Grace Thoughts

Announcer (Male): Hello friends, welcome to Grace Thoughts, the radio ministry of Grace Connection Church with Pastor Tim Kelley. Grace Thoughts has been dedicated to preaching a clear gospel of grace for over 20 years. Here is Pastor Kelley.

Tim Kelley: How did this conversation end here and then it went over here? I had somebody knock on my door one time, I think it was 10:30 at night, from the church. I let them in and there was a conflict between them and another person in the church and they sit down on the couch. My wife is with me and they are just bellowing out this whole thing about this scenario with another family in the church going back 20-plus years ago.

I was listening to them, I'm just listening, and I was a relatively young pastor and I just didn't really know what to say anyway. I'm sitting there and I watched their mind. All of a sudden, the man stops and says, "I bet they're poisoning my cat as we speak." "What?" "I bet they're poisoning my cat." "Who?" "The people they were complaining about." "Why are they poisoning your cat?" "Because they're like that. They're probably poisoning my cat."

I was very diplomatic because I'm a pastor. My wife has no filter at all. She looked at him and just started laughing and so I had to do damage control right after that. But she just got the biggest kick out of that. "They're poisoning your cat! Why would they poison your cat?" See, his mind was busy. He was making this stuff up in his mind. The cat lived a long, healthy life. No one poisoned the cat, but the mind was busy. They were cumbered about.

Martha, her mind is busy and the Lord says, "Mary, slow it down. Slow your thinking down a little bit. This is needful for you." Westcott said this, I thought it was an interesting note on this word "needful." Chreia is the word. It means there's a gap in your life, Martha. I always get them mixed up. There's a gap in your life. You're missing something here. Something has escaped you. Something's missing. One thing. Your gap, Martha, is you have service but you don't have communion.

We have a sort of a standing policy here at Grace and we try to implement it as much as we can. We need people to volunteer. We do in Kids Connection and every front of the ministry. We need help, as every church probably does, but we want you to sit before you serve. In other words, you have to be feeding your faith before you start giving it away.

We want folks that are working out there to come make sure they're in here. We want you to be drawing near to God so you can serve in the spirit and not the flesh. Serving God in the flesh has a lifespan to it. Serving God through the energy of the flesh has a time frame on it. It'll burn you out. But when you walk in the spirit, there is no—it's wind beneath your wings, just like somebody sang some time a long time ago from the '70s.

Martha's life represents most of our Christian lives. I know it represented mine for good portions of my life while I taught the grace of God. The law life is not always evil. Martha, we have to assume, loved Jesus as much as Mary loved Jesus. Her relationship with Jesus was just different. She had a "churchianity" relationship with Jesus and not a "christianity" relationship with Jesus. Under the law, it was about what we did. We got to work hard. We got to do this. I got to gain social status. I got to obey the law. This is what I got to do.

Don't give me this grace stuff when it's all free. She wanted to please Jesus, and I'd venture to say that's not everyone's motive, but it was hers. Just not in the right way. She wanted to please him more than she wanted to hear from him. I'll say that again: she wanted to please him or work for him more than she wanted to hear from him. I want to challenge us all a little bit. I don't know where you are in your Christian life.

If you're young in your Christian life or maybe you have some besetting sin in your life that you struggle with, you're probably in pretty good shape seeking the Lord. You know who concerns me? The religious. The religious that have gotten so well-practiced in this Christian life, have morphed their behavior into a certain standard of living that there's nothing really rattling their cage anymore. So we've learned to live the Christian life really without the Holy Spirit.

If you've never had the conviction of the Spirit come in and just tweak you, fall down on your knees and find God tonight or tomorrow. I start every morning with the Word of God and there's very few mornings I get up and not walk away from spending time with the Lord not having the conviction of the Spirit upon me somehow. Maybe as a husband, a dad, a friend, a pastor, a thing in my life that's maybe trying to grab a little bit more territory, whatever it is. It changes by the day.

But if I've never been convicted by the Spirit recently, then I venture to say, if I can be so bold, there's something missing in your heart. You might have gone the way of Cain, the way of Martha, and took the wrong fork in the road. The law life loves retribution theology. In other words, if something bad happens, that's what a law thinker thinks: it must be because I did something bad, right? Something bad happens to me, then "God, why are you punishing me?"

Because this bad thing happened, so it must be punishment. It must be something I did wrong because isn't that how my earthly parents worked? If I do something bad, they punish me. That's the law life. That's the way of Cain. I took the wrong road. The law life judges themselves by their performance, how and what they're doing for God at any given moment. The law life loves formulas and lists just to tell them how to do something or give them the list to do, obey it, and they are content.

