Posted: October 9th, 2009 |
Filed under: book, God, life | Tags: grace, sin |
16 Comments »
Grace is a pivotal word in Christianity. You hear it in sermons and songs. It’s written on bumper stickers and imbedded in church slogans. Yet, it’s the last thing that Christians are known for. If the world had to sum up Christians in one word, that word would be ‘judgmental’.
Wolves wearing sheep costumes have infiltrated our steeple-topped roofs. Who fell asleep? Why wasn’t someone keeping watch? More importantly, is there anyone who knows the truth so that the lie can be sifted?
Our congregations limit their biblical knowledge to what is coming from the pulpit on Sundays and propaganda that is put out there by celebrity Christians. The rebellious and revolutionary truth of the Gospel has been drowned out with opinions and superstitions. Most of my generation agree that not even Jesus would be the type of ‘Christian’ the church thinks he should be.
The general ‘believing’ population doesn’t know what the Bible actually says. It’s no wonder the culture is riddled with divisions and dissociations. Quarrels and gossip circulate like tornados in suburban cul-de-sacs. Most just want to walk away from the whole thing. The church is no longer offering spiritual meat and potatoes and that is what we’re looking for. Preachers seem to be more like motivational speakers or emotion manipulators. We’re not walking away because we’re not buying the Truth. We’re walking away because we’re not finding the Truth.
You can sit in your meeting places and discuss the problem until your pie charts turn into a membership recruitment carnival cake walk, but we’re not looking to be entertained. The old bells and whistles don’t work anymore. We live in an era when we can access the world by putting our fingertips to our iPhones. We are looking for something to satisfy the deep. We are looking for someone who knows what they’re talking about.
We know it’s not rule keeping that eases the hunger, we’ve been there and it’s not the key. Intents and purposes aside, the written and unwritten rules are more for our flesh than for our spirits. When all of our time is spent trying to adhere, we don’t take the time to get to know who God actually is. Our spirit remains hungry.
If someone is sacrificing Led Zeppelin in his iPod, dancing lessons with her best friends or the smooth taste of an expensive bottle of wine, it’s no wonder they’re so abusive to those who don’t. It would make anybody crabby to watch others ‘get away’ with behaviors you deem sinful. Therefore, you tisk and condemn. The practice of superstitious religion with the belief that you can lose your salvation by not getting the rules right is probably the thing that makes God’s enemy, Satan, most proud.
The free for all doesn’t work either. Years are going by and all of our living right experiments are coming up short on answers. However, ask anyone in the heat of their own personal ‘Get Mine Marathon’ and you won’t find the depth of satisfaction and meaning there, either. Every day brings more things to obtain. Therefore, it is absolutely impossible for a seeker-of-everything to be satisfied with ‘so far.’
Experience gives birth to knowledge and wisdom. A person knows nothing about a situation they’ve never been in. Obviously there is any number of things you would rather not experience, but still like to collect the experience’s lesson.
The Church is like a prominent family who fights to keep their good name. When an ugly occasion takes place, it is quickly whisked away and never talked about. Under rug swept. What if the tainted people under the rug knew something that the others didn’t? What if they knew the piece of the puzzle that made our faith make more sense? What an upheaval it would be if the outcasts of the religious elite were the one’s with the clarity of grace needed to preach the Gospel with the ‘X’ factor that is missing from professional Christianity. Wasn’t Jesus an outcast of the religious elite? Wasn’t he an upheaval? What if the religious ‘X’ factor wasn’t some external sparkle that everyone can coo over, but an internal searing of the soul by grace so aggressive and forgiveness so exhaustive that the recipient walks away from the spiritual brawl with a limp? What if the limp is the ‘X’ factor?
Who do you want preaching the message of Grace? The career Christian who stays in every Friday night playing Old Testament Bingo with his fourteen-year-old poorly socialized son? Or would you want to hear about grace from the ex-rock star who’s distracting tattoos testify to his length of journey? How about the alcoholic who is on his fifth try at being sober? Do you think the adulterous home-wrecker could have learned something in the fiery aftermath that could have taught her a thing or two about grace? Jesus cradles the broken sinners to his chest and his blood washes away their filth as they cry in his shirt.
Jesus’ life purpose was to save us from our sins. He was a friend and a teacher to those in the physical sense, but he is a savior for all in a spiritual sense. You can thank him for your new car and sweet puppy, you can submit your immoral co-workers to his attention, you can even ask him to bless your food. When was the last time you laid curled up in a fetal position knowing that he had every right to make you pay up for your disgusting behavior and he didn’t? He came and laid down next to you and stayed there until you were ready to get up. Then, while the memories of what you did shook your brain and lost your hope in the vertigo of facts, he held your hair when your stomach emptied itself.
