In a recent post I described the healing power of a room of grace. In that room you find acceptance instead of rejection. Understanding instead of judgment. Sadly such a place of God’s grace seems more the exception than the norm and that was communicated in this thoughtful response from a reader.
But where do we find that room of grace, where we are accepted, where people run to us in acceptance, instead of running from us for being broken? Too many in the churches are broken-hearted themselves, are facing terrible situations they don’t know how to cope with. Most don’t seem to even know we are in a battle with Satan to discourage us so much that we don’t know how to seek God with faith. Those who CAN’T attend church are mostly forgotten or invisible. (I’m not even speaking of those who don’t want to go.)
That honest and heartfelt lament made my heart sad. Where do you find a room of grace is a fair question. The voice of discouragement immediately started in my head. Your message of grace and healing can’t happen in the church. Your pipe dream just discouraged a struggling believer. A room of grace is about as likely as a gumdrop forest. Who are you kidding?
My friend Bruce McNicol says that his challenge is trying to prescribe a cure to a church that doesn’t know it is sick. We do have a landscape littered with broken, discouraged and tired sojourners. Imagine people with all degrees of illness and injury going to a hospital emergency room. When they check in every person reports that they are “fine”. None of the staff knows what symptoms the patients are concerned about. The doctor shows up, gives a stirring talk and sends all the sick and injured on their way to “get over it”. That is how too many churches have evolved. Rooms of grace are hard to find. I sadly acknowledge that fact and perhaps it is because such a room is scary. A room of grace takes authenticity, humility, surrender and trust to let down your guard and live out of grace. We have labored under the same performance based checklists for so long that we don’t even know our spiritual health is declining.
Weekly study (Check)
Committee meeting (Check)
Wednesday church, Sunday School, Worship Service, Sunday night Meeting (Check)
Joy
Freedom
Forgiveness
I would submit that the unchecked items are the ones that God cares about most. The other good things are so much better when they flow out of grace that creates a willing heart of obedience.
The note continued.
It’s all very well to speak of “doing things” for others, yes, oh it’s so needed. But some of us can’t do much for others. I acknowledge my dependence on God! I’m not able to take my body for granted, as most people do. I’m not able to sort out the confusion of mind, as some people seem to do.
I don’t know what physical challenges you might be dealing with in your life. But may I make one thing perfectly clear? If you perceived any performance pressure from my writings to “do things” for others then I have failed to communicate well. Those people who seem to be able to “sort out” and “figure out” their confusion are often living a lie. They are likely as confused and vulnerable as the rest of us but they just cover it up with more activities and shinier veneers. The entry point to the room of grace is humility. Being in control and self-efforting righteousness will not open that door. The note concluded with these thoughts.
But my prayers are that God himself will intervene, sending himself — his own dear Son, his Holy Spirit — to comfort and cheer and stir up and let the discouraged know how much he loves all of us, and empower us to be His alone. Oh, how I wish there were those who would model the life you describe — of caring enough to show others (including me) Jesus’ care and concern, his cleansing and life-giving power. Oh, how I wish I could minister to others the same way: but the “hows” escape me in my ill and tired body. I’m so thankful, however, that at least some of the time I am able to hold on to the idea that His strength is perfected in my weakness.
There are many followers of Christ who are modeling the life I have described. But may I suggest they are not “trying” to do anything other than live out of the truths of who they are in Christ. That is when their offering of obedience is truly pleasing to God. Just like Abel, our response to God pleases Him when it is out of faith and not begrudging obligation. I quit trying to do ministry and my ministry exploded. I quit trying to change people and God somehow started using me in the lives of others. I quit trying to be significant and I found significance. God’s plan at times seems like the Bizarro World comics I used to read. Everything seems to the opposite of what human nature demands. You are exalted in humility. What? Your heart is more important than your works. Really? Your forgiveness is a gift with no fine print. No way. You can’t do anything to make God love you more. Seriously? It is all so counterintuitive to our cultural instincts.
I would suggest just a few things to consider.
God knows your heart to minister to others. But for now allow Him to minister to you. Let the Holy Spirit comfort you. Let God love you. Ask Him to fill you with His love and for opportunities to love others. Trust God for that happen. He will do it in His time. Remember who you are every day. You are a saint. You are righteous because of Christ and what He did on the Cross. You are adored and precious to Abba Father. When you are tired and ill you have a Redeemer who understands. He experienced tiredness and pain and betrayal. Those closest to Jesus slept through his agony in the Garden of Gethsemene, denied Him in the public square and hid from the authorities after His death. After the resurrection Jesus went straight to those who left Him with a message of love, hope, forgiveness and grace. Relax in Jesus. Maybe you will be the one who constructs a room of grace in your community. Maybe God will lead you to one. Your humility and heart tell me you are ready and willing. Let Him do the rest.
