It's too easy to love darkness. Too easy to think we are doing right when we are doing wrong. For many years I worried about behavior modification and struggled to maintain the right appearance, just like the Pharisees' whitewashed tombstones I so self righteously scorned. I kept trying to jump higher and higher, but my heart kept pulling me lower and lower. Finally, I collapsed in a heap of exhaustion and failure at the Cross. It was there I began my discovery of grace.
In Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller writes about the struggle we all have with accepting grace.
Enlightenment came in an unexpected place: a grocery store...While standing in line at the checkout counter, the lady in front of me pulled out food stamps to pay for her groceries...It was obvious as she unfolded the currency that she, I, and the checkout girl were quite uncomfortable with the interaction. I wished there was something I could do. I wished I could pay for her groceries myself, but to do so would have been to cause a greater scene....The woman never lifted her head as she organized her bags of groceries to set them into her cart. She walked away from the checkout stand in the sort of still movements a person uses when they know they are being watched.
On the drive over the mountains that afternoon, I realized it was not the woman who should be pitied, it was me. Somehow I had come to believe that because a person is in need, they are candidates for sympathy, not just charity. It was not that I wanted to buy her groceries, the government was already doing that. I wanted to buy her dignity. And yet, by judging her, I was the one taking her dignity away...
I love to give to charity, but I don't want to be charity. This is why I have so much trouble with grace.
He goes on to tell about discovering that his prayer requests in church were always for others, not himself. He told himself that was proper, his struggles weren't that bad. But a friend told him, "Don, you are not above the charity of God."
I am too prideful to accept the grace of God. It isn't that I want to earn my own way to give something to God, it's that I want to earn my own way so I won't be charity.
As I drove over the mountain that afternoon, realizing I was too proud to receive God's grace, I was humbled. Who am I to think myself above God's charity? And why would I forsake the riches of God's righteousness for the dung of my own ego?
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Rick says that I will love God because He first loved me. I will obey God because I love God. But if I cannot accept God's love, I cannot love Him in return, and I cannot obey Him. Self discipline will never make us feel righteous or clean; accepting God's love will.The ability to accept God's grace and ferocious love is all the fuel we need to obey him in return....If we hear in our inner ear, a voice saying we are failures, we are losers, we will never amount to anything, this is the voice of Satan trying to convince the bride that the groom does not love her. This is not the voice of God. He woos us with kindness, He changes our character with the passion of His love....
In exchange for our humility and willingness to accept the charity of God, we are given a kingdom. And a beggar's kingdom is better than a proud man's delusion.
It is a daily struggle to let go of that prideful delusion and embrace the Cross. I think that's why Jesus invites us to take it up daily. Embracing the Cross requires two empty hands.
"Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ," Philippians 3:8 (KJV)
