Grace Thoughts

Tim Kelley: Now unholiness has become our norm. Let me start with a quote here as we rattle along, but please listen if you can get into the spirit of this quote. It's pretty heavy, I would say. But as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and I do not see. I listen and do not hear. The tongue moves in prayer, but it does not speak. God seems absent. Heaven is empty. And the bitterest bitterness of all, my own suffering seems to count for nothing. Just that terrible pain of loss of God not wanting me, of God not being God, of God not really existing.

In the darkness, Lord my God, who am I that you should forsake me? The child of your love and now become as the most hated one, the one you have thrown away as unwanted, unloved? I call, I cling, I want, and there's no one to answer. When I try to raise my thoughts to heaven, there is such a convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul. Love, the word, it brings nothing.

I am told that God lives in me, and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. I did not know that love could make one suffer so much, of pain human but caused by the divine. The more I want him, the less I feel wanted. I want to love him as he has not been loved, and yet there is that separation, that terrible emptiness.

The feeling of the absence of God. They say people in hell suffer eternal pain because of the loss of God. In my soul, I feel just this terrible pain of loss of God not wanting me, of God not being God, of God not really existing. That terrible longing keeps me growing and I feel as if something will break in me one day. Heaven from every side is closed.

Well, that doesn't sound like a very happy person, does it? Those are the words of Mother Teresa. Those were words uncovered of hers in her journals after she died. They found that this was her spiritual despondency and her spiritual journey that she was on. She lived in a spiritual desert. Those that knew her the closest say that she panicked that God had rejected her, or worse, that he was in the dark hiding from her. As if by some strange formula, the greater her success and the greater her public adulation, the more abandoned, humiliated, and desperate she felt.

What was her problem? Was it a problem of commitment? Could you find a more committed Christian than Mother Teresa? Somebody that literally gave away every comfort in her life to the sake of the poor and the hurting and the needy. She reached people some of us wouldn't even dream of reaching. She stooped to depths some of us would never even dream of stooping to. So was it a problem of commitment? Was it a problem of Christian service? Can you think of anyone else that lived a life like she lived her life when you think of all the people since the cross? There was a time she won the Nobel Peace Prize and won a Cadillac. She gave it back or sold it or did something with it. She didn't care about any of those things.

I know a man that used to work for the Albanian Special Forces. When he worked for the Albanian Special Forces, Mother Teresa came to Albania to speak, and he was assigned to guard her and protect her for the week that she was there in Albania. He said when he picked her up at the airport, he said, "Mother Teresa, can I get the rest of your bags?" She goes, "No, I have them in my hand." That was all she had.

He said for the next week, he followed this woman around and looked at how she lived her life and how she interacted with world dignitaries. He knew at the end of that week, that's when he got saved because he figured something had to be supernatural about this woman. No one could be like this without the work of God. So was Mother Teresa's problem that of service, or was it maybe the lack of spiritual disciplines?

She didn't pray enough, right? Didn't memorize enough scripture. Didn't read enough. She never fasted. Of course, we know she read the scriptures every day. We know that she meditated every day. We know she'd go on long fasts without eating and just getting before God. She lived this Christian life from the outward sense as exemplary as anyone we'd ever know. What was her problem?

What do you think it was with her that tortured her so much in her heart and soul? I'm going to just suggest this today because I'm certainly not God, but I believe that Mother Teresa's problem was one of theology. That sounds trite, but using that term theology—the study of God—and understanding what happened when Jesus Christ said on a cross, "It is finished," is imperative if I'm going to think right about Christ.

Knowing who he is and his love and his mercy, knowing what happened to me when I became born again, when I was indwelt and sealed with his Holy Spirit and understanding what the cross did for me, what that cross accomplished for me and in me, I cannot live the Christian life in the freedom that it promises me if I don't know how to think.

We live, I believe, in a theological famine in the land. Never have I seen such a large amount of people turning into and loving and embracing the pure gospel: the gospel of God's grace, the gospel of spiritual transformation, the gospel of Christ doing the work in us. Many good men are preaching it; many good people are doing amazing works. I saw a TV show this week where Christian leaders are on the streets with homeless people and helping people. That's a good thing. We need to be light. We need to be salt. And that's how the early church was designated and how it stood out amongst the earth—they took the refuse of Rome and gave human value to people that the government of Rome cast out.

But Christian service, my friends, and Christian message and social justice all have to come under the umbrella of Christian message. In other words, there's a gospel attached to this. Mother Teresa had it down. She knew what she was doing. No one served humanity better than she served humanity. The scriptures tell us to take care of the poor; no one took care of the poor like her. No one served. But if you do those things without understanding the Christian message of the cross and the meaning of the cross, the best it can do for you is produce despondency.

No matter what you do, it will never be enough. If you're on the Christian treadmill of just doing more and more and more, it will never be enough unless you understand that it's Christ doing it in you and through you for you. And that whether you do it or not doesn't change how he thinks of you. Those things were settled in heaven when Jesus Christ says, "It is finished."

So today, I want to start a mini-series. We're calling the series the Fantastic Five. Who likes superheroes? I do. I like superheroes. One of my favorites was Fantastic Four. Remember Fantastic Four? They had the stretchy person and the rock guy, the girl had a force field, and the guy turns into a ball of fire. Today we're going to call this series the Fantastic Five. Five incredible cardinal doctrines of the faith. Things that we need to embrace and understand and hold on to if we're going to walk this Christian life, my friends, in joy and in peace and in liberty.

Knowing the love of God which passes knowledge, experiencing the peace that goes beyond understanding, there are certain things we've got to know took place when Jesus Christ died on that cross. Superhero doctrine number one: regeneration. For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray—this is in Titus chapter 3—slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and the lovingkindness of God our savior appeared, he saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.

So he saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his mercy. When God looked at me, did he see what work he could get out of me? Or did he just see me and realize I needed mercy? By the washing of the regeneration and the renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we may become heirs, recipients according to the hope of eternal life.

Regeneration is defined, I think, as the implanting of a new principle or disposition in the soul. Key word there: new. Not renovated, but new. Not something conditioned, but new. Something that wasn't there before. Implanting a new principle or disposition in the soul, the impartation of spiritual life to those who are by nature dead in their trespasses and sin. That's Ephesians 2:1-2. We're dead in our trespasses and sins. The word "dead" there is "nekros." You see where the Greek word talks about a corpse.

Before Christ, we're spiritual corpses. There is no life in us. We're dead people, spiritually speaking. Then Jesus Christ breathes life into us at the moment of salvation. His Spirit comes and seals us. At that point, life comes into you. There's a new impartation of something that wasn't there before, something inhuman, something that cannot be corrupted by sin, something that could not be corrupted by humanity. It was something inhuman, something divine. The Spirit of God came into you as somebody who was dead in their trespasses and sins. And he gave you this life to rot a spiritual transformation in you that starts the moment you meet him and is finally completed when you finally meet him face to face.