Culture clashes are inevitable. However, it isn’t just between ethnic cultures. It also happens between our Christian culture and the secular culture that we live in. We feel that tension because we see the world differently.
How do we navigate this tension that we feel with people who don’t believe like us? Some Christians respond by trying to blend in at all costs so that they don’t look weird. Other Christians become very zealous, yet they become unnecessarily offensive that it affects the mission.
The Bible gives us a better way to deal with the tension.
The Bible tells us that we have a God who is powerful and active and He’s working everywhere. Jesus told us that God sends rain and sun upon both the righteous and the unrighteous. He feeds the birds of the air and He clothes the flowers of the field. He works in all things for our good, and he sustains all things by his powerful word. So God is actively involved in every good thing that happens. You can say that God’s grace is like sunlight because every part of the world experiences the grace of God and the power of God.
And yet there are some people who experience a concentration of God’s power. So they’re able to do things that a normal person can’t. And I think that’s a good thing. I believe the world needs more powerful Christians because there’s so much brokenness around us. There’s so much pain and loss and anxiety. If only we could have more power from God to make things right.
So, my big question is: How can we have more power from God? Today I want to show you an answer from the Bible. The answer is that we need to take action on God’s words without twisting them.
Jesus doesn’t pick who’s on his team based off of what people could do for him and how they benefit him. No, his operating system is completely built on grace. Grace being God’s free, undeserved love, favour and actions toward sinners, based on who HE is and not on what people have done.
Now, if I’m being honest, in all my years of being a Christian, the idea of GRACE has been the hardest for me to accept. Because you grow up learning that is good, it is POWERFUL to earn, to be self-made, to achieve stuff for yourself. So that your name is lifted high. But grace? To freely receive something you didn’t deserve? That feels weak. And yet, that is everything Jesus is about. We want to say, “God, I’ll do it myself” but the whole point of the gospel is that we can’t, but Jesus does, and that’s not bad news. That’s reality. Christians are Sinners Saved By grace.
But a Christian who cannot understand and receive grace, becomes a Christian who starts looking for their identity, their worth, and their belovedness in places that will eventually crumble and break. Today, we’re looking at the gift of grace and I hope to reflect through the different ways we may respond to it.
As we continue in our series on Encountering Jesus, I want to ask the question, “What do you find when you encounter Jesus?”
And from our passage, we see that you find: 1) A Grace that SURPRISES 2) A Grace that TRANSFORMS 3) A Grace that OFFENDS
Growing up, I had a pastor named Jesse Morales. He was awesome! He played basketball with me. He was always asking about my walk with Jesus. And he believed in me! When I was in high school, he asked me to preach one Sunday. That was scary!
However, the best thing I admired about him was that he always shared his faith. He always told me stories of sharing his faith with someone at the gas station and then I’d meet that guy at church.
Then one day, he was diagnosed with ALS, which is a fatal neurodegenerative disease. This disease starts taking away your motor neurons. It progressed to the point where he couldn’t talk anymore.
So, when I visited him, he would communicate using a letterboard. I had to write down what he was saying to me. And he was always asking me again, how my walk with Jesus was going.
Do you know what amazed me the most?! Even though he couldn’t talk anymore, he was still sharing his faith, using the letterboard. He had a caregiver named Sonya and with the letterboard he shared about how she can have peace with God and eternal life with Jesus!
And you know what happened?! Sonya became a Christian! Isn’t that crazy!
When I heard that story, I was so amazed at his faith. Here’s a man that can’t talk anymore and yet he’s still find ways to share Jesus to people. He could have packed it in and just waited to be with be with Jesus. But he was still on mission, even till his last breath.
Our passage today is about amazing faith. We will learn from a person whose faith was so great that even Jesus was amazed.
