Grace Thoughts

Tim Kelley: I don't judge people. I really don't. I highly accept people where they're at, with their weaknesses and their individualities, their peculiarness. And I think you all are a little weird, but I don't judge people. I haven't judged people for a couple hours now.

For a long time, I've just learned in the grace of God that you're all different. You're not as normal as I am, but you're all different. You have different weaknesses and different strengths, different upbringings, different temperaments, and different stuff that makes you you. I understand that.

So I can't point the finger and say, "You should be more like me." You don't want to be like me. Just be you. You are just great just the way you are. You're a unique individual, peculiar member of the body of Christ.

Now with that said, I'm the most critical person in the world when it comes to myself. If I pray two hours in the morning, I should have prayed two hours and 15 minutes. If I memorize that six-verse passage, how come I forgot verse five? If I get up at 6:30 in the morning to read the Bible, why didn't I get up at 5:30 in the morning? If I get up at 4:00 in the morning, why didn't I get up at 3:30 in the morning?

I'm relentlessly hard on myself. I'm relentlessly critical of myself. No one else, just me. I would like to trade it to be more critical of other people, but it's really just me.

It wasn't too long ago the Lord just spoke to me and said, "Tim, when are you going to believe what you preach? When are you going to believe my love and my grace, that you really do stand in grace? Tim, I see you just perfect whether you get up at four, five, six, or seven. It doesn't change how I think. When you get up at 4:00 in the morning to pray, I don't go, 'Whoa, look at Tim.' Or if you get up at seven to pray, I don't go, 'Whoa, look at Tim.' I just say, 'Whoa, look at Tim,' whatever time you get out of bed. Know what I'm saying?"

So I have an option. "No, God, You love me, and I do stand in grace. I am accepted just the way that I am." Yeah, I'm a man of weaknesses, difficulties, and struggles. Mine are different than yours; mine are mostly up here. But You love me just the way that I am, and You accept me just the way that I am.

That doesn't mean I'm perfect. It doesn't mean I'm finished with the journey. It doesn't mean I'm not battling things in my life. I should continue to battle things like sin and anything that makes me live short of the glory of God. But I am teaching myself to think in the love of God. I'm teaching myself to think in the shadow of the cross.

Paul said this in Philippians 4:8. He said whatsoever things are lovely, pure, virtuous, and of good report—I don't pay attention to those. Think on these things. It's a command there. So let's look at God's Word real quickly as I plow through this. God's Word, number one, is transformational.

It transforms us. James 1:21 says, "Therefore, putting away all filthiness and rampant wickedness, receive with meekness—" there's that beautiful word that means I don't contend with God. That's what meekness means. I accept God's dealings with me as they are, as good, because He is good. I don't contend with God. "I receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls." That word "save" there could probably be better translated as "deliver" your souls in this particular instance.

The word's implanted. What does that mean? It's in me. It lives in me. It's got roots in me. Hebrews 4:12 in the Amplified Bible says, "For the word of God that speaks is alive and full of power, making it active, operative, energizing, and effective. It is sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating to the dividing line of the breath of the life-soul and the immortal spirit, and of the joints and the marrow."

Here's the part I highlight: "Alive and full of power, then, of the deepest parts of my nature, exposing and sifting and analyzing and judging the very thoughts and the purposes of the heart." So the Word of God is alive—"zoe" is the root word there—and powerful. It's living.

The Bible, God-inspired according to 2 Timothy 3:16, God-breathed, is a living organism. It's not a dead book; it's a living organism. So when I hide the God-breathed Word of God in my heart, any time I put life anywhere, it produces life. Any time I plant a seed, it produces something. If I put life in the ground, it produces life.

The Word of God is living. So I read it. I may not be able to memorize a lot—I try to—but I read it every day. I read—I'm saying I, us, me as a Christian. I hear it, just like you're doing now, hearing the spoken Word of God, the preached Word of God.

I meditate on it, I muse on it, reflect on it, and I take my time. If you read in your Bible, don't speed-read it. Read something, think about it, reflect on it, and memorize it—just long enough to forget it if you have to. But let it have its work in you.

The more I partake of it, or the more it partakes of me, the more mental, emotional, and psychological territory it begins to capture because it's a living Word. I begin thinking inside the framework of the Word of God. I begin thinking like the Word of God thinks. That, my friends, is mental health. Now let me go on. God's Word is destructive because it's alive.

In other words, what do I mean by destructive? Well, "Isn't my Word like a fire or like a hammer that shatters a rock?" asks the Lord in Jeremiah. He went on to say, "I'm going to put my words in your mouth like a fire; these people will be like wood, and my words will burn them up." What I'm getting at is that we all have this old stuff in us.