Allan
This article means a lot to me, especially now. You have a gift of communicating that is quite rare. Thank you so much.
kingfisher
Thank you, Dave, for your meaningful post. I especially appreciated your saying to let Jesus minister to me. I accept that he’s my Savior, my Friend, will never leave me. I accept that he is God Almighty, a God who can do anything and everything. And that he hears my cries and prayers. I often pray for him to “send your own dear self” to others. But somehow, I don’t often think of him as ministering to me. Giving to me, being God to me, yes. Doing something for me, or letting me worship him, yes. Caring about me, yes. But ministering to me — well, I certainly need to think about that! It sounds so soothing and comforting.
It would be good for me if this theme could be an ongoing thread, but if you’re like most bloggers, in a day or so you’ll have posted another blog entry, on an entirely different subject.
Thank you for your kindness and the thought you put into answering me.
When I wrote, I was in much anguish of spirit because of pain, a recent hospitalization, and ongoing health problems and a doctor’s careless speculations (without showing proof) that my health would keep deteriorating. I needed to reach out to someone, but there didn’t seem to be anybody out there I could trust. Since then, I’ve taken my cries to God, and he has done some beautiful things to bring me more peace. In reflecting on this, I wonder if we should not be taught better how to seek our own room of grace, our haven, in the Lord Jesus himself, not looking to other people to provide us with “community”. But sometimes we can be too sick or mind-aching or needy to be able to grasp anything other than a “Jesus with skin on”. So there’s room for both the turning to the Lord and the reaching out to other people.
SPKarenO Are you the Karen O that I know? Thank you for your heart’s cries for me.
WanderingAuthor. Sometimes I also feel I’m a misfit, an outcast. But I usually try to remind myself that that’s sickness and pain talking, also the shy person who doesn’t know how to insert myself into others’ conversations because my thoughts are different, my experiences and tastes different, and probably because I’m so focused on my own little world. It sounds like you and I have the same cry and the same prayer. I do hope that God “his own dear self” will send all who seek him, the very things that they need most, and that he will call Christians to himself in such a powerful manner that they will become like him, and hear his voice about whose needs to help him meet. (ah, if I could really hear—- could really touch others with my prayers—- )
Wandering Author
I am lucky enough to have a church which functions at least to some extent as a room of grace. My pastor has the guts to get up in front of us all and admit his own flaws, use his own life as a negative as well as a positive example. I’m very thankful for what I have; I’ve been able finally to accept God as a loving Creator Who freely offers mercy and grace to anyone who will accept it.
I honestly believe that most of the people in my church do the best they can – and since I don’t do as well as half of them, I’m not in a position to criticise them. But there are still things which trouble me, things I’m just trying to trust God to help me work out.
I’m a misfit and an outcast: I always have been and suspect I always will be. I used to rage at God for making me that way, but I’ve come to accept He had some purpose in shaping me as He has. But even the best Christians I’ve encountered are not really capable of understanding a viewpoint radically different from society’s norm.
I don’t mean to say I’m always right. I’m probably crazy on a lot of things, but one of the things that torments me is this – when you can’t find anyone who understands your viewpoint, who at least honestly considers it before presuming that you’re wrong, how can you trust their judgment? Yes, the problem is probably more than half my fault. So many things led me to develop an outlook and ideas so completely outside the usual that I honestly have no idea how to express those thoughts so they make sense to anyone normal. When I try, their answers make it very plain they have no idea what I’m trying to say. And I do know that I often make huge leaps of logic, which are obvious to me but not to anyone else, but if I try to explain all the steps of my reasoning, it takes too long for anyone’s patience, since I am discussing what is for them such uncharted territory.
When your reader said “I’m not able to sort out the confusion of mind…” it struck a real chord with me. Among other things, I was raised by parents I suspect were both mentally ill (although neither were ever diagnosed). How can you be raised by mentally ill parents and possibly turn out sane? Yet how can you ever figure out what sanity is, when no one can ever offer real answers to the points you raise?
No, it isn’t their fault, I do understand that. And for myself, I’ve learned to live with it. I at least know God, and His grace. But there are so many people out there who still don’t know Him, and some of them struggle with the same issues I did. There are others so different no one can make the leap to understand them. Some of them hate God because of their isolation. Others struggle with their faith. For the sake of those people, I wish I could find an answer.
Even a broken room of grace is infinitely better than nothing. I’ve experienced the lack and I have no doubt of that. But I truly wish I understood how to create something which went a little further, where people would take the time, however long, to learn to understand the most different, the most isolated, the most struggling among us, to reach out to them and to help them and minister to them. In this busy society, with all the things everyone has to do, I don’t know how anyone could do that – but I do believe God can still work miracles. And I long for that. I don’t know all the exact issue the reader you mention struggles with, but I have my own, I know others with their own issues, and I wish there were an answer for us.
The fact you’re even discussing this at all is very encouraging to me. I thank you for raising an issue that is at the moment highly relevant to what I’ve been thinking and praying about. There is a real need out there, one that is all too often not met at all, and I pray that God will heed those of us crying out to Him and supply that need.
SPKarenO
“A room of grace takes authenticity, humility, surrender and trust to let down your guard and live out of grace. ” So true! It takes one humble leader saying, ‘I’m broken. I’ve been hurt too. No one needs to pretend anything different.’
My heart aches for this reader and the many others who have no room of grace to flee too. And I am abundantly, exceedingly grateful for mine.