Grace for the Race

The world is full of people who are scrambling to fulfill a miniscule mission as they race through life toward the finish line.  A miniscule mission is a one where self is on the throne and you live within the narrow borders of your own little life.  It is that place where your heart beats for you and only you.  It is a life marked by self-satisfaction, self-survival, self-importance, and schedules filled with self-satisfying pursuits.

We expect this kind of tunnel vision from those who do not know Christ; tragically, many in the church who proclaim His name are also embarked on miniscule missions.  They are more concerned about advancing the cause of their own little kingdom than expanding God’s BIG kingdom.

So . . . how is it with you?  Are you on a miniscule mission?  Or are you pouring yourself out to advance the cause of the kingdom of Christ?

Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.  (Matthew 6:33)

Did you know that the Bible never tells us to simply seek the kingdom of God?  It tells us to seek it first!  We are not to pursue the advancement of God’s kingdom after we pursue the advancement of our own kingdom.  We are not to pursue it even at the same time.  We are to pursue God’s kingdom first!

The advancement of God’s kingdom is to take first place in our lives.  Of course we are to love our families, deepen our friendships, work hard at our jobs, save for the future, and serve in our communities.  But we are never to make these—or any other worldly pursuits—the ultimate priority in life.  When anyone or anything other than Jesus sits on the throne of our lives, we miss the One Thing that matters most.  When we make anything smaller than God our first priority in life, we embark on a miniscule mission that will eventually lead us to a place of dissatisfaction, disappointment, and ultimately despair.

When Adam and Eve exchanged their pursuit of the kingdom of God for the pursuit of their own little kingdom, desiring what looked good and felt good, their miniscule mission plunged all of the created order into ruin.  Our first parents literally denied their own humanity!  They were created for the pursuit of God and His kingdom, not their own.  We all know how that mission worked out for them: hiding in the brush, shivering with fear, blaming everyone but themselves for their catastrophic fall.

But thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!  He refused to leave Adam and Eve within the constricted borders of their sin-filled lives.  God pursued two rebels on the run and promised to send a Savior who would save them from their sins and the misery of pursuing a miniscule mission.  And God has done the same for every child born of grace.

God’s grace has broken the chains of our self-imposed imprisonment that pursues the advancement of our own personal kingdoms.  His grace has rescued us from living a miserable life of advancing our mediocre, miniscule mission; He has awakened us to live a life that truly matters.

Sure, His grace empowers us to love and serve at home, at work, and in our communities, but He empowers us to do so much more!  In His most gracious act after salvation, God gave us a desire to live for Him rather than for ourselves.  At this level of living, life becomes a journey of unimaginable joy, because we are living for what—or more accurately, Who—we were designed to live for in the first place: God!

This is the Gospel.  This is grace for your race.  NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

Most Christians know the verse that assures us we are “more than conquerors” (Romans 8:37), but we forget that we first had to be conquered in order to be conquerors!  Before God could make us conquerors, He had to conquer the dominion of darkness that resided in our hearts—the dominion of sin, death, and the devil.  He had to remove these from the throne of our lives in order to take His rightful place . . . and He had to conquer us to do it.

What a beautiful picture the Gospel paints of both the conquered and the Conqueror in the life of the Christian!  We see the very first picture of God conquering the sinful heart in the Garden of Eden after the fall.  When Adam and Eve sinned, they knew it.  How do we know that they knew?  They ran and hid from the presence of the One they were created to love and live for because they felt naked and ashamed.  God tells of His commitment to conquer the dominion of darkness that resided in their hearts:

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”

And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”

The man said, “The woman you put here with me — she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”

Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”

The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,

“Cursed are you above all the livestock

and all the wild animals!

You will crawl on your belly

and you will eat dust

all the days of your life.

And I will put enmity

between you and the woman,

and between your offspring and hers;

he will crush your head,

and you will strike his heel.” (Genesis 3:6-15, emphasis added)

When God said to the devil “I will put enmity between you and the woman,” He was making it clear to Adam and Eve that He was going to conquer the newfound affections of their sinful hearts.  In order for Adam, Eve, and their offspring to return to their “First Love” the sinful affections of their hearts needed to be conquered.  God graciously conquered the hearts of the first two sinners in order to make them and their offspring more than conquerors.  This is truly a dust-to-glory story!

