Revived By Grace

“You can’t get there from here!” he yelled at us in the chaos that was quickly forming.  “You have to go through the back door!”

So, we grabbed more hose, extending what we already had, made our way around the house to the back door as the smoke billowing out of the upstairs windows thickened and grew blacker by the second.

I had been at Station 11, polishing the fire pole that evening when my first, 1st-in house fire came in over the radio.  It was 26 years ago now, at the start of my firefighting career.  I was the new guy and adrenalin was running high and strong as we rushed to the address, not that we couldn’t find the house by following the column of smoke we could see across the roof tops on that warm summer evening.

As we arrived on the scene, we found the house, set quite a ways off the street, requiring every inch of our go-to 150 feet of hose in order to reach the fire if we were to go in through the front door.

It was the homeowner who met us in the front yard and warned us that we would need to go around and through the back door in order to find the stairs to get to the second floor.

The short version is that, though we followed his advice, increasing our work and delaying our arrival at the seat of the fire, we would later discover that we certainly could have reached the stairs by using the front door.  In fact, it would have been much simpler and faster.

We would later learn that he had just installed brand new white carpeting in the front room and he didn’t want us trampling our dirty boots all over his nice new carpet!

To this day, I still shake my head when I think of that guy, much like you are shaking yours right now.  We had our goal and it was in his best interest for us to go through the front door.  It would certainly have been faster and simpler for us but he simply couldn’t have anyone soiling his precious white carpet.

Don’t get me wrong.  It wasn’t long before the hoard of firefighters that would eventually arrive on the scene would discover that we had taken the wrong route.  By the time the fire was out and we had left the scene, his white carpet was, well, no longer white.  We had trampled all over it.

For years, as a pastor, I was like that guy, though I had no idea that I was giving bad advice, steering people away from the carpet. I had no idea that I was, as my wife, Heidi, says in the book she is writing— that I was a “gatekeeper to the throne room of God’s grace.” 

Just this morning I read a very sobering passage of Scripture.  Specifically, I was alarmed by Hebrews 12:15 where the writer told his readers (first and foremost the leaders among them) to “see to it that no one comes short of the grace of God.” (NASB)

Wow. What a statement! The writer, is telling them to be sure that there is no one among them who, in Paul’s terminology, falls from grace. 

We preachers are, in a sense, gatekeepers.  By our words and sermons we either direct people toward a life of grace alone or we direct them toward a life of grace plus performance.

The concern in Hebrews was that there would be any among them who would step out of the sphere of grace, so to speak, and try to live off on their own in the land of performance based-Christianity.

Understanding the point of the entire book of Hebrews is key here. The writer penned the letter out of concern that they were being pressured and thus tempted to add works to their Christianity much like the Galatians.

He was trying to tell them to step out on faith, like the Israelites at Kadesh Barnea, and live solely on grace alone. No works required. No sacrifice for sin. No performance. 

God is serious about His offer to enter into a rest from works. Hebrews makes it quite clear that it is a life of grace alone that is being offered. To reject it is to live life out in the wilderness, wandering needlessly. To accept it is to live a life learning to rest from the need to perform.

As with the Israelites, our only right response is to take the offer seriously and enter in. To refuse it is a commitment to struggling, to scratching and clawing to exist, trying to make your way. It is not like God will abandon you. He certainly will not but it is totally missing a life of freedom, of not having to perform.

As a preacher over the years, I have unwittingly kept people from the Promised Land. Unlike the carpet guy, I thought I was doing the right thing. 

I wanted to steer people correctly and I didn’t get it all wrong.  Maybe I did most things right as most pastors do.   I just wanted them to live a life of holiness, a life of obedience, and a life which pleased God. What I didn’t realize was that I had been acting like one of the 10 spies who advised them the Israelites to stay out of the promised land. I had no idea I was doing it. I thought I had their best interest at heart.

What I didn’t know was that Joshua and Caleb were right. That land was the land that God had brought them out of Egypt for. He had prepared it for them and I was keeping them from it. I was making them come “short of the grace of God.”

I am not trying to fall on my sword here for having messed up a bunch of people, nor am I trying to castigate other pastors.  I taught the grace and mercy of God with all my heart and, like most pastors, I still do.  What I am saying is that there may have been a hidden curriculum over the years.

Do not confuse a hidden curriculum with a hidden agenda.  This is where I differed from Carpet Guy.  His hidden ‘agenda,’ what he was not coming out and telling us, was that he did not want us to ruin his new carpet.

A hidden ‘curriculum’ is what a person is practically, though unintentionally, teaching.  It is what the listener is getting, despite the fact that the speaker was not necessarily trying to teach it.  

The hidden curriculum that is so prevalent in the church today is:

• That I have to behave to keep God happy even though Jesus made Him happy on my behalf
• That I have to earn His ongoing forgiveness to stay in relationship with Him even though that forgiveness was granted to me at the cross, once and for all
• That the single-most important thing to God is for me to live a sinless life even though what He has always wanted most is relationship with me
• That the Bible is primarily a book telling me how to live my life rather than, first and foremost, God showing Himself to me and what He has done for me
• That Christianity is about what I can do for God rather than what God has done for me

The list goes on and I hope, in future entries, to address this hidden curriculum.  If you have come to believe any of it, you have been degraced.   If you have been pushed away from church by it, you have been degraced.  Far worse, if you have been pushed way from God by it, you have been degraced.  If you find it hard to go to God when you have screwed up, you have been degraced.  If you find yourself living life under the pressure, the slavery, of having to work harder even though you can never measure up, you have been degraced.

I want to infuse grace back into the discussion, back into your life.  It is time for a biblical, grace-saturated message.

At Camp Gilead, our favorite Christian camp, there is a small pond about 50 feet across that they often stock with fish (they do a father/son fishing derby every year).  Walking across the camp a few years ago, I noticed that all the fish had congregated at the inlet end of the pond.  They were gill to gill, above and below each other crammed as close to the incoming water as possible, their mouths wide-open and gills working overtime as if they were gasping for air.  I would soon discover that that was not far from the truth.

Come to find out, fish get their oxygen not from the water molecules themselves (H2O) but from the air that has been drawn into the water as it rushes down river, over rocks, over waterfalls, etc. This pond had become so stagnant, that the only air the fish could find was in the water that was slowly trickling in from the stream.

That life-giving oxygen had become hard to come by and they were trying to get it from anywhere they could.  

Jack, the camp director, discovered the problem and brilliantly installed a pump that simply shot pond water straight into the air, only to splash back into the pond.  That simple act didn’t create any oxygen, it simply introduced it back into the pond and the fish responded immediately.  They rushed to the area and before long were swimming about happily as they were meant to.

Simply put, I want to be about the business of introducing air back into this pond we call the church.  We fish are looking for grace wherever we can find it.  We cannot survive without it.  The pews are full of souls with mouths wide open, gills working overtime in order to survive.

Those fish were revived by something so free and abundant. They just needed it introduced back into the pond.  I have been revived by grace.  I want you to be, too.

That is what this blog and future entries are all about.  Stay tuned…

Bill Austel