Grace Talk

So many of you have written to ask how Sunday's talk went...and I am so thankful and grateful that you care. For those of you interested, you can hear the talk by clicking on the link in the right hand column. Otherwise, here's a quick recap!

Sunday went well. Speaking publicly can be such an ego-driven thing and something I am so prone to getting sucked up into. I love to have my ego massaged. It's fun when people tell me I "done good", that I speak well, that I touched their lives or something to that effect. I certainly appreciate their sentiments - and all of the comments were positive this past weekend. But seriously, who is going to walk up to you if they didn't like your talk and say, "Man, you really sucked!"

Whether they liked it or not, the focus of my message was two-fold. First, communicate to those who just can't wrap their brains around the complete depth of God's love for them. That portion of the talk is summed up in one sentence from the talk, "You cannot do anything to earn God's love - you already have it!"

Second, I was hoping to communicate to those of us that have claimed to respond to God's grace that we should actually live it out. I hope Church People will stop sucking life out of the local church and, as the old saying goes, "sitting and soaking" in Sunday services and small groups. At times our church programs can be so tired and lifeless. We need to create a personal "Grace Giving Manifesto" and love people to the measure that we are loved by God. (See "Senseless Grace" below).

The Manifesto looks like this and comes from Matthew 25:
Feed the hungry.
Welcome the stranger.
Clothe the naked.
Care for the sick.
Visit the disenfranchised.

What else (beside call out the Self-Righteous Stupid Church People) did Jesus do on this earth?!? Even most of the time when he was with his small group (disciples) he was doing one of the above listed things...discipling his followers in the midst of showing grace to others.

So for me now, the question remains - which of these will I begin to involve myself to give more of this "senseless grace". I certainly think that learning to give grace will be the only thing that saves me from myself.