Yet Not I, But The Grace of God That Was With Me
1 Corinthians 15:10
“ But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. “ (NIV)
This is for all those who preached grace and talked grace, but held onto some forms of legalism in the deep crevices of their hearts. This is my story and I pray it may set free, someone who was struggling as I was. This one is for you!
2 Samuel 22: 21-25 reads, “The Lord dealt with me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands he rewarded me. 22 For I have kept the ways of the Lord and have not wickedly departed from my God. 23 For all his rules were before me, and from his statutes I did not turn aside. 24 I was blameless before him, and I kept myself from guilt. 25 And the Lord has rewarded me according to my righteousness, according to my cleanness in his sight.” (ESV)
From a young age David set his life toward God. He meant to keep the ways of the Lord and live according to the word of God, trusting that the Lord was faithful to his promises and would credit him with righteousness. When we read this, in this New Testament age, we think that David was sounding a little self righteous with this “According to my righteousness”. “according to the cleanness of my hands”. King David was a great man, but he did sin. And some of sins were ubber serious. But I realize that he can say these things because he received the forgiveness of sins from God. He received the grace of God and that is how he can be declared righteous in the sight of God and that is how he can say that is hands are clean. He could have confidence that he is blameless from God’s point of view and that he has fulfilled all of the law’s demands, only because of God’s grace. David knew this salvation, this justification apart from works. Romans 4:6-9 reads, “just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: 7 “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; 8 blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.” (ESV) It was not something new to King David. Abraham himself was considered righteous by believing, before he was circumcised. (Romans 4:1-12)
As King David could have sought many different kinds of rewards, but for him the greatest reward was being found righteous in God’s sight. Look at verse 25, “And the Lord has rewarded me according to my righteousness, according to my cleanness in his sight.” What was God’s reward? God’s reward for King David was that he was delivered from the hand of his enemies and that his kingdom was established and upheld. He received the love and forgiveness and the peace of God in his heart. He also knew that his body would not see decay and that he would not be abandoned to the grave, but would experience resurrection and eternal life in the kingdom of God with God, forever. This is the greatest reward and it is given to us, not because of our works, but because of the pure grace of God.
Holding onto the grace of God and knowing that we are justified by the grace of God alone is an imperative. We can not live without it. Over the last few decades of Christian living I knew this and I held onto the grace of God. But there was another part of my heart that held onto salvation by works. I was the type of Christian who quietly and privately held onto legalism while talking about grace. But the effect of this on my life could not be ignored. I felt “right” and accepted by God and my peers if I was always engaged in mission, always doing something positive and related to my mission and calling in my life. If I deviated, even a little, or took some rest, there would be feelings of failure, guilt and fruitless feelings brewing in my heart. If I was not bearing outward fruit in my life, then my solution was to work harder. Maybe I needed to simply reposition my life within the paradigm I was operating in, and from that new vantage point, work harder. If I suffered a few more years doing the same thing and I would somehow make breakthrough. With human effort I tried to keep my “hands clean” and never to turn away from the Lord. I attempted to live a blameless life by obeying what I knew was the law to the Lord, all the while telling the world, “by the grace of God I am what I am.”
What is the end of that verse? “No, I worked harder than all of them. Yet not I, but the grace of God that was within me.” (1 Cor 15:10, NIV) I was operating on the premise that if I had the faith to hold onto the grace of Jesus, then automatically I would work hard, even striving to work as hard as Apostle Paul. I literally ignored “Yet not I, but the grace of God that was within me.” I knew very little the difference between the working hard and the grace of God; the difference between human effort versus divine inspiration; human strength versus spiritual strength. What was the end result of this striving and seeking to be right before God using my human efforts? It was years of depression, anger and frustration, unreal expectations on family members, and joyless Christian living with no relationships with the greater body of Christ. I had no way to be set free. Who do I blame? Myself. I was the leader of a single family house church for 14 years with just me and my family and few Bible students who came and went. I let it happen. For over twenty years, I ignored pieces of the Bible. I thought depression was part of the package of suffering for Christ. I was willing to live in it my secret legalism. I even promoted it.