Who knows that Jesus? Us sinners. We know him like that.
Isn’t it a twist to know that a life can become a direct parallel to scripture more as a sinner being nursed back to health in the secret places than as a moral victor in a vinyl suit smelling of microphone breath slapping ‘fives’ in the church corridors?
The sinner has lost her good name. The reputation she had in the world has dissolved as fast as baker’s sugar in the hot water of public disdain. Yet, as she loses her life as a successful righteous life owner, she finds her life as the beloved lamb who is being carried on the Shepherd’s shoulders all the way home.
The busy believer has a reputation in the world to uphold and an example to set. She is impenetrable by the real life circumstances because Christians, after all, are not supposed to be affected by the pains and sufferings of the world. People assume that something is wrong with their relationship with Jesus if they are.
Where is a crying and tortured people going to turn? Will it be the one who cannot identify with pain due to the continual denial or the one who carries the knowledge of tremendous spiritual suffering in his eyes? When you just want to cry into the night, ‘It hurts!’ who is going to understand that kind of groan?
We are Christians. We are people who carry the lamp and man the lighthouses. We’re not to be examples of lives that don’t need Jesus because we’ve gotten good at keeping the rules. We are to be examples that no matter how bad it gets, there is hope and it’s only because of what Jesus did that we can be okay.
‘You’re going to make it,’ they say. How do they know? Because they bear the scars that prove they were there.
Grace is the pivotal gift in the lives of human beings. We are people who have real lives and real aspirations. As a result of our human condition, we are also bruised and scarred by inevitable failure. Grace is not the free gift reserved for those who don’t need it. ‘Grace Is For Sinners.’
Posted: September 24th, 2009 |
Filed under: book | Tags: hope |
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The Sarah Home, located in Chico, California is asking for your help by donating copies of ‘Grace Is For Sinners’ for the women in their recovery program.
The Sarah Home for Women was founded by Janet Bennett. We are a part of The Well Ministry of Rescue in Chico, California. We are a 12 month Christian based recovery program. We utilize the 12-step method and Boundaries teachings, along with various group and individual Bible studies. The Sarah Home is a residential facility located in a beautiful Chico neighborhood. -Taken from their website.
Learn more about The Sarah Home by clicking here.
You can purchase books for the ladies at a 40% discount or donate money to go toward the purchase of books. They need 36 copies.
Thanks for your help! We’ll keep you posted on the progress!
Candra Schauer donated $25. Thanks Candra!!!!
Janelle Davis donated $50. Thanks Janelle!!!!!!
Posted: August 30th, 2009 |
Filed under: book, God, life |
10 Comments »
I once heard someone say that you can tell a lot about a person’s relationship with God by how they pray.
We’re supposed to pray for the people who push us around, talk about us and make our lives a living hell.
‘…pray for those who persecute you.’ -Matthew 5:44
If scripture is right about who God is, then everything happens for a reason. Everything has a purpose because God is sovereign. It’s easy to recognize God in the chocolate cake and rainbow moments, but he’s also in the hollow nights and dark alleys of desperation. The bad in this world shows his submission to God by changing his hat from curse to blessing.
Do you know what sovereign means? It means ‘supreme ruler’ unaffected by anything other than his own concerns. His concerns are not your concerns. His concerns are you. A man is short sighted and emotional. His concerns change with the wind. God sees eternity and does not lose sight of direction or reason. You ask God for hope. If you understood who he was and what his sovereignty meant, you would know that God is your hope. Your only hope.
So how do you pray for change when you’re praying to a sovereign God?
Isn’t it clear that they all know and agree that God is sovereign, that he holds all things in his hand— Every living soul, yes, every breathing creature? Isn’t this all just common sense, as common as the sense of taste?-Job 12:7
How do you pray for the hearts of people to change when the story of your life is written already?
‘Even before I was born, you had written in your book everything I would do.’ -Psalm 139:16
When Job was in the presence of God, he learned about sovereignty…
Job answered God: “I’m convinced: You can do anything and everything. Nothing and no one canupset your plans.” -Job 42:1
It was God’s plan to bring a Messiah out of a particular blood line. Along the line there were at least two women who could not conceive. God didn’t make Abraham pick a wife who could bare children, he showed his sovereignty by doing as he wishes in spite free will, in spite of genetics. It’s the same with Rebecca.