But after we have been given our dose of Gospel-conquering, which reorients and recalibrates the affections of our hearts, we are made to be “more than conquerors” for our new King.  And what is the most important thing we have been called to conquer?  It is our unbelief.  We simply find it hard to believe that God is not angry with us anymore!  We see God’s unconditional love and continual forgiveness as unbelievable.  We know Jesus saved us, but our unbelief causes us to live like it’s all up to us to stay saved.  We are adopted children of the King living like orphans on the street.

Church historian Richard Lovelace wrote:

Many Christians, below the surface of their lives, are guilt-ridden and insecure . . . and draw the assurance of their acceptance with God from their sincerity, their past experience of conversion, their recent religious performance or the relative infrequency of their conscious, willful disobedience.

Why?  In a word, they have not allowed the power of the Gospel to conquer their unbelief.  And that is why the Gospel is for sinners—both those who are saved and those who are lost and needing to be saved.

To be “more than conquerors” we need to marinate in the truths of the Gospel daily so that the cross begins to cast a longer and stronger shadow over our unbelief.

This is the Gospel.  This is grace for your race.  NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

Forgetting seems to be a bit more regular in my life these days.  Sometimes I forget where I put the car keys.  Other times I forget to get the right things from the grocery store.  At times I even forget what I am saying right in the middle of saying it!

Can I get a witness?

But there is One who never forgets when it comes to His covenant promises.

I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.  (Genesis 9:15)

Thank God that covenant promises are not dependent upon the forgetful minds of His covenant people.  It is totally dependent upon the infinite, immutable, and infallible mind of God.  Notice that God does not say He will never again send a flood if we remember His promise.  He says that when He looks upon the rainbow in the sky, He will remember the covenant He has made with us.  God makes the covenant promise and God keeps the covenant promise, wholly apart from anything we do.

What a great comfort this should be for us today and every day!  It is God who remembers His promises and keeps every one of them.  God remembered rebel Adam after his sin in the Garden of Eden and came running after him.  God remembered His covenant promise to Abraham in spite of Abraham forgetting it himself.  God remembered His people Israel as they groaned under the yoke of bondage in Egypt.  God remembered you when He was nailed to that dirty tree.

There is, however, a place in Scripture where God promises to forget:

I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.  (Jeremiah 31:34)

WOW!  Not only does God promise to remember His covenant promises, He promises to forget our sins.  You see, God placed all of our sins on His beloved Son Jesus and sent Him outside the camp as the Scapegoat for His people.  And because Jesus has paid the penalty for our sin, paid it in full, once-for-all, God will remember our sin no more.  He will not—He cannot, because His justice forbids it—collect a second payment on a debt that has been fully paid.

Because God looks on us through the lens of the perfections of His precious Son, it is impossible for Him to continue to be angry and remember our sins; God poured out all His fury for our sins onto Christ as He hung on the cross.  And because of that, “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1).  Our sin debt has been paid in full; it is finished (John 19:30).

When we marinate awhile in the Gospel, we begin to enlarge our view of the vast blessing of God remembering and forgetting.  His covenant promises are never dependent upon our remembering, which is what makes them an everlasting covenant.  His promise to never leave us or forsake is everlasting.  His promise to free us from the bondage of the world, the flesh, and the devil is everlasting.  His promise to give us rest is everlasting.  His promise to remember our sins no more is everlasting.  And His promise to prepare a heavenly dwelling place for us is everlasting!

Our God truly is an AWESOME God!  And I think we would all agree that this is truly good news for those of us who remember stuff we would be better off forgetting, and forget stuff we would be better off remembering.  Glory be to God!  It all rests upon Him.

This is the Gospel.  This is grace for your race.  NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

When was the last time you overlooked an offense?  You know, when someone said something that got under your skin . . . when someone did something that really ticked you off.  Perhaps it was the time someone changed their plans without telling you and that disrupted your plans.  Or when someone put together a special invitation list that included everyone and his uncle—except you!

We’ve all been offended.  And we have all offended others.  Today I want to tell you about the Gospel power that helps us overlook offenses, regardless of the cost.

Fools show their annoyance at once, but the prudent overlook an insult.

(Proverbs 12:16)

A person’s wisdom yields patience; it is to one’s glory to overlook an offense.