It took my wife’s courage and “wifely” wisdom to let me know that something was not right. It has been a very tough two years, coming out of my old ways, but by God’s grace I have been digging deep in the crevices of my mind and heart and sweeping away vestiges of legalism. I have been making strides towards understanding more fully, “by the grace of God I am what I am.” and “Yet not I but the grace of God that was within me.” And even my recurrent nightmares of not measuring up, have gone away, being replaced with dreams of being proactive and overcoming. (That is another story.)
Thanks so much, Kevin, for sharing this. The “little legalisms” have similarly plagued me for over two decades until I felt so angry, irritable, frustrated and especially joyless and without peace some years ago. Worst of all, I didn’t quite know why, so I mainly blamed others (at least in my heart and hopefully not outwardly and verbally, but then again maybe I did, but conveniently forgot that I had blamed others!).
‘If I deviated, even a little, or took some rest, there would be feelings of failure, guilt and fruitless feelings brewing in my heart.’
‘What was the end result of this striving and seeking to be right before God using my human efforts? It was years of depression, anger and frustration, unreal expectations on family members, and joyless Christian living with no relationships with the greater body of Christ.’
herein we see the bigger trauma on our children/students: but thanks be to God the Holy Spirit can restore stolen fruits of joy, peace, love, etc; the “vineyard tenants” must pay God rent/produce good fruit, or get out & be replaced by true kingdom workers: HALLELUJAH!
Here is an amazing testimony to the grace of God.
Thank you also from my side. It’s so good to see people like you finally coming on and starting to reflect what their were doing openly.
You’re right, we all have to blame ourselves in the first place. Yet doing so we should not overlook what caused us to develop these unbiblical mindsets and unhealthy practices. I know you did not invent these things in your mind from thin air. Someone implanted these ideas in your mind, someone imposed these ideas onto you. We should expose clearly what these false ideas are and in which ways they were imposed onto us. We need to start naming and framing things. It were not things which “just happened” and we let them happen. No, the happening of these things was systematically, and we were systematically trained to let these things happen.
I agree that there are systemic problems that must be addressed. But also I have not been hearing enough of our own responsibility for allowing things to happen. After all our God is with us and he is trying to communicate truth to us 24/7. Why was I not listening years ago if he is in my heart, which God is? That is all I am trying to say.
‘I have not been hearing enough of our own responsibility for allowing things to happen.’ sorry, i for one shall no longer take personal responsibility for systemic failures: if Christianity ain’t got it right after 2000yrs & i had to find Christ/Spirit in God myself, then i am willing to share blessed new insights, but shall not wallow in past humanity’s/religion’s inadequacies/roadblocks that only impeded my progress, rather speed me on my way.. (hallelujah)
Kevin, your last comment is intriguing and raises many questions in my mind.
You asked, “Why was I not listening years ago if he is in my heart, which God is?”
Behind this question there seems to be an assumption: That every Christian should automatically know how to discern the inner voice of the Holy Spirit who speaks to him/her personally. And that if we aren’t listening to this voice, it’s because we are sinning.
In my experience, however, that practice of discernment — learning to hear the voice of God — does not happen automatically. It needs to be cultivated. It needs to be learned from others and taught to others. The practice of discernment is rooted in spiritual disciplines that go beyond Bible study and the familiar things that we were taught in ubf.
And it is not merely an individual activity; it happens in churches and in families. You learned a great deal from your wife; she helped you to start discerning. My wife did the same for me, and continues to do so, and I do the same for her. When the relationships among us are healthy and loving and Christ-centered, then there’s a whole lotta discernin’ goin’ on. But when the relationships are screwed up, when the relationships are ideological and superficial and pragmatic and abusive, that process of discernment gets screwed up too.
