A Covenant for Wanderers

Make covenants, not resolutions, as you walk into the year, for covenants give us company in keeping what we pledge. A resolution with no witness is too often just a wish, a good intention with nothing but our declining willpower to make the vital difference.

The covenants we really need are bigger than our diets and more urgent than our visits to the gym. We need companions to whom we’ll make the most important promises of all: to tell each other just the truth; to remind each other of how good the gospel is; to continue walking side by side through any guilt or fear the new year brings.

Agree with someone in your life—a spouse, a friend, another sinner saved by grace—with whom you’ll travel in days ahead—by phone, by app, by real steps on real roads. Pledge perseverance, not perfection, for walking with another sinner will reveal how much you both need constant grace. 

And when you stumble, as you will, a hand will lift you up, and brush you off, and help you keep on walking.

As this year starts, invite some other to what Jesus now invites you: “Come walk with me: keep covenant.”

That’s how you’ll stay in grace.

Walking Across the Line

The waning days of this old year remind us we ought never walk alone. We need three things to end December: forgiveness for the wrongs we’ve done; the healing of our wounded memories; assurances that we will have safe company in days and miles ahead.

The gospel tells us we have all of these in Jesus. His blood alone removes our shame and stains. His reconciliation shields us from hard-earned, high-priced bitterness. His promise to stay with us—in every hour, in every age—gives courage on dark nights, and lifts our hearts when we can’t know the future.

By grace, we walk away from sins—our sins, and those done to us through the pettiness or animus of others. By grace, we lose the need to sanctify our scars, or grimly tell our tales of injury. By grace, we stretch a hand into the as-yet-unknown future—and discover, to our joy, that we are grasped and held and loved and valued by the Lord who walks beside us.

We dare not make this crossing by ourselves, for we will either fall back into what has been, or hide in fear of what may be. The grace of Jesus makes the new year safe for pilgrims walking homeward. “I will never leave you or forsake you,” (Heb 13:5) Jesus says to all who journey with Him.

And for this moment, month, or year, our hearts are light, our spirits high. The road ahead is rich with kindness and companions.

So stay in grace.

Delivered Into Light

In the middle of the carol, or the middle of the night; when the parties all are ended, and the sales all suspended; when our hearts are warmed by kindness never earned and not deserved—then we sense again the rescue that is Christmas.

We were the people sitting in darkness, and on us the light has dawned. We were those aching for deliverance—from ourselves, from our stuff, from our sins, from our sadness.

The gospel every Christmas—and each day throughout the year—is amazingly adapted to our shadows and our pain. For “the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:5). For once—for now, forever —darkness doesn’t get to triumph. The empty will be filled; the broken will be healed. Eyes and minds will both be opened; icy hearts will start to melt.

At Christmas, we recall that He was once delivered, and deliverance always is His plan. One tiny hand is stronger and more powerful than all the tyrants who have ruled.

Never underestimate this Child: before Him every knee will bow—not only wise men and some shepherds. At Christmas, we may sing with joy what we will one day say anyway: “Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2:11).

Light grows. Hope rises. Grace will have the final word.

So stay in grace.

Not Just December 25

I hope you smell the balsam wreaths again this Christmas season. But I pray you also see in your imagination wreaths of fragrant incense rising up in heaven where Scripture says our Saviour “lives eternally to intercede for us” (Heb 7:25).

I hope you hear the cherub choirs this Christmas, decked in bows, all shiny bright; but even more, the angel hosts that John the Revelator heard. They sing not only “Peace on earth,” but “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” (Rev 5:12).

I hope you savor foods of Christmas—pies and puddings, cakes and cookies. But more than all, I hope you hunger for the food that one day soon will fill our mouths at the marriage supper of the Lamb. On a table miles in length, there’s even now a place card with your name on it, a table setting saved for you.

Christmas is one story of the grace that fully, finally saves us. As we grow up into Christ, “who was, and is, and is to come” (Rev 4:8), we find news gifts, great passions, and fresh reasons to rejoice.

Oh come, let us adore Him.

And stay in grace.

No Strings Attached

We trade our gifts on Christmas Eve, or Christmas morn, or some convenient holiday. We wait to see a grateful smile, or wide-eyed wonder on a child’s face—all quietly aware our turn is next: the next gift will be handed us.