What God did in this case made it perfectly plain that his purpose is not a hit-or-miss thing dependent on what we do or don’t do, but a sure thing determined by his decision, flowing steadily from his initiative. -Romans 9:12
If you look at the way Jesus taught his disciples to pray in Matthew chapter 6, you will see that he knows that God’s say goes. If you want to set the world right, then pray that God reveals Himself. The reason for this is because he is the sun pouring through a darkly lit room.
‘Our Father in heaven, reveal who you are. Set the world right…’ -Matthew 6:9
He can ‘set the world right’ however he sees fit. The key is that he sees what we don’t. Our trust in him says we know we don’t see, so we give our will to him.
‘Do what’s best— as above, so below.’ -Matthew 6:10
….Keep us fed. Keep us in this frenzy of forward and backward, receiving and offering dance of forgiveness. Protect us from ourselves and the enemy….
The end of the prayer says it all.
You’re in charge! You can do anything you want! You’re ablaze in beauty! -Matthew 6:13
He’s in charge. You are not at the mercy of another human being. You’re not at the mercy of genetics. You are not at the mercy of your own limitations. We serve a God who can do anything he wants. Out of his sovereignty, he can take what was meant to destroy you and make it the thing that holds you up. When the storms come, you’ll be the one still standing.
Thank you for praying for Justin and his daughter. One step on a very long journey was taken….
justin and his little girl
Posted: July 7th, 2009 |
Filed under: book | Tags: book |
3 Comments »
Recently, I was interviewed by Wrecked.org. They’ve been good to me over there. You can read the review of Grace Is For Sinners here. They even let me write for them once in a while.
You can check out the interview here and find out how to win a free book.
Leave some feedback. I’d like to know what you think of it.
Now, enjoy this random cat vs. human dance off picture.
Posted: July 2nd, 2009 |
Filed under: book, God, life | Tags: book, grace |
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The intended audience for ‘Grace Is For Sinners’ lies within the sub-culture of the Christian community. These people are not questioning the validity of the Bible. The Bible is the only thing that they will trust. They do not feel a connection to a world that doesn’t acknowledge Jesus and they have lost their welcome in the world that does. Their Christian community has failed them. They’ve failed to uphold what they teach and claim to believe. Too many Christians have turned life saving/changing truths in the Bible into a lie. They’ve put restrictions on God and roadblocks to the cross.
The intended audience for this book is at a very primary level of themselves. They are at risk of losing hope completely. They aren’t discussing theology, mythology or psychology. They are DYING (spiritually speaking). Leave the debates to those who enjoy them and have time for them. There is a time and place for that, but the context of ‘Grace Is For Sinners,’ is not the time or place. ‘Grace Is For Sinners’ is a finger pointing them to scriptures in the only source of information that they believe. They are scriptures that will give them hope, show them grace and love them. All of these things end up giving them the strength to not let their faith fail.
There will be many who won’t agree with the message because it’s bold and gritty. It kicks religion where it hurts. There are some who won’t read it/finish it because of what they think it might say. However, the lives that have been changed by the message in this book are worth so much more than the controversy it could potentially create.
As the dedication states: ‘This book is dedicated to those who have fallen. If you’ve been there, you know. If you’re still there…hang on.’
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Posted: June 17th, 2009 |
Filed under: book, God, life | Tags: change, grace |
2 Comments »
I got a letter from a reader the other day. it was titled ‘First thoughts after getting kicked in the gut...’ It went well with the other explanations people give when they’re reading. Men, if they’ve been there, want to know if they’re going to cry all the way through, or just during the first half. If they haven’t been there, they feel like they’re getting kicked somewhere else. I have some who cry in the dedication.
People are telling me about healing and hope. Some are telling me about intense conviction and a leveling of religious ego and building up the ‘love’ that we’re meant to be defined by.
‘Grace Is For Sinners‘ covers so much territory. It seems to be whatever that person needs, whether they like it or not. It’s a challenge. For some, it’s the challenge of their life. It’s a journey that will leave you forever changed.
With her permission, here is an excerpt from my latest letter. Can you identify?
Finished “Grace is for Sinners” …I intentionally didn’t read it at home, and waited until I was safely packed away on a business trip that would leave me in Isolation over the weekend. I read it then.
So…here’s the initial reaction, …sobbing and all. At least you get to read it without the tear-stains.
I finished ‘Grace is for Sinners’ this afternoon. I started it a few days ago…read late the first night. Yesterday I didn’t pick it up. Partly because I didn’t want to face the rest of ‘Grace…’ quite yet. But I picked it up and finished the book my daughter calls ‘raw’. She is right. It’s raw and real and causes me to smell the smell of rotten stuff buried deep within myself. The smell of sin is hard to ignore when it surfaces.