(Proverbs 19:11)

It is so much easier to go on the offensive when we are offended!  We build our case, review the record of wrongs, and plan our counterattack.  But Scripture tells us there is another way that will yield better fruit, fruit that will last: that fruit is overlooking offenses.

To be sure, there are some offenses that demand our attention and our appropriate response.  But I think we would all confess before the Lord that we are far too thin-skinned and ready to get back at those who have offended us, often in the most trifling matters.

Because it is not in our DNA to overlook offenses, we need to rest more securely in the truths of the Gospel.  The Gospel frees us to overlook when we are offended and slighted.  We can overlook the thoughtless mistake.  We can overlook the quick quip.  We can overlook the snide remark.  We can overlook the rude comment.  We can overlook the insidious insult.  The Gospel not only empowers us to overlook offenses, it empowers us to stop trying to vindicate ourselves to the offender or the onlookers.  In the eyes of the only One who truly matters, we are already vindicated by His blood poured out on Golgotha’s Hill.

Jesus endured every imaginable offense to make us His.  He endured the offense of unbelief.  He endured the offense of betrayal.  He endured the offense of false accusations.  He endured the offense of denial.  He endured the offense of ridicule, gossip, and slander.  He endured every offense, including cruel scourging, tearing thorns, and crushing nails.  And at the end, He said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  So the Gospel is ready to help us endure and overlook offenses, and it will do it by a Gospel-thickening of our skin.

One final point!  It is in our DNA to want to get back at those who have offended us.  “Vengeance is mine!” says the one who was offended.  But the glorious Gospel frees us from our incessant need to want to get even.  Here is where the grace of forgiveness kicks in and allows us to pay down the debt of an offense rather than demanding that the offender pay it.

Only the Gospel can help us steward our emotions, actions, and words to respond to an offense in a way that glorifies God and brings good to others.  Remember, overlooking offenses is a decision; and it is a decision we must make every time we are offended.

This is the Gospel.  This is grace for your race.  NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!  

The trees of the Lord are watered abundantly,
the cedars of Lebanon that he planted.

 — Psalm 104:16

Lebanon is a land of immense beauty and important history.  Located on the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea, the Lebanon mountain range rises majestically from the sea to snow-capped mountain peaks that reach over 10,000 feet.  Deep in the mountains in the north are the famous Cedars of Lebanon which are often referred to in the Bible.  We read about the cedars of Lebanon in the books of Kings, Song of Songs, Isaiah, and in the Psalms. These trees, which can grow up to 130 feet tall with a trunk size of over 8 feet in diameter, are symbolic of every Christian for a two important reasons.

1. THEY ARE PLANTED BY GOD

As the cedars of Lebanon are planted by God, so too is the Christian.  It is not a work of man and machinery scattering seed that sprouts up into the cedars of Lebanon . . . any more than it is the work of man and machinery scattering seed that sprouts up into Christians.  It is only the hand of God that plants the seed in the right soil to produce the desired results, whether He is planting cedars of Lebanon or Christians of the Lord.

2. THEY ARE WATERED BY GOD

The second reason these majestic trees are symbolic of Christians is the fact that you will not find an irrigation system watering them.  In His providence, God not only plants these beautiful trees, but He also waters them and cares for them . . . just as He does for the Christian.  The grace that planted the Christian in the soil of salvation is the same grace that sanctifies him as he grows to maturity.  God does not plant the Christian and then expect him to grow on his own, by the spiritual sweat of his brow.  God graciously creates the perfect environment for growth and maturity.  For “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).

What a comfort to know that our faith is rooted in the work of God and not our own!  Is there anyone reading this today who would take any comfort whatsoever in knowing that you were the one who was responsible for your salvation?  Have you not done many things that would cause you to doubt the reality of your faith if you were the one who was responsible for generating it in the first place?  I know I have, and it is only in knowing that I played absolutely no role in my salvation that I am secure in knowing it is real, even in the face of my many failures.

In the very same way, is it not also a comfort to know that our Christian growth is rooted in the work of God and not our own?  To be sure, God’s Word commands us to work and to practice the disciplines of grace: Bible study, prayer, communion with the saints, service, giving, fasting, etc.  But it is not in the practice of these and other disciplines that we grow.  If this were so, our growth would be dependent upon our effort.