And if you were discipled in a faith community that had little understanding of the Christian contemplative traditions and spiritual formation — a community with a narrow, hierarchical, top-down educational model — a community where innovative learning and nonconformist thinking and connections to the greater Body of Christ were often discouraged — a community where one leader exerted a great deal of control and dictated (what he believed to be) the will of God to everyone else — then when did you ever have the chance to learn the art of personal spiritual discernment?
What I’m trying to say is this. We who are are steeped in the traditions of modern evangelicalism tend to place a great deal of burden on the individual believer to discern right from wrong. I think we underestimate how much of our ability (or inability) to hear God’s voice depends on the quality of relationships with significant people in our lives and on the culture of our faith community.
Kevin, please don’t take my feisty comment as critism of your article. I thought it was very good. I’m just stirring up the pot, as I often do.
“Why was I not listening years ago if he is in my heart?”
Your question is very good, and I am asking myself similar questions. Part of my anger is also anger about myself because I did not listen. On the other hand, I must say that in UBF I systematically un-learned to take any thought that raised in my own heart seriously. So many times, when I did something that my heart told was right, the “servant of God” told me was wrong, and vice versa. So there was a conflict. Whom should I trust more, the servant of God, my everlasting calling to be a UBF shepherd, or my own inner voice, which could be God speaking to me, but could as well be my lazy, unspiritual, family-centered, humanist, individualist ego, as UBF leaders warned me, or could be just “feeligns” and “emotions” which should be ignored as UBF leaders told me? The only things that counted in UBF was “absolute obedience” in a “leap of faith”. Both are pretty incompatible with what you feel in your heart. You just jump. You just blindly follow. Feelings and thoughts of my own had to be neglected. My chapter director gave us examples in which seemingly foul things turned to be good in the end. What we learned was that there was actually no way for us to discern good and bad, we should only follow the direction given by our shepherd, as obedient sheep. The system and our teachers systematically discouraged us from searching for the voice of God in our heart and taking our own thoughts seriously.
I believe there is one simple answer to our question, namely: psychology. Many of the reasons why we behaved like we behaved have very simple psychological explanations. We all are human beings. As such, we are easily fooled by even simple mind tricks. In my view, groups like UBF have established a system of mind tricks which emphasize each other and create somethings called “mind control”. You know this from classical cults. You could also ask: Why did, say, the people in Jonestown, kill themselves? Why were they so stupid? Do you think they all were idiots? Do you think they had wicked minds? I don’t think so. They were well-meaning people, searching for God and trying to please him. But they had been systematically mislead, step by step, using mind tricks, group pressure etc. We are all human beings. It’s easy to fool us and mislead us.
‘Do you think they all were idiots?’ obviously not, since they like kool-aid:)
‘So many times, when I did something that my heart told was right, the “servant of God” told me was wrong, and vice versa. So there was a conflict.’
therein lies the inherent schizoaffective-like damage imposed on adult, & worse yet child, psyche: do we follow our inner voice/gut feeling from God or the external religious authority who ‘knows best from God’ SUPPOSEDLY:::(
‘What we learned was that there was actually no way for us to discern good and bad, we should only follow the direction given by our shepherd, as obedient sheep. The system and our teachers systematically discouraged us from searching for the voice of God in our heart and taking our own thoughts seriously.’ WOW, evil direction incarnate, opposite of God’s healthy/holy intent (now hell fire nipping at heels, but still time to repent..) HALLELUJAH!
‘In my experience, however, that practice of discernment — learning to hear the voice of God — does not happen automatically. It needs to be cultivated. It needs to be learned from others and taught to others.’
‘When the relationships among us are healthy and loving and Christ-centered, then there’s a whole lotta discernin’ goin’ on. But when the relationships are screwed up, when the relationships are ideological and superficial and pragmatic and abusive, that process of discernment gets screwed up too.’
we must hold the feet of religion to the fire to repent of ungodly practices, until it learns to help seekers/believers hear God individually/collectively; if it fails to do so, the spiritual damage (‘bleeding’) must be stopped & replaced by individual ‘to Christ Alone’ spirituality, with Holy Spirit fruit/helps cultivation, & when possible sincere collective worship of God in Spirit/Truth:
HALLELUJAH!