I walked a few blocks to help erase the smell. The breeze was fresh and clean and helped me to ignore the noxious odor. I had all but forgotten the stench. All but.
Things were sifting around below the surface of my mind…I knew stuff was there, I didn’t want to think about them, yet. Then I looked up to the sky and tears came fast to my eyes.
“I want to know You. I want to trust You completely. I can’t live this half-life anymore. Help me.”
I was praying and walking back to the hotel. I don’t know what this all means. I do know that I don’t want life to go back to normal. Ever. I don’t want this to be a ‘high’ that gives me goosebumps and then is gone when ‘real life’ hits. It’s not a high. I’m as scared as I’ve ever been, and feel vulnerable.
When my daughter asked my reaction, my word was ‘shocked’. Not at the story…it’s all too known in the church today, in various ways, some subtle, some flaunted. Shocked was what I chose for how far from God’s Truth we have strayed, and how little we seem to realize or care that we have done so.
You have voiced in this book much of what I’ve been trying to put to words for many long years. Why isn’t the church relevant to others as it should be? Why is the New Testament church not what we see today. How can we change what needs to be changed?
I have clung to the hope that some day, some way, things would be better. Our lives would live up to what our mouths speak. Or our lives would follow what our hearts knew to be the Truth. I still have that hope. I don’t know if I will get to see it happen, but I know that God’s Bride will become the beauty he deserves.
Posted: June 13th, 2009 |
Filed under: book | Tags: book |
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‘Grace Is For Sinners’ is about two weeks away from hitting the mainstream!
Serena Woods’ autobiographical account of her experience with grace minces no words. ‘Grace Is For Sinners’ is a gritty reflection of what moral failure looks like within the glass doors of Christianity. Serena’s transparency regarding her sin and the aftermath would have been enough to challenge most, but she doesn’t stop there. She goes on to challenge the church’s response to Christians who sin with an in depth study of the Bible. Out of context scripture is used to condemn the sinner, but Serena found the in-context grace that saturates the Gospel. Her defense of the salvation power of Jesus is found in ‘Grace Is For Sinners’!
Watch out world….
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Posted: May 2nd, 2009 |
Filed under: book, life |
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I have to admit something to you. I’m a facebook addict.
I’m not as bad as I was, but still…. With the pictures and friends and status updates, I can’t stay away from it. So, instead of denying myself the pleasure of facebook ‘super poke’ applications that allow me to throw sheep at my friends, I’m going to invite you to find me on there.
This is my official ‘writer’ page and it’s a great way for us to connect. Nobody knows about this page yet, so be my first friend on there. Be the first person to post ‘sassy pants‘ on the wall and I’ll send you a free copy of ‘Grace Is For Sinners.’
Fun, eh?
Don’t let me down.
From the bottom of my heart,
Serena
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Posted: April 20th, 2009 |
Filed under: book | Tags: book, change |
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Here is the latest review of ‘Grace Is For Sinners’ as written by Mariah Secrest for Wrecked For The Ordinary: Social Action For Spiritual Misfits. (I love that name)
“When we talk about grace on Sunday morning, we often couch it in sacrosanct sentiment. We gloss over our (or others’) bevy of shortcomings with a wand of detachment, daring only to acquaint ourselves with some vague and perhaps grandiose notion of grace. When we depart into Sunday afternoon traffic, however, the thin vapor of grace as something lofty and intangible tends to evaporate.
Does grace really show up in the crevices of our lives? Grace looks pretty on paper, but is it just like the inflated legal tender of our collapsing economy-a currency that promises much but is backed with little value? Grace seems like something we should talk about only once we don’t need it. Do our inadequacies punch holes in the righteousness that Christ champions?
Grace seems like something we talk about in the sanctuary, not the bars. We speak of it as though it is lightweight, floating around in the clouds as some ephemeral nicety. But grace is meant to go hand-in-hand with experience. It’s meant to be the flower pushing up through mud and grit. Grace is the cupful of water running over the dusty lips of those who are facedown in the desert. Grace is for sinners.
Serena Woods’ autobiographical account of her experience with grace minces no words. The opening chapter of Grace is for Sinners picks up her story with her on the bathroom floor, shutting her kids out from her so they won’t see her crying about the affair she was having with her friend’s husband.