Thank God it doesn’t work that way!  Who has the strength and stick-to-itiveness to continually stay on track?  The grace that made us Christians matures us as Christians.  What starts in grace continues in grace, and will one day be completed in grace.  God finishes everything He starts and that includes you!  (Philippians 1:6).

This is the Gospel.  This is grace for your race.  NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

As a pastor, I often find myself in a counseling situation confronted with people who have only one goal: to “fix the problem.”  The problem with just “fixing problems” is the same things keep breaking again and again and again.  The solution is to move beyond fixing problems to finding perspective—and the only perspective that will truly fix problems is God’s!

Let me put it this way: we need to develop a biblical perspective (or “worldview,” if you prefer) about the life we are living.  Troubles in marriage simply will not be fixed by addressing the troubles in marriage.  Difficulties at the office simply will not be corrected by addressing difficulties at the office.  Challenges in raising our children simply will not be overcome by addressing the challenges in raising our children.  We need the appropriate perspective, and that perspective is found in the pages of Scripture.

Only the Bible makes sense out of the stuff of life.  Only the Bible identifies our universal problem—sin—and the universal solution to that problem: the Savior, whose name is Jesus Christ.  All the marriage books and professional counseling in the world will not “fix” a marriage . . . without the Savior; they only make them worse.  Business seminars on conflict resolution and communication will not fix difficulties at the office . . . without the Savior; they only make them worse.  Parenting workshops will not help us overcome the challenges we face in raising our children . . . without the Savior; they only make them worse.

You see, without a biblical perspective we cannot understand what is most important:

• The glory of God
• The sinfulness of man
• The fallen condition of everything (people, places, and things)
• The grace of the Gospel of Jesus Christ
• The reality of the devil and hell
• The reality of heaven
• The certainty of eternity

Oh, sure, we can fix problems for a while.  Behavior can be modified and restrained with a little extra “want to” for enough personal gain.  Whether it is the desire to avoid pain or achieve pleasure, behavior can and often is modified and changed . . . for a while.  But only the truths of the Gospel can truly transform behavior, because only the truths of the Gospel can change the heart.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?  (Jeremiah 17:9)

For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. (Matthew 15:19)

The human heart is far too corrupted by sin to be changed by behavior modification.  Only an all-out cleansing of the heart by the truths of the Gospel will move a person beyond behavior modification to heart transformation.  Only looking at our lives from the biblical perspective will cause our hearts to beat less for ourselves and more for our Savior.  And when our hearts are beating more for our Savior, God is glorified, and all those we come in contact with are benefited and blessed!

This is the Gospel.  This is grace for your race.  NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

Have you ever wondered what life would be like if you had it all?  I am sure we’ve all daydreamed about such an existence at one time or another, but I can tell you that it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be.  As a pastor, I have counseled those who looked like they had it all but were cracking up behind closed doors.  A few cracked all the way through, and I found myself standing over open graves alongside broken hearts.

Why?  Because the promise of “having it all” simply cannot deliver! Those folks who found it to be an empty promise learned the hard way what C. S. Lewis explained in Mere Christianity:

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world (something supernatural and eternal).

This profound truth has been lived out in the lives of far too many who desperately sought their identity, purpose, meaning, significance, happiness, fulfillment, and joy in something smaller than God.  Have you ever wondered why God began His Ten Commandments with “I am the Lord your God . . . you shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3)?  Because God knew the ultimate end of chasing after “other gods,” and that end is a meaningless existence marked by self-rule, self-focus, self-atonement . . . and ultimately self-desctruction.

Anything that has replaced God on the throne of your life is an “other god.”  It is anything you have made more important than God.  It is anything that rules your heart and shapes your life.  It is anything you believe will do for you what only God can do.  It is anything so important and central to your life that, if you lost it, your life would be ruined.  In other words, ANYTHING can be your “other god.”  Here are just a few examples:

• Career
• Family
• Romance
• Beauty
• Brains
• Social Status
• Applause of Man

As you can see, there are a great many things that can hold title to the functional trust of our hearts.  Yet none of these things will meet us in our place of deepest need.  C. S. Lewis found that desire which no experience in this world could satisfy . . . and that desire is God.

