Grace Thoughts

Guest (Male): God loves you. 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 Kelly.

Tim Kelley: Back a while ago, when my wife and I ran a Christian school right here for this church—I'm talking a while ago in the 80s for some of us, and some of you don't even remember the 80s, shame on you. Part of that ministry, probably in the 30 years of ministry, that was some of the most fruitful ministry I think that we had. Having these kids day to day, working with them, talking with them. My wife was an amazing, gifted teacher. She would always take things of life, regular events of life, and work them into a lesson.

She would be teaching them math or science, and then all of a sudden, the subject of boys comes up. What do boys have to do with math? Nothing. But somehow, my wife would turn it around and interject, and we'd always be talking about relationships and things. Then we would always be teaching the kids spiritual principles, too—gracious principles, how God thinks in light of the Scripture.

This was the most common thing: when one of the kids would do something that would contradict the rules or did something they shouldn't have said, we would tell them and bring up one of these principles. The kids would say, "I know, I know." We'd tell them the truth, and they'd say, "I know, I know." We would always say, "Well, if you knew you knew, you wouldn't have did it, did it." We only know what we can truly experience.

It's like a beautiful picture. I put a beautiful picture on the wall of the Swiss Alps. I got a beautiful picture from Mary from Antarctica this past week. Gorgeous, absolutely breathtaking, one-dimensional picture on my phone that I got from her. Now, she saw it in three dimensions. She's breathing the air; she has the experience. All I had was a picture. I couldn't tell you what it's like to be in Antarctica because all I had was a snapshot of it. I never experienced it.

Many times, especially if we've been churched for a while, we'll hear about certain Bible themes like the theme of grace. We'll hear different preachers define it: God's unmerited favor and mercy, Christ's riches at God's expense, or whatever how it goes. The question is, when I hear about the grace of God, do you say, "Oh, I know, I know"? I know about the grace of God; it's this, this, and this.

Then I ask you, how does it impact your life today? How does the grace of God, the grace principles of the Scriptures, influence your thought life, or does it at all? If it doesn't, then you might not really know as much as you think you know about grace. Does my understanding of grace have any input into my marriage? Any input to any human relationship that I have on a horizontal level? You have to answer yourself that question, just as I have to answer it for myself.

How does the grace of God change how I relate to my past? What does a message of God's amazing grace help me work through my pain? I'm getting at taking this message of grace and making it real in our lives, having it go beyond just being a pretty picture on the wall, something we can say, "I know, I know," but have it be something we can really experience. Does the grace of God teach me how to think and relate to God Himself?

Would you want a brain surgeon who graduated from medical school but never did a surgery? Would you trust him with your operation? He's got the degree, he has the education, and he has the head knowledge; he just hasn't experienced his education yet. I'm going to find the guy that has done a few of these surgeries before because he has experience behind him. He has lived it.

The student hasn't lived it yet; he will at some point. He'll get some patient that he didn't tell it was his first time, or he'll assist with many surgeries, obviously. But that's the principle. I can talk about these truths, but my theology was meant to become practically applied in my life. Does my understanding of grace help determine my purpose for life? That's a big thing: purpose.

One of my favorite Bible teachers that I like to listen to on almost a daily basis when I work out is Chip Ingram. I just like how he emphasizes the grace of God, and he recently said this in a message: that grace is the most important word in the entire Bible. Then he said it separates us from all other world religions. I thought back then of something that happened to me over 20 years ago.

I was downtown St. Petersburg and I was evangelizing, witnessing, and passing out tracts all by myself. I was standing in front of City Hall and this big guy comes by me, and I hand him a tract. This was in the 90s, before all the September 11th stuff happened. I start sharing the gospel with him. He's getting a little tense with me; I didn't quite understand why. Finally, he sort of burst at me and said, "I'm a Muslim, and I shouldn't even be talking to you."

I said, "Okay, I'm good, but can I just ask you a few more questions?" After he defined all the things that he believed and I gave him the gospel, he's getting really agitated with me. At that point, he says, "I have to stop this conversation." I said, "Then let me summarize it. You believe that you have to work really hard to gain your God's approval, and even with that, you're not sure that you have it."

You're not sure that you'll ever go to a place we call heaven based upon your performance because you don't know how good is good enough. I believe that a God of grace said all I have to do is believe on what He's done for me. He loves me unconditionally, and He'll receive me into His presence based upon His own merit, not on my merit. He looked at me and said, "Exactly." And we parted ways.

Grace really does take the Christian and set them apart from the rest of the world. You can get into some of the other Eastern thoughts, and it's finding my own level of consciousness, it's finding my own level of whatever it is from whatever angle you want to take it, but it's all basically me, me, me, me. Grace says you can't do anything; it's Him, Him, Him, Him.

You might not understand grace if you work harder after you fall—I'm talking spiritually falling, morally falling, ethically falling—so you might feel better about yourself. I just fell flat on my face morally, ethically, however that is. I'm going to work really hard for God; I'm going to church—and you should, never withdraw, always draw near. Depending on how hard I work and how bad my sin was will determine when God's actually truly forgiven me and I feel as though I can enter His presence again.

If you blame somebody else for all your problems—parent, wife, spouse—you might not understand grace. You swear all in your life would be okay if you filled in the blank. You might not understand grace. If you think God owes you a blessing based upon your performance, you might not understand the grace of God. Where do I get this list from? From my head. That's where I get it from—my own little diseased brain which works through these things on a daily basis myself.

If you think bad things that happen to you are punishment from God, you might not understand grace. It doesn't matter how I live; I'm under grace. You might not understand grace. If you know God loves you, but you're not really sure that He likes you, you might not understand God's grace. If you think that when you get saved, you remain the same, unchanged, untransformed, you might not understand God's grace.

If it would be easier for you to love people if they were just more like you, you might not understand the grace of God. If you pick and choose who you'll forgive and who you won't, you might not understand the grace of God. If you are not gracious, you might not understand the grace of God. Somebody said this yesterday: the first thing that grace should do is make you gracious and kind.

In a nutshell, what does the grace-full life look like? Jesus came to impart the fullness and the abundance of the life of grace to every believer. We are saved by grace and we grow in grace. Grace teaches, encourages, and comforts us. The grace-full life is a life that liberates us from the chains of a performance-based or guilt-ridden spiritual experience.

Pure grace ushers the believer into a relationship with God as it wonderfully establishes, sustains, and satisfies our souls to the fullest for the duration of our journey with Him. Knowing grace and owning it sometimes is different. In Ezekiel chapter 33—and we'll get into the crux of the message here, it won't be a long message because I actually cut it in half.

Ezekiel's preaching to, like all the prophets preaching to, Israel here, and they're not hearing him. Unlike Jeremiah, they were always throwing him in jail; they didn't like Isaiah. But they liked Ezekiel pretty much, and God said this in chapter 33: "You are very entertaining to them, Ezekiel. They like you. You're very entertaining to them, like someone who sings love songs with a beautiful voice or plays fine music on an instrument. They hear you, Ezekiel, but that's all they do. They don't ever act on what you say." I hope, my friends, that this series will start a whole new chapter in my life and your life where we act on the grace of God, maybe in areas which we've never done it before.