She writes, “I was a Christian for nine years and never did anything like this before. I didn’t think I ever would. I had strong feelings and biting words for people who do what I did and there I sat, being who I hate and still being me, whom I loved. Two separate identities in one small body…I wondered that night, if hell was just separation from God.”
We have a difficult time extending grace to fellow believers. All manner of tangled questions arise as to how much God really forgives and what that means to those who sin and their community around them. Of course, we know in our heads that we are all sinners saved by grace-we can quote the verse-but sadly that often does little to prevent us from stratifying our degrees of righteousness for a handy reference point. This was very much Serena’s encounter with the church, and catching a glimpse of her heartbreaking experience of rejection shines a glaring Mag light on the high price of judgmental predispositions. Certainly, our failures bring enough devastation on themselves. But self-righteous judgment and moral stratification within the church can extenuate the damage beyond recovery.
Grace is for Sinners is the story of a woman who found grace where it was most needed and from the purest source-God Himself. But it came through the most painful of voyages across the wilderness of guilt, misguidance, and isolation. Christians who didn’t know how to handle grace on an industrial level burned the bridge that Christ meant to bring Serena back into restoration. Serena freely admits her guilt, but so convictingly reminds us, “Jesus didn’t hang on the cross in case you need him, he hung on the cross because you desperately need him.”
This is, and has always been, the essence of the Gospel. Death to life. Brokenness to restoration. The very experience of the Resurrection represents the transformation that each of us who claim Christ has undergone. We don’t get to hang on to just a little bit of our own moral status. He asks us to completely swap our attempts at holiness with his own. If we are still sitting in judgment of one remorseful believer’s failures over and against our own with no posture of restoration, it can only be because we ourselves have not found the profusion of healing that God aches for us to take from His scarred-over hands. Perhaps we are still cowering from our own guilt, covering it up by pointing at the decoy of others’ guilt. Grace levels the playing field. Redemption is meant for all.
Grace, in short, is for sinners.”
Mariah has currently landed herself in Tucson, Arizona, where she just finished a philosophy degree from the University of Arizona. She thought life was supposed to get easier after college, but she’s keeping way too busy working as a musician, editor for this magazine, and occupying other sundry roles. She enjoys writing almost as much as she enjoys making music. Almost. You can hear her music on Myspace.
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Posted: April 7th, 2009 |
Filed under: book, God, life | Tags: faith |
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The ‘Grace Is For Sinners: Bible Study’ {Round Two} begins tonight.
It’s a grass roots era of watching small groups of people form and join others in the aim to effect their world with love. Especially when they have a better picture of the fullness of God and that he is Love.
Religion has trimmed the rough edges off the truth in order to make a theology that is easier to fit into stories, sermons and witnessing tips. Most people believe the watered down truth. They fail to see that the holes it creates only herd confused lives into a world that is tightly monitored because there is an ignorance that leads to fear. Godly ‘fear’ is not because of his wrath or because of messing up the whole system he put in to place. One important aspect of real Godly fear comes from the realization that he is sovoriegn and we are not. Being out of control is terrifying for a human being. Not having the final say concerning what is best for us is not a comfortable position to be in.
“When you don’t acknowledge the fullness of whom God is then you leave huge holes in the faith system. It’s as though you need to protect Him from the opinions of others if they were to know how far He would go to show that He is God. You have this need to protect His unconventional ways from a people that think He should be more docile. You only talk about His blessings and His rewards to righteous living and personal sacrifice. If something goes wrong in another person’s life you say it’s because they are out of the ‘river’, out of His light, off His path, out of His will or diverted from His plan. Why don’t you believe the Bible when it says that your will is secondary to His or when it says that He is in complete control over everything? Why do you give Satan or other human beings so much credit for the things as though God’s hands were tied? My answer is simple. It requires too much faith.
It requires too much faith to believe that God is in control when your life feels so out of control. It requires too much faith to think that the calamity you find yourself in could possibly be part of God’s plan for your life. It requires too much faith in the God, whom you know is good, to have any part of what doesn’t feel good. You have preconceived ideas that, if it were God’s way, then there would be no pain and no failure. It requires too much faith to believe that God would use both pain and failure to bring you to discover Him. That is, unless He already has. Accepting or rejecting doesn’t change the Truth. It changes you.“ - ‘Grace Is For Sinners’
‘Tradition made a God out of certainty and certainty gets crushed by real life.’ – Rob Bell
‘We don’t reduce Christ to what we are, he raises us up to what he is.’ 1 Corinthians 10:17
‘So, my very dear friends, when you see people reducing God to something they can use or control, get out of their company as fast as you can.’ 1 Corinthians 10:14
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