Regardless of where this might find you today, if you have been chasing after “other gods” in search of having it all, there is hope: His name is Jesus Christ.  The way forward is to turn back—turn back to the One True God, who loved you so much that He chose to take your place on the cross to claim you as His own.  Jesus is the answer to your nagging questions and the solution to your pressing problems.  Jesus is the only One who can truly meet your every need and fulfill your deepest desires.

I can tell you from personal experience that there is a time when having it all is enough.  It is when our “ALL” is the ALMIGHTY!

This is the Gospel.  This is grace for your race.  NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

When was the last time you let your history mess with your destiny?  I can tell you when it was for me.  It was when I was wasting valuable time trying to rewrite it!  Our history is what it is—history—and spending time bemoaning it or trying to rewrite it is wasted time that distracts from the destiny God is calling you to do.

The most common way we let our history mess with our destiny is when we bog down in blaming others.  We blame others for our failures.  We blame others for our current station in life.  We blame others for our lack of meaning and purpose in life.  Blame-shifting is simply the blank page upon which we attempt to re-write our history and justify in our minds why we are not moving in the direction God would have us go.

There is a solution to overcoming the problem of history messing with destiny.  The Gospel!

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

(Romans 8:1-4)

For those who understand the truths of the Gospel, history can never mess with destiny.  Paul tells us that there is NO CONDEMNATION for those who are in Jesus.  We don’t have to waste time grieving over our past.  We don’t need to shame or blame people in our past.  There’s no need to rewrite our histories.  We never again need to sink into blaming others to help us deal with our current circumstances in life.

Jesus has set us free from our past, no matter what was in it.  We need not fear our past.  We need not deny our past.  We need not blame others for our past.  We need not be chained to our past.  We need to simply embrace the truths of the Gospel, which assure us that we have been set free from our past and from the desire to recreate it or whitewash it in order to make ourselves look better or feel better about it.

The devil is a liar; he wants your history to mess with your destiny!  So he keeps trying to get you to focus on a painful past, littered with broken dreams, unfulfilled promises, and unrealized potential.  Don’t waste your time trying to rewrite all that old news.  You have been freed from the pain of your past and can submit to God’s call into the promise of your future. The prophet Micah rejoiced in the freedom God has granted us from our past history.

You will again have compassion on us;

you will tread our sins underfoot

and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.  (Micah 7:19)

God is for you.  He has not only wiped the slate of your past clean; He has broken it and promised to never use it again.  He has hurled that slate into the depths of the sea.  Every time we attempt to rewrite our history in order to make ourselves look or feel better, we are denying the power the Gospel.  We are forgetting, just as Peter warned we might, that we have been cleansed from our past sins (2 Peter 1:9).  We are ignoring Jesus’ victory cry from the cross (John 19:30) that all that history is finished!

The Gospel is not only the power of salvation; it is the power of sanctification that increases our reflection of Christ.  It is the power that propels us past whatever history we have, knowing that we are completely forgiven and unconditionally loved.  These Gospel truths free us from living in the past so that we can lean toward our future.

This is the Gospel.  This is grace for your race.  NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

The dictionary definition of complacent is “to be contented to a fault; self-satisfied and unconcerned, especially when accompanied by unawareness of actual dangers or deficiencies.”  Sadly this describes far too many in the church today.  They have grown so comfortable with their spiritual standing that they have become complacent, to the point where they are living out a Christless Christianity.

Complacency is never good; contentment is another thing altogether. The Holy Spirit inspired the apostle Paul to encourage us:

I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.  (Philippians 4:11-13)

When the apostle Paul said he had learned to “be content,” we misunderstand if we believe he was equating content with satisfied.  Sure, we all need to learn to be content with what we have, but that is to be in the context of pursuing what God has set before us.  The rhythm of redemption is not to rest on our laurels and succumb to the cruel current of complacency.  We are to continue pressing on until our race is over.

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.  (Philippians 3:12-14)

In Paul’s contentment, he continued straining forward and pressing on in the direction God was calling him to go.  Paul knew that being “satisfied” would only lead to complacency and watering down his impact in expanding the cause of Christ.

Do you think Paul was ever satisfied with the level of ministry he was accomplishing?  If he was, he probably would have rested while behind prison walls.  Honestly, if it had been you . . . do you think you might have sulked and pouted at this unpleasant turn of events? “Lord,” we might well whine, “I did all that great ministry for You, and this is what I get?!” Yet we know that most of what Paul contributed to the New Testament was written while he was in chains.  He never stopped pressing on toward the goal.

