#grace changes everything

This past week has a been a whirlwind of life and blessings in abundance!

I don’t even know where to start really, so just hang on for this roller coaster of an update!

I have lived in Charleston for ONE FULL YEAR! (WOOOCELEBRATION) In this year, I have been depressed, anxious, POOR, exhausted, and homesick. But I’ve also built incredible new relationships, rediscovered that I am not made complete because a man is in my life (granted, I do have a pretty great guy now, but this isn’t about him), AND I’ve been like 98 percent on my own. That means when my car broke down, I could not call my Papaw to come fix it with his great mechanic skills. When I had what was believed to be pneumonia (that was a hell of a time, let me tell you) I couldn’t call my mama and daddy to make me tomato soup and bring me heating pads. When I didn’t know where the money was going to come from to make up my half of rent, I literally had to praise dance when God placed some great families to babysit right in front of me.

So what does the beginning of year two look like? Sorry, Chas town, you can’t get rid of me that easily! 

It looks like me leading a small group for high school girls, and two weeks ago they all had sweet Jericho moments (ya know, when the walls come down) and broke down about their very real and valid insecurities. It looks like my co-leader and me scooping them up in a big ol’ hug, because 1. we love them, and 2. we STILL battle with those same insecurities that tried to knock us on our bootys ten years ago. God has preened us accordingly, so that we could grow, though, and literally be here for “such a time as this” to pour into these gals.

I’m going back to school to finish a degree I started 4 years ago, and will prayerfully finish by next birthday. 

I’m doing life with a small group, whom I never thought I’d find outside of my hometown. (My original group was a hard act to follow!)

I’m doing life with this guy Mr. Green, and I’m learning how to be SUBMISSIVE in a Godly dating relationship. (If you know me, you know I’m a tough one to lead.) I’m learning how to let someone else provide me, and fill in places where I fail or am completely flawed. 

One of my greatest friends is packing up his bags and moving to Charleston in literally three days, so I am imagining an incredible amount of adventures in store. 

Yesterday, I met THE director for the Doors2Freedom organisation, and am prayerfully seeking where I can use my training/knowledge/degree to actually get plugged into an incredible ministry rescuing women from sex trafficking. 

and ps. I’m writing a book. 

(I don’t even know if anyone but my mum reads this, to be honest) This is life right now. A beautiful, crazy, hurricane, salty air life. 

Happy Easter Friends!

My response to the book “Why Grace Changes Everything” written by Chuck Smith;

Attempting to comprehend the love God has for us can be overwhelming and easily jumbled. God’s love is unconditional, never changing, and completely free to us. God desires communion with us so much that he has paved the way of salvation and lavished upon us grace beyond measure. To try and unpack this , imagine you are back in elementary school P.E. You are in a line of other kids your age, and kickball teams are being chosen. One by one all of your classmates get chosen for a team and you are the last one left; how awful that feeling of inadequacy is. Now, picture the same scenario, except that you are chosen first! The other team sighs that they don’t get you on their team, and the team you were chosen for rejoices over the fact that they get you on their side. What a good feeling it brings that you are chosen and rejoiced over when you make the conscious decision to join your team that you were first chosen for. To further the last hypothetical situation, bear with me, let’s say you are chosen first for the team. When your name is called out for the team you stand there and try to prove yourself worthy of the team. They keep telling you that you have a secure spot on the team and all you have to do is accept the offer, but you keep trying to prove yourself as a good addition to the team. As silly and irrational that it sounds, that’s what many Christians, myself included, do their entire lives if they don’t fully understand the significance of God’s love and God’s grace. No matter if you think you are the worst kickball player in the world, or if you consider yourself the kickball champion, you are chosen first and called to your team: the choice whether you join your team falls into your hands. God has called you into relationship with Him and has provided everyday for us to do so without having to justify or prove ourselves worthy. In the book Why Grace Changes Everything by Pastor Chuck Smith, he not only explains how we are able to abide in this intimate relationship with God, but  also digs deep into what it means to truly understand what the grace of God means, and the significance behind the simple fact that God loves you, a lot.

To lay the foundation of understanding God’s grace, we must first understand his love. God’s love for us is the drive and motivation behind us accepting God’s grace on our lives. In the preface of Why Grace Changes Everything, Chuck talks about God’s unchanging love as the binding component between us and him. With love we are forming a relationship, and it is by Grace that we can build this relationship with a perfect God. In chapter 1 Chuck said, “...our relationship with God does not depend upon the puny pebble of our own efforts but upon the massive rock of His unchanging and loving character…” All we have to do is call upon our savior and believe in His love for us, and an immediate father/child relationship is built. It is said in 1 John 4:16 that “So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” Since God is love, we can expect and put hope in that promise of him loving us. When Jesus came and lived the perfect life and died as a perfect sacrifice and fulfilled the law on our behalf, the new covenant of grace was established. This new covenant of grace opens up to us the freedom to meet directly with God through his spirit.  Grace cannot be earned nor lost- God’s love and grace are simply a gift to us to bring us joy and deepen our relationship with a perfect father.

With such an abundant gift that seems almost too good to be true, it’s significance in our lives can be mistakenly diminished. Whether it be through doubt in our justification through Jesus Christ or simply spending a life dedicated to works and not living in the joy of a relationship with God, we lose out on the freedom found in God’s love by misunderstanding the reality of God’s grace. Galatians 2:20-21 explains this well:

“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.”

