Most people keep a pot of anger on low boil. But you aren’t most people. Look at your feet. They’re wet, grace soaked. Jesus has washed your feet. He has washed the grimiest parts of your life.
To accept grace is the vow to give it. You don’t endorse the deeds of your offender when you forgive them. Jesus didn’t endorse your sins by forgiving you. The grace-defined person still sends thieves to jail and expects the ex to pay child support. Grace sees the hurt full well. But it refuses to let hurts poison the heart.
Where grace is lacking, bitterness abounds. Where grace abounds, forgiveness grows. So go ahead. Set your feet in the basin. Let the hands of God wipe away every dirty part of your life. Then look across the room and wash someone else’s feet. Let grace begin—and continue—in you.
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Victoria Ruvolo doesn’t remember the 18-year-old boy leaning out the window, of all things, holding a frozen turkey. He threw it at her windshield. Crashing through the glass, it shattered Victoria’s face like a dinner plate on concrete.
John 13:14-15 (NKJV) says, “Since I, the Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash each other’s feet…do as I have done to