Paul never grew complacent about his relationship with Jesus.  We know that his heart continually ached to be in the presence of his Lord, yet he knew he still had work to do, because God had not called him home.  Paul was not subject to the cruel current of complacency.

What about you?  There are so many areas in life where we can grow complacent.  Here are just a few:

• After many years of marriage
• When we have finally climbed the ladder of career success
• When we have reached a comfortable level of service in our church

The call to every Christian is to continually press on and pursue God’s perfect plan for our lives.  And those who are His by faith know we never reach our final destination until we get to the other side.  The cruel current of complacency is not to be the mark of the committed Christian.

It has been wisely said, “It is far better to burn out than rust out!”  Now, I am not encouraging burn out; if you’ve been around the church for any length of time, you’ve seen that happen to great men and women of God who did not find balance in life.  Remember that a life without balance leads to an unbalanced life.

But let me close by encouraging every member of the church to be active in playing their part, straining forward until the moment they are no longer needed . . . and that will be the moment when God calls us home.

This is the Gospel.  This is grace for your race.  NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

I’m sure you remember the children’s rhyme, “Stick and Stones.”  The rhyme dates back to 1872; it was designed to encourage children who were being verbally bullied to rise above the bully’s hurtful words and refrain from any kind of retaliation.  The version familiar to most of us is:

Sticks and stones

will break my bones

but names will never hurt me.

To be sure, stick and stones can break our bones, but if you have ever been on the receiving end of name-calling, you know this chant is just not true.  Names hurt.  Often they hurt far worse and cut more deeply than any stick or stone.  Just ask the child whose father said time and time again, “You’re an idiot!” or “You’ll never amount to anything!” or “I’m sorry we ever had you!” or “You make me sick!” or worse.

Harsh words outlive the days of our youth; they wound us as adults too.  Harsh words, fueled by raw emotion, spill out in a heated argument between a husband and wife where nobody wins.  Then there are those angry outbursts between friends that fracture relationships and often cause their ruin.

The words of the reckless pierce like swords, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.  (Proverbs 12:18)

The Bible makes it clear that our words can either build or destroy . . . heal or hurt . . . comfort or crush.  The words we speak into the lives of others are either considered life-giving (deposits) or death-dealing (withdrawals).

So . . . what does your word bank account balance look like these days?  What would those closest to you say?

I’ve worked as a coach for decades, and I can tell you that the athletic arena of competition is fertile ground for hurtful words.  Countless kids have been driven away—not only out of sports but, out of any kind of physical activity as adults, simply because of the damage done by the words of the reckless—coaches, parents, fans, and other players.

I wince every time I remember my own grievous failure.  I was coaching my son Brock’s little league baseball team.  I was always good at encouraging and lifting up the players, but at times I could be hard on Brock, especially being one of those coaches who never wanted it said that I “played favorites” or “babied” my son.  One night we lost a game that would have put us in the championship game.  When we went into extra innings after a poor decision by Brock that let the tying run score, I singled him out in front of the whole team: “YOU cost us this game!”

It still breaks my heart to think about what I did that night, but I thank God that He has grace enough to cover our mistakes—all of our mistakes.  Now, six years later, Brock is playing for his high school team and I am a dad in the stands cheering him and all the other players on.  Whenever I speak of that awful night when teaching, or preaching, Brock will jokingly say, “You know dad, I’m sure I’ll get over it in a few decades!”

If you have been on the giving or the receiving end of hurtful words know this: the truths of the Gospel have given all those who are in Christ new names—“HIS”!  It is only because Jesus has renamed us in the Gospel as HIS that we are lifted above every damaging and destructive name we have spoken into the life of another or have received ourselves.  Gospel renaming redeems us from a past littered with wicked words, nasty names, and destructive dialogue.  The Gospel empowers us to rise above the names others give to us, knowing that we are HIS, and it empowers us to speak redemptive rhetoric to all those we encounter.

Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body.  (Proverbs 16:24)

And there are no words more gracious, more sweet, and more healing than Christ’s triumphant cry from the cross: “It is finished!”

This is the Gospel.  This is grace for your race.  NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!