Back in the early days of my Christian walk, when I was learning how to pray, there was a process the Spirit of God had to teach me how to pray. I got my legal pad out and I wrote down everything I wanted to pray for: people's names, everything. It was this legal pad and I'd start in the morning and just go. I did it. I didn't sense God at all, but I did it. I got through my list. Then the Spirit slowed me down. He says, "Tim, put the list away and do as much listening as you do talking." I hate it when I'm wrong.

See, it's the difference. There's no list. The law life has an "I can do it" mentality. The law life complains because others are not doing all that they are doing. This is a big one. I've watched this many times through the years. Pastor Lewis, those in ministry: "How come we're the only ones doing this? How come we're the only ones volunteering?" Well, I can tell you why. The answer is simple. We are more spiritual than the rest. It's obvious, isn't it? We're more committed than the rest because we're doing more. That's the law life.

I remember being on the mission field and going out evangelizing on a foreign field one time. The missionary said, "How come we're the only ones out here?" I remember thinking, it's by grace that we're here. Let's be thankful for the five or six or eight who come out, and maybe there's another dozen that wish they could be here but they couldn't for logistical reasons of their life. The law life can never relax and enjoy God's presence. The law life is in a constant state of disappointment.

Let me tell you a few more subtle ways this law life might get us. There's sometimes a point in our Christian walk, even as we maybe get older or sickness comes into our life, where I just can't do what I used to do. I can't function like I used to function, however that may mean. Maybe even getting to a church service is difficult for me. Maybe illness has racked me, maybe pain, chronic pain, whatever it is. It's different. What do I do with that?

I can be frustrated and understand I'm frustrated because I don't want to live that way and I do understand that. That's normal and that's legitimate. But do you think that somehow God is less pleased with you because you can't perform like you used to perform? You think somehow that God has benched you? "I don't need you anymore, put you over here." Don't think like that. That's the law life. Sometimes grace puts us in a bed of affliction. Sometimes we never get out of that bed of affliction, sometimes we do.

Sometimes we have a besetting something that causes us to limp for the rest of our life. But maybe it's a loss, maybe it's deep pain, but we limp for the rest of our life spiritually speaking. Maybe we just finish the race limping. The key is we're in the race. I think one of the purest understandings of grace is by somebody who can't do anything for God yet enjoys his presence. You can't perform, you can't act, you can't reach out for one reason or another, yet you know who you are in Jesus Christ.

You know you stand and you lie in his imputed righteousness and Jesus Christ is as fiercely in love with you as the person preaching to thousands from a pulpit. And he's just as pleased with your life as he is with that life even though no one notices you. That person understands grace. They've taken the right choice. They're walking in Mary's path. Mary sat at the feet of Jesus. Mary represents the other road, the grace life. The grace life does not say "I can do it." The grace life says, "Not I, but Christ can do it through me."

The grace life judges themselves by what Jesus did for them on the cross, not their performance. I could never work up enough righteousness. My righteousness is as filthy rags. I need an intervention. If God looked in the human race and saw any inkling that man could have done this by themselves, there wouldn't have been a cross. He never would have come. If there was one man that ever would have been born into the human race that could have lived a perfect life without God, then the cross never would have happened.

But it was impossible. And so in the counsels of God, the love of God, which loved man, the power of God, and the wisdom of God came up with a plan to redeem man and not to renovate their righteousness, but eliminate their righteousness. Pay with one grand act once and for all—Hebrews 10:10, 10:14—and give that race his own righteousness. That was the cross of Jesus Christ. Whosoever believes on him, now my friends, salvation takes place and the Spirit seals us.

What happens is he gives us his righteousness, not ours. It's not renovated righteousness. It's not religious righteousness. It's not comparative righteousness. It's not relative righteousness. It's imputed righteousness. God takes his righteousness and imputes it to you. We call that good news because only righteousness can come in the presence of God. Unrighteousness cannot. God is holy, he's right, he's pure, he's sacred. There's nothing impure that could come into his presence.

So he gave us the only pure thing there was: himself. For whosoever believes. The grace life judges themselves by what Jesus did for them, not their performance. The grace life serves God out of a heart of love and gratitude, not out of duty and obligation. That's so big. Understands that the grace life understands that God's thoughts towards them are constant and independent of our service and even obedience, whether we're serving or we're sitting. The grace life has no lists, no how-tos, no formulas.

It's not made a system out of their Christian life. They're easily captured by Christ and in their heart they seek his presence every day. So a life that's marked by victory, self-discipline. Christian service becomes a product of fellowship with Christ, not a duty. It's about meeting Christ.