And though this pageant brings us joy, and warms our hearts, we dare not say it represents the gospel, even though it’s full of gifts. Our calculations typically are tuned to give of equal value. We won’t embarrass others with extravagance that they can’t match, nor do we like the debt we feel when we receive “too much.”

But heaven gave extravagantly when heaven gave us Jesus. He came with nothing in His hands but everything—all riches—in His heart. His greatest joy is in our joy—and in our inability to trade Him anything in return.

Grace is a gift we cannot earn, and don’t deserve, and can’t repay. We don’t make things “even” by obedience, or costly sums, or kindly deeds that lessen obligation. He who “owns the cattle on a thousand hills”—and all the hills—isn’t seeking reciprocity.

Accept the gift. Embrace the Child. Be overwhelmed with joy.

And stay in grace.

Fully Identified

It would have been grace enough if the Father had executively announced from heaven’s throne that He was commuting our deserved sentences and opening all prison doors. That would have been the very definition of unimaginable and unmerited favor.

But that His Son should condescend to crawl into our hovels, be one of us, experience our dirt and pain, and taste the worst of weakness and of cruelty—that’s more than we dared ask or think. Grace took on flesh and bone, and all the drudgery and mystery of being human, in hope of bonding us forever to the Father. Jesus took no detours around our pain, for “we have One who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin” (Heb 4:15).

Jesus was—and is—the grace of God incarnate, for grace invariably moves toward those who hurt and grieve and sin. Christ passed through our last portal—death—to open up the door to heaven’s deathless throne room.

Now He has sat down again at the right hand of the Father, awaiting grace’s final chapter, when He says we will share His glory and His throne. There is no finer, better place than wherever Jesus is.

So stay in grace.

Grace at the Gates

The act of giving thanks—whispered at each common meal, or once a year at family dinners on big holidays—is an early, hopeful flag that grace has come to live with us.

For a moment—for one long, exhaling moment—we acknowledge the truth of what the apostle wrote 2000 years ago:  “You are not your own:  you have been bought with a price”  (I Cor 6:19-20).

For an instant, the guard is down, the drawbridge open, and we admit that we aren’t self-made or even self-sustained.  The castle of our lives has always had a Guardian, a Protector.  All that we are, and all we have, and every structure that secures us has been given, not deserved.  Even what we say we’ve “earned” is undeniably built on gifts too numerous to count. 

When I say “thanks,” I confess that there is something—Someone—wider, bigger, and more gracious than any defense I muster or every good I do.  So we learn grace through gratitude.  And even as we teach our children to “Say thank-you,” the Spirit prompts us each to murmur private “Hallelujahs.”

Throw wide the gates, and cross the moat. Release yourself. 

And stay in grace.

The End of Magic

The greatest illusion isn’t some card trick that leaves us gasping, or rabbits pulled from a performer’s hat. 

No, far greater is the fantasy that makes us think we’ll satisfy God’s holiness by saying “no” to salty snacks, or overcome our deficits by working longer, harder, better. 

This “sleight of hand” is hardly slight, for we deceive ourselves whenever we pretend our brokenness is of the fingernail—instead of the fatal—kind.  

Grace requires we surrender our illusion that heaven is within our grasp. Only Jesus’ wounded hands will ever lift us from our mud. When we’ve come to doubt ourselves the most, we’re ready to put all our trust in Him. 

Grace always is an “all or nothing” offer. Jesus gives us all His righteousness: we bring nothing to the performance. We’ve got no rabbits in the hat, nor extra cards tucked up our sleeves. 

“In my hand no price I bring.
Simply to Thy cross I cling.”

So stay in grace.

Can You Handle the Truth?

Now would be a good moment to start telling ourselves the truth.

I can no more make myself acceptable to God by right living or good choices than I can learn to levitate, fly unaided through the solar system, or pick strawberries on the moon.

The myth of legalism fools us into assuming that there are just a few steps left between our holiness and the holiness of God. It grossly underestimates both God’s essential goodness and our essential lostness. Oddly, legalism teaches us to lie to ourselves and God about the real picture of our lives.