I used to be tremendously insecure. I'm not anymore. The Word of God smashed that in my life. I used to be vindictive with my mouth; I'm not anymore. The Word of God smashed that. It took a 30-year process and it's still going on.

I used to be self-conscious, but I'm not self-conscious anymore because the Word of God is destructive. It came in and replaced my self-consciousness, and now I think in a whole different way. How I used to think 30 years ago compared to now is so different because it's destructive. It displaces my old man; it displaces my old way I used to think.

It rewrites my past. I am not who my parents said I was, if that was negative. I am not worthy to be ignored or indifferent to. I have more value than that. See, that's how God thinks. I can compare it to my feelings—that's how my feelings think, that I don't have any value at all because I never felt valued on this side of glory.

But God says I have great value, so much value that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should never perish but have everlasting life. As part of the human race, I've been given divine value. I don't have it outside of that. I never got it from people, and most of you haven't either. We get it from Him. God's Word is creative.

He spoke the universe into existence; His Word creates. Acts 20:32 says, "And now, brethren, I commit to you and I commend to you the word of his grace which is able to build you up." That's a construction term in the original language—to build you up and give you your rightful inheritance amongst all of God's set-apart ones, the saints. Those are consecrated, purified, and transformed of soul. So the Word of His grace is able to build something new in your soul.

It talks about a whole construction project: you clear the land, run the pipes, put the foundation down, and build a whole structure around it. The Word of God can build a whole new structure in your soul.

I've watched my friends—I'm going to close in a moment here—people that I knew 20 or 30 years ago, and some of them had biting tongues, anxious spirits, and big mouths. Then, with the process of time and the Word of God, as these people practiced their faith, hiding the Word of God in their hearts and devouring the Word of God in their personal life—

Ten years pass, 20 years pass, and they're not even the same people anymore because the Word of God is transformational. The Word of God destroyed who they used to be in a good way and filled them up with the word of grace, building something brand new in their hearts that was never there before. Lastly, the Word is healing.

By the power of His Word, I healed you and saved you from destruction. The word "healed" here in the Hebrew is a wonderful word. It has this sense of returning to a pristine state. I love that. The pristine state was the Garden of Eden, the place where there was no sin, no pain, and no grief, just fellowship with God.

The deep need for love was met; the deep need for acceptance was met; the deep need for significance was met; the deep need to belong was met. It was all met. And here He says, "Let me restore you to this pristine state. Let me bring you back to who you were always made to be.

Let me give you unlimited potential and buy back some of those lost years and restore some of those damaged minds and emotions." My friends, this is a process, not an accident. It doesn't happen haphazardly. It happens when we give our minds over to the Word of God. I'm not saying you're going to be able to just memorize the Torah and get off your prescription medicine. I'm not saying that at all. You may need them, maybe for the rest of your life.

But give God's Word a chance. Hide it in your hearts. Give yourself over to the power and the ministry of the Word of God. If I'm a bodybuilder and I only lift on Sundays, I'm not going to win any contests. I'm going to be skinny the first workout, I'm going to be skinny the second workout, I'm going to be skinny every workout because I can't just lift once a week and grow.

I need to pile workout upon workout upon workout to get the effects that I want. It's the same way with the Word of God. I can't just come on Sunday and be inspired and challenged, but leave here and go home and think that by next Sunday I'll grow in my faith. You might grow a little bit, but when you go home and you purpose to open the book, hide it in your heart.

You purpose, whether that's in the morning hours, your afternoon hours, or the late hours, to do it. I remember as a student in Bible college, I would write Bible verses on a piece of paper. Me and my friends would put three correlated verses down and put them in our smocks. We had to wear these smocks as we'd bust tables.

All night long, we'd walk around the restaurant, whispering in the dining room, the dish room, wherever we were—the kitchen—and we'd test each other on these verses. We'd just grill each other, and by the end of that night, because we were all competitive, we would all know these verses.

To this day, those verses are still in my heart. They still come back to recall; I still think of them to this day, 30 years later. I still think of them because it's the living Word of God. I got the chemical dump going. I want to remember them. I want to think with the Word of God.

I don't want to think in life like I was programmed as a child. I don't want to think like an American; I want to think like a Christian. I want to think as one who is blood-bought by Christ, who's loved by Christ, who was bought with a great price, who is in the palm of God's hand, and is no longer judged by anyone.

So when that giant sucking sound—that mental sucking sound—says, "Tim, come this way. Be discouraged. Be depressed. Be anxious. Be self-condemning," I say, "No." No, I'm going to think differently. I'm going to think with the Word of God. And in order to think it, my friends, I've got to consume it. Amen.