You are right. When Julie sensed that something was not right and needed to change, both she and myself did not know what that meant. But we knew we could not stay as we were. This could be the stirring of discernment. Eventually God led us. My point in my previous statement comes from thinking like a nurse. If a nurse is brought to trial about a malpractice suit, the nurse will be judged on 2 things…did the nurse follow hospital protocol and did the nurse do what the average nurse would do anywhere? The fact that the hospital itself may not be operating right and the nurse was swept along not knowing right from wrong may not be a defense.
‘The fact that the hospital itself may not be operating right’: have no fear the economy has fixed that, now the government (fbi/etc) is pursuing greed/graft to reclaim funds (like recent closure of Sacred Heart Hospital where i used to work:)
yes the Lord, before His return, is finally holding systems accountable, not letting individuals take all the blame (just the systems theory social worker coming out in me:)
I am with you on that, Kevin. When you say that you “sensed something was not right”, do you mean you sense it only now, or was that feeling always there? Personally, I must say I had such a nagging feeling all the time from the very beginning to the end, but in the phase where I was deeply involved, I was able to suppress ist. We learned to dismiss is as coming from our worldly mind. In order to follow our mission, we had to ignore any such nagging feelings, and to distrust our feelings in general.
In your example you said “the nurse will be judged on 2 things: did the nurse follow hospital protocol and did the nurse do what the average nurse would do anywhere?” What if these 2 things contradicted each other, i.e. if the hospital protocol prescribed things that no average nurse would do? Because that is exactly the case we have to deal with. I am pretty sure many things that are considered normal or mandatory in UBF are not what average Christians do. Also, your example assumes that the nurse had a proper education so she knows what you do. In our case, we got our education in the same dysfunctional hospital, so we never learned or quickly re-learned what an average nurse would do.
In the end, though, I agree with you that the nurse had no defense if she did things that violated common sense human ethics. As another comparision, we could take the “I only followed orders” defense used by some German subleaders after WW2. I totally agree with you on that this kind of defense is not valid. The whole concept of “absolute obedience” is not a valid. If you trusted in this principle, you were fooled. In reality, as Luther said, “to go against conscience is neither right nor safe.” As a German, I always felt something was wrong when the Koreans tried to teach me obedience.
So, you’re right, the individual guilt stays. Still, what happened in Germany in the time of Hitler can not be explained and understood if we concentrate only on the individual guilt of the German people or the sub-leaders, without talking about the real leaders like Hitler and Goebbels and the ideology that they propagated. This ideology must be analyzed and dissected: Why was it so appealing to people? How did their propaganda work? Also, which mechanisms did they use to stifle dissent? How could they gain power so quickly and hold it? How did everything happen, what where their roots? What were the fundamental flaws in their ideology? What were their fundamental crimes? This all must be properly processed. If you can’t pinpoint all these things very clearly, how can you make sure that such things will never happen again?
We need both, admission of our own guilt, but also exposal of the whole system that mislead us lower-ranking members, and that also mislead the leaders. We need to speak about the psychological mechanisms behind it, because it worked by exploiting such mechanisms. As I recently wrote, that system aggravated our failures. It aggravated not only the sheepish behavior of the rank and file, but also the authoritarian behavior of the leaders. Recognizing this also helps us to put their sin into perspective, because in the end, we both were victims of the same evil system. Even though this does not take our and their guilt away, it puts things in better perspective and helps us understand why we and other people behaved the way they did. It also helps us understand and underestimate the danger and power and dynamics of such systems. Without seeing the larger picture, without naming and framing the system that kept us all enslaved, we stay confused about what really happened.
Of course I wanted to say that it helps us to “not underestimate the danger and power and dynamics of such systems.”
Chris, in your comments above you mentioned psychology and the defense of Nazi war criminals that “I only followed orders.”