 Grace, on the other, nail-pierced hand, can tell the awful truth about how far we fall short of heaven’s ideal. Jesus’ holiness covers all our lostness and our wretchedness. And for a change, we need not cringe, for we are loved no less for being sinners, nor ever held at arm’s length.

No, we are pulled into a grace embrace so kind and so forgiving that fear and willfulness begin to disappear. We start becoming like the love that saves us. 

So stay in grace.

More Day to Dawn

“Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy and shall break
In blessings on your head.”

It’s every believer’s lot to occasionally grow anxious, to lose peace, to doubt that a good God really wants to do good things for us.  We remember all our sins—years after He has chosen to forget them.  We cringe at indiscretions, which in His discretion He has graciously erased from our life record.  And so we crouch into the future, heads down, half-expecting the worst, or at least the very painful.  Surely all our sins will soon catch up with us.

“But surely He has borne our griefs and carried all our sorrows” (Is 53:4). It is to us—those who have taken Jesus as our Lord—the gospel speaks with special, reassuring power. We need not linger in the half-light of our anxious thoughts about our standing with the Saviour:  “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you” (Is 60:1). 

Grace is for every moment, even those when memories afflict us.  Christ offers all He is to all who seek His joy and light.

So stay in grace.

Cross Purposes

Be wary of the vengeance that your bitterness demands. 

The blade you wield will cut both ways to injure you and those you wound:  you both will bleed.  Retaliation never was so cool and final as it seems in all the movies.  There’s always more to pay—more pain, more cuts, more haggard hearts.  No grudge was ever settled save by love.   

Christ’s wounded majesty and broken law didn’t move Him to abandon us or push us toward our fate.  No, He stepped closer after being injured, and embraced us in our violence.  The spear was taken from our hands; the curses quieted in our mouths.  “With His stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).

Christ crossed our bitterness with love too great to seek retaliation, and far too kind to give us what our sin deserved.  In this is life, and all our hope.  Grace ends the deadly cycle of our hurt.

So stay in grace.

Staying in the Race

Grace doesn’t gloat when others lose, nor grow dejected when another takes the flag. It isn’t glum when others swell with self-importance, nor filled with glee when rivals lose their footing.

Salvation never was a zero-sum game, for there can be millions—no, make that billions—who finish the course and win the prize. The waiting crown comes in as many sizes as those who run the race.

But finding grace will always be a winner-take-all contest. All whom Christ saves win all of Him—eternal love; enduring hope, and joy that triumphs over sorrow.

We look down into open graves and twisting pain, and say to all the worst that evil brings—“Because He lives, I too shall live.” We taunt death’s weakness—"Oh, where’s your sting?”—and fix our eyes upon that day when we will rise to light and joy and everlasting life. “The prize awaits me—the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on the day of His return” (2 Tim 4:8).

We run to win!  So stay in grace.

A Circle of Forgiveness

As Christ grows greater in our minds, we lose our need to be authorities over what others think and do.

The deepening awareness that we have been wrong more than we have been right—that we are only now approaching the starting point of faith—creates a gentle tolerance for those now camped where we once stopped, or mired in the stuff from which Christ freed us. We learn to smile at vehemence and vitriol, remembering how frequently we used them for bad causes or when we were still unsure.

Grace makes us gracious to the ungraceful, for we see ourselves in them. We remember that their faults are just as pardonable as ours, and no more dangerous.

The fellowship of the forgiven is as vast as the grace that makes it possible.

So stay in grace.

Is It Too Good to Be True?

If you are truly saved through faith, then you are daily praying grace down into the cracks and crevices of life, into the dim and unlit corners where fear and fate and faithlessness more often hold the keys.

Understanding—really understanding—grace rarely happens through a flash of intellectual enlightenment: Paul’s own Damascus Road was just the first of many miles spent learning grace.

Each week we find how weak and meager is our faith, how little we actually trust the great bold verities announced by Jesus and His gospel, how much we fear that what He promises to give is too good to be true.

“Increase our faith” is the most honest prayer we ever murmur—and the one He most delights to answer.

So stay in grace.

When Everything Changes

Our pledges of good behavior are only as good as the people who make them—which is to say, not good at all.  The litter of our broken promises to change, reform, and improve ourselves stretches back like resolutions at the end of January.

