finds you when you’re not looking. It creeps up on your blindside. It will also storm your beach and ambush your stronghold. Your defenses don’t stand a chance against it because it has a man on the inside working against you. It has your soul in its crosshairs, call it a heart attack. You have heard stories about it. You may even call it your ally but truth is when you signed that treaty, your fingers were crossed. You know what it feels like because it is a repeat offender and terribly contagious. Who or what is this that threatens us all to our very core?
I am a GRACE refuge. The life that I have so often worked, slaved, and prided myself in creating was over thrown by GRACE. I now live in a land quite unfamiliar to me ever since GRACE ambushed me over 13 years ago. See, when I said that my defense is useless against GRACE because he has a man on the inside working against me, that man is Jesus. He is a saboteur who took up residency, called me friend, lover, and co-heir. Then one day he did something unthinkable, something I’ve never known a man to be able to do confidently, authentically, and without oppression. He revealed his true identity. He is actually the Son of God, and he and his Father are one. Then I realized my greatest fear which then became my greatest desire: He unveiled the truth behind the facade of my life. My true identity to me.
Once I was fully exposed and standing in the reality of the man I’ve created and the cost of the life I’ve created for myself I knew my fight was over. Before such stark truth, nakedness, and light, what could I say? What excuse could I offer, what defense could I pose, and with what strength could I fight? He knew all my passwords, secrets, plans, strengths, and weaknesses. Knowing that surrender was inevitable, defeat surely before me, and a lifetime of work, accomplishment, and pride rightly judged with a verdict of death I caught a glimpse of my future. My eyes see how GRACE is actually the result of, not the condemnation of, the loving sacrifice and power of Jesus, His Father, and the Spirit of Holiness. I see that judgement has passed me over because the sabatuer of my prideful and selfish life was actually positioning himself so close to my heart that when death came to strike my heart, it first had to go through the man standing before it. Jesus, he wasn’t trying to steal my life, no he had just saved it! He had just displaced me from a land dictated by death and ruled by the delusion of pride. Suddenly I found myself living in the land of the living, a land called GRACE. The great beauty about this kingdom called GRACE, as it turns out is that…
…it is always much closer than it appears.
Uncomfortable Middle 