We see here that Christ was sent and died for us because he loved us THAT much. Literally the only way for us to live in God’s love and have close relationship to Him is through Jesus Christ. We are not justified by the law, nor good works, but only through faith in Jesus and his sacrifice alone. When we try to find our sanctification through the law we basically look like the kid who was chosen first for the team, but still is trying to prove themselves worthy of a spot. I lived most of my christian walk in such a way! Why Grace Changes Everything has radically changed my view on grace. I lived under the misconception that grace was earned, and that grace and forgiveness were on the same level. I didn’t understand that God’s grace is simply God loving me so much, and lavishing gifts upon me because of his deep love for me.

“God has given you but one simple responsibility; to believe in His promise. You can enjoy the blessing of a relationship with God even though you may not pray enough, or give enough, or sacrifice enough because of your faith in what God has already done for you.”

God loves me, and by me believing in his promise to love me I get to live in the joy of relationship with Him. Chuck Smith explains in this book the concept of grace and love, and then follows that up with what it  means for us: freedom.  “As recipients of God’s love and forgiveness, we no longer have to live as slaves to our own fleshly desires. We have been granted the capacity to turn from our sin and serve and worship God.”  Being free from sin means being cast out of all bondage, to love and serve God.. freely. When freedom is turned away from God and back into fulfilling fleshly desires you are no longer free but again a slave to sin. If we are granted freedom and a life full of joy our response should be worship and a dedication of our life to God so that He might make it full. We are free to serve God and please him simply because we love him, not because we are under obligation to do so. Grace gets rid of the to-do list and gives us a desire to become a humble servant for God because of his love for us. This takes my preconceived notion that in order to be saved I have to serve my neighbor, or I have to go on this mission trip, and turns it into an occasion for joy that I get to do these things. Joy that I get to freely serve in love and not in bondage to the law. Serving Christ isn’t meant to be a chore, or a pre-requisite to heaven. Serving Christ is simply a response of the Holy Spirit working in our hearts and us pressing into our relationship with God in the  place of  a humble servant. As Chuck Smith eloquently put, “ May the Lord help us to freely love, to freely serve, to freely seek the best interests of one another. For then, at last, we shall be capable of fully enjoying the incomparable delights to be found only in the freedom of God’s great grace.”

Once again I have found myself in tears at my cluttered kitchen table. Pens, homework, coffee, and a new plethora of wedding things surround me and my thoughts. 

I have caused a lot of heartache recently, because I couldn’t let go of my own hurt long enough to let myself forgive someone. I have been clinging to this clump of pain like it’s the Ring, my precious, when it has been worthless poison. I have almost allowed myself to let one of my oldest and dearest friends walk out of my life. 

Tonight, I was so overwhelmed by the “audacity” this friend had to ask me for one more thing, when I had given her so much, that I couldn’t see the Forest for the damn trees in front of me. (Listen, I’m a terrible runner, but when Satan tells me lies, I could not run faster with them.) 

I opened my text from my fiance’ and he said “just give it away.” That’s it. One simple text. But it could not have been more clear, and he probably didn’t fully grasp everything I was holding on to. It was not just the furniture my friend had asked me for, but it was the hurt from the last year, and the grudge I’d been hiding in my heart where the Word should have been. 

I crawled into the floor and faced my friend, and truly someone I consider my sister, for the first real time in a long time. I reached for her hands, and she went for an embrace I was not expecting. We just lied in the floor like lost little girls, holding each other, and crying. The little middle school girls we were in our most innocent of time of friendship, the adult women who have gone through heartache and hell, the women who just were not made to do life alone, and who were really created to pray for one another and encourage one another, all wrapped up in one big hug mess on the floor. 

I’m not strong. I’m not perfect by any means. I’m sometimes a terrible person, and I’m very slow to forgive. 

My heart is heavy for friends and my church family back home. There were two affairs within the church that is causing great confusion and pain among the Body and I can only imagine within the two effected families.

These were people that I loved and looked up to and did life with. Please know, I am aware that in this time of healing for these families, this may seem very trivial to make my own reflections. I do not want to gossip, and therefore am making my own reflections of God's movement in my heart.

Because these were "my people" I am praying for them. I've been served some humble pie in my prayers, and there are some takeaways that I just need to jot down. I am selfishly left anxious about my own beliefs (if these people I thought were so far above sin, how the heck am I ever going to make it?) Here is my heart:

1. Jesus is the only example we should set our eyes on. Every person falls short of the glory of God. 2. EVERY person need grace in the worst way. We are all broken, and in need of a Saviour. 3. The Bible literally gives us examples of how to respond in such a time, and that is with grace and poise. Even when wrongdoing occurs, we as the church are to respond with patience, pointing those people to Christ's love and forgiveness. It is not for us to condemn. (Even when I want to be angry and condemn!) 4. I am praying for my sweet friends. I am praying that God can restore, and make whole what is broken right now. I am praying that God will be the victor and that His glory will come of this. I am praying for hearts to heal and trust to be restored. I am praying for the church as they decipher this to the youth, and members and that the church will continue to grow.