I recently ran across two articles that touched on this psychology.
The first article reports on what a team of psychologists found when they examined Nazi criminals on trial at Nuremberg. They found
* in many ways, these war criminals seemed like very ordinary people; they didn’t appear evil at all
* they routinely avoided responsibility for their own actions, placing all the blame on their leaders
* they lacked sensitivity and human empathy, and they never felt guilty or had any bad dreams about what they had done
* their personal development had been stunted by a lack of parental love and unconscious hostility toward their fathers
That article can be found here:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/07/inside-the-nazi-mind-at-the-nuremberg-trials.html#url=/articles/2013/09/07/inside-the-nazi-mind-at-the-nuremberg-trials.html
Another article is about the psychology of “good people” who cheat. Although they know their actions are wrong, and they do feel bad about what they have done, they find comfort by convincing themselves that
* they don’t cheat as much as others do, and
* cheating is not their normal behavior, but something they do only once in a while, so when they cheat it’s not representative of their true selves (“that’s not who I am”)
Neither of those is very surprising, but it was interesting to see how it was demonstrated experimentally.
http://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2013/11/20/how_cheaters_comfort_themselves_108367.html
Another aspect of the Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg that echoes some things that Chris has said in the past:
* Those men never set out to have evil lives. They all seemed to be normal, good people who fell into their evildoing more by accident, through a sequence of bad decisions that they made incrementally over time.
‘their personal development had been stunted by a lack of parental love and unconscious hostility toward their fathers’: yeah the joy robbed by religion damaged parent/child relationships, but God Alone must repair the damage man’s ulterior motives have done.
Brother Kevin,
Thank you for your sincere and personal article. There was one line that you wrote “He could have confidence that he is blameless from God’s point of view and that he has fulfilled all of the law’s demands.” Then you talked about how you held onto salvation by grace but in many ways lived from a place of works. Sounds like me in so many ways in fact it was the little legalistic ways of my own walk that I would say crippled my love for God and realizing his love for me. I also agree with you that blaming yourself is a more healthy way of going forward. However, who we blame is not the issue, it’s God’s amazing grace that God led you to a low point so that you had to almost completely rediscover the gospel. I can blame a lot of my personal legalism on UBF which has some truth. The one thing I wish I learned more than anything or that I wish someone told me is that I have the teacher of truth living inside of me and he is my ultimate Bible teacher. Some may think this is to much of a me centered gospel, we do need others but I also realized that I need to be FREE from others to really even begin to love others. But back on subject, when I was born again, God gave me 1 John 2:5-6 and 1 Peter 4:1-2 which have to do with being DONE with sin and living as Jesus did. But with my understanding of the gospel and my stuck identity in my sin and the pressure of bearing fruit I lost all hope in these verses. So I began to ask myself one question over a matter of about 6 years, “What does it mean that Jesus died and rose again?” Through time and circumstances, I began to completely rediscover the answer, but it was because I was asking it and it was because the Holy Spirit was answering. 1 John 4:17 was one of my strongest answers. “In this world we are like Christ.” I began to see that in Jesus my spirit was completely set free from the power of sin and death, but because my heart was so set of bearing fruit and pleasing the church I lived in a conflicted place which set me up for failure. What helped me the most was learning what it meant that Jesus lives in me through his spirit. Jesus made me a good tree! I just didn’t see that because i was so foucsed on the fruit! Fruit flows from who I am not what I do. The gospel is so much greater and complete than I had thought. When I began to live from that place as a son of the Living God and a set free sinner, sin and legalism began to loose and God’s truth began to win more. Anyways just wanted to say hi and that I’m so thankful that God is giving you the joy unspeakable and peace that surpasses all understanding. May God be with you and your family.