And we aim too low. We have in mind trying to suppress our angry words. Christ has in mind an entirely new vocabulary grounded in the knowledge that we—and all others—are deeply loved by Him.  

We imagine chocolates as the foible we intend to fix. Jesus knows that fear is at the root of all our failing—fear of the Father, of each other, of the future. And so His first word to us at every moment of doubt and discouragement is an assurance of His care:  “You can stop being afraid now.” 

Grace always meets us where we are, but never leaves us where we were. The greatest and most joyful change is lived by those who most receive the gift of grace.

So stay in grace.

Sustainability

Breathe deeply now, and let your heart grow quiet as you turn from sins forgiven. “By this we shall know that we are of the truth, and reassure our hearts before Him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and He knows everything” (1 John 3:19-20).

It’s not the voice of God that drives you on to fear, or rush, or labor past your strength. 

We dare not make the Spirit own our anxiousness or lack of peace.  God is always on the side of what gives life, builds hope, and moves us even one small step toward balance. 

His grace is meant to keep us breathing, as well as for our saving.  The day that Jesus wants to bring us healing is the day that we are living, not only when our destinies are weighed.  “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10).

His grace is for today and always. 

So stay in grace.

When Politics Mislead us

How does God’s grace invade our daily conversations?

Certainly not by retreating to our separate corners and hurling brickbats at each other.  Of all the “stuff” we absorb from our angry culture, the habits of accusing and deriding are undoubtedly the worst. 

But as grace finds a home in us, we grow more willing to admit that we might be mistaken.  Receiving grace requires we confess we are wrong, and always have been.  We’ve misunderstood the love of God, imagining Him as only angry, always disappointed. We’ve wandered into deeds that brought us shame and guilt.  We’ve argued for ideas that were vanquished at the cross.  “All we like sheep have gone astray” (Is 53:6).

So grace prepares us for a new way of talking with each other, even when we disagree—especially when we disagree.  “You could be right”—"I might be wrong”: these are the tools of reconciliation and renewal.  Look carefully at grace before you look your opponent in the eye. 

There is no greater joy than laughing with a former enemy.  So stay in grace.

Environmental Truths

Below our deepest hurt and darkest shame, there is the grace of God—forgiving us, rebuilding us, repairing all that’s broken.

Above our highest joy and most euphoric moments, there is the sheer delight of God—applauding us, encouraging, enlarging celebration.

Through every stage of every journey—in trust, in fear; in faith, in doubt; in youth, in gray maturity—we’re never left alone or told to make it on our own.  Despite appearances, the road is never empty.

Around us each are Jesus’ everlasting arms—sustaining us, protecting us, embracing us. His hands are ever on us.

“For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things” (Rom 11:36).

“Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? . . . No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us” (Rom 8:39).

We are befriended by the One who rules all time and space. 

Receive the gift.  And stay in grace.

Drenched But Delighted

Come stand with me beneath the waterfall of grace.

There is no waiting line, no jostling for position. There are no elbows, scornful faces, or murmured whispers of contempt. No one here will keep you from receiving what your withered spirit needs. 

This is the fellowship of the redeemed. This is the company of those who gladly—daily—open their parched lives to the “washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5).

Grace isn’t some scarce resource, guarded by the worthy, requiring conservation or close rationing as though it might run out. This is the river of life—re-life; renewal; resurrection—flowing from the grace of Him whose great forgiving is “a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (John 4:4). 

Those who really “get” the grace of God keep pulling all those they love into the healing, rehydrating stream. The waterfall keeps getting wider. More and more will be revived.

Step out of dry and into drenched.

And stay in grace.

Upending Our Economy

The most famous story Jesus ever told was all about our struggle to receive the Father’s grace and love.         

One son insists he isn’t worthy of such kindness. The other argues that loyalty and self-sacrifice should count for more than grace in the father’s economy.  Each wants a different status than his father is bestowing.

But God’s family is founded on His gift of grace, not on our faithfulness or service. Receiving what Jesus is still offering requires we surrender all our notions of unworthiness or value.

Neither “wandering in a far country” nor “staying at home” prepares us to accept a gift that isn’t bound to our behavior. You cannot earn the Father’s love:  you cannot lose the Father’s love. 

Allow yourself a great embrace. Receive His love.

Then stay in grace.