Thanks, John, “The one thing I wish I learned more than anything or that I wish someone told me is that I have the teacher of truth living inside of me and he is my ultimate Bible teacher.” – See more at: http://www.ubfriends.org/2013/11/19/yet-not-i-but-the-grace-of-god-that-was-with-me/#comment-11533
My own personal thought over the last few years is to preach, teach, share, converse, discuss, interact and live out the gospel as of first importance as best I can (Acts 20:24). After that I pray that I may get out of the way ASAP so that by God’s help I may allow for a far better One who can do the job that I can never ever do (Jn 3:8; 1 Cor 2:12-13).
I just wanted to interject. Thanks for all the comments. They are very helpful. Chris…the thing that I thought was not right, was my joylessness and my depressed feelings and the dynamics I had with my wife and kids. At first I couldn’t put a finger on it as to why, but I knew that this was not right. Jesus came that we may have live and have it to the full. The first inkling that something was wrong came years ago when I was listening and my family was singing some southern gospel songs. I was amazed that the writers and singers of these songs were so joyful about one topic….the kingdom of God. They sang about the resurrection. And they were so happy. This was the first light that began to breach the walls that surrounded my heart. Thank’s John jr for your words too. One thing I do wish is that someone would quickly counsel me, directing me to my true Bible teacher the Holy Spirit of God. Maybe people were, but I may not have been listening. Generally speaking I knew about grace, but inside I couldn’t let go of the words, “deny yourself daily” and my own interpretation on what that means. I always had to have this tension going on inside. To some it may sound blasphemous, after all Jesus tells us to deny ourselves daily and pick up our crosses and follow him. But the way I was applying it was leaving me, and those I was mentoring, mainly my family, unable to taste joy in the Lord. Why weren’t we as happy as those Southern Gospel singers sounded and wrote?
Kevin, when you’re talking about the “deny yourself daily” verses I know exactly what you mean. Every UBFer knows. The problem is that UBF has loaded these verses so much with a certain meaning that it is hard for us to even think about these verses because we are so biased and bound by our UBFish framework of thinking. For instance, the “cross” in these verses means in UBF immediately the “cross of missing”. Just google for “cross of mission” “luke 9:23” and you will find only UBF web pages that make a connection between these search phrases. Hardly any other Christian makes this association. “Deny yourself” is reduced to “do UBFish things” and “obey your UBF teachers”. Mission (not love) is the most important thing in your life. And then the thing gets even worse, because “mission” in UBF is not what an ordinary Christian understands as “mission”. “Mission” in UBF is only “campus mission”, and the most important aspect of that mission is not evangelization, but “recruiting new members” and “disciple training”. It’s all about increasing your own ministry to become more proud, and all about “training” and “drill” as if we were dogs. There is no freedom, love, joy, creativity, spontaneity, brotherhood in all of this. Because in order to dispense training, you need to be a drill sergeant, not a friend or a brother. And yes, we (the lower ranking UBFers) also trained ourselves very hard, so that our life became joyless. By the way, I did not see the higher ranking UBFers doing this. My chapter director never went to the campus for fishing, he did not have the problem of getting day job, family and UBF activities reconciled because he and his wife had no day jobs and did not partake in the “ordinary” UBFers activities. He never wrote and delivered his own sogams, was exempt from cooking, singing, grooming and other chores that we ordinary members and missionaries, who had day jobs, needed to do. And then he blamed us for not looking joyfully enough. And the same is true for all the other upper echelon directors including Samuel Lee. They imposed an ideology of absolute obedience and work upon us that they themselves did not want to follow. Particularly the “obedience” part. Samuel Lee told everybody to deny themselves and obey him, but he chose to obey nobody. He did not even listen to anybody. This is what is wrong with the whole UBF system. In such a system, you cannot be joyful. Joy comes when you start doing things freely out of love, not because you obey people and the rules of a system.
“my joylessness and my depressed feelings”
Many UBFers are struggling with this I guess. I remember a shepherdess who admitted these thoughts to our chapter director. He then showed her that well-known picture of the broad and narrow path (it was the only picture in our center), teaching her it was normal that the right way (the UBF way) was a miserable one, while the fun was all on the other side, the way to destruction. That shepherdess really was “edified” through this picture and continued to follow the narrow UBF path, believing this was the way to heaven. Actually if you take this seriously this also means that all those who do not live in the UBF ways are comdemned and will burn in a fire that is waiting for them at the end of their way. One couple of Korean missionaries who left my UBF chapter (for good reasons) needed more than a year to free themselves from the thought that they would burn in that fire because they “left their mission” and did not “deny themselves” any more, because these pictures were so deeply implanted in their minds. Apart from this fear, even if you’re going on the right way (the UBF way), how can you be happy with the thought that nearly everybody else outside of UBF will face destruction? If you have such a worldview, you simply cannot be joyful.
When I wrote “cross of missing” I meant “cross of mission” of course. I guess it was a Freudian slip because that interpretation is missing many things.
i like that, ‘cross of missing’: missing God’s point that He already forgave us, so why are we being used to try to earn our salvation for the sake of building a human kingdom that won’t last, while the heavenly kingdom is coming soon?
religion has robbed our joy, now we must crucify religious tendencies until the Holy Spirit saves us & restores our joy. HALLELUJAH!
‘“Deny yourself” is reduced to “do UBFish things” and “obey your UBF teachers”. Mission (not love) is the most important thing in your life.’
simple powermonger/benefit seeking lingo for ‘i gotta control u man or i’m out in the cold myself’: must be repented of or incur God’s answer
‘This is what is wrong with the whole UBF system. In such a system, you cannot be joyful. Joy comes when you start doing things freely out of love, not because you obey people and the rules of a system.’ so Holy Spirit fruit (joy) is robbed from the faithful masses to serve the dictatorial/pampered few, despicable; such systems must reform to obey the Lord Jesus Christ, or face replacement.. Hallelujah!
so religion has failed in it’s mission to show us how to accept Jesus’ finished work on the cross & seek/find Holy Spirit fruit/freedom; so now we must instruct religion to do so & control it until it can be trusted to ‘do it God’s way’, instead of any other way (frank sinatra did it his way:)
Kevin, I honestly had very little understanding for many years on what it meant to deny myself and follow Jesus. It doesn’t mean to deny the joys that this wonderful life has to offer for mission or anything that like that, what does the cross actually represent. It represents God’s love, and to me it means daily denying my self-centered person and living from who Christ is in me. the cross represents a horrible sin that was done against the Son of God and him responding in love, amen! And I have the power for that love to take over my life if I deny myself and take up the cross in the Holy Spirit. How we are taught this makes a huuuuuuuuuuuge difference. We are not denying to do, were denying to become. Were not taking up the cross of mission, were taking up the cross of becoming love, the very reason Christ died for us.
I felt a bit like crying after reading this article because I believe that awakening to the meaning of grace is what people in and out of UBF need. Why does grace become just another “spiritual” word in environments like UBF? Why does grace get diluted and rendered meaningless in phrases like, “I received much grace from your message/testimony…”
A UBF old timer I know recently sent a well-meaning message to a young person, a teenager, the gist of which was this: Learn and obey the Ten Commandments, have a strong desire to study hard and enter [Ivy League] University. Is that supposed to be the gospel of grace? Sounds like the “gospel” of “be a blessing” and “have a vision” that Samuel Lee was constantly drilling into people. Kevin, I think that UBF old timer I mentioned has never had your recent awakening and freedom. And I find that sad because he’s a good guy.
I blame the teaching. Ideas are powerful and stubborn things. What does a previously un-churched college-aged seeker learn first and often in UBF? Does he learn, “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved?” Or does he learn from his first few Bible studies that “man=mission” and a few weeks later, to “be a blessing” and “have a vision”. For so many, the message of grace will forever be overshadowed by the performance preoccupation.
‘For so many, the message of grace will forever be overshadowed by the performance preoccupation.’ such religion has damaged our lives & our children, only the Holy Spirit can redeem healthy holy living out of the ashes of demanded self-effort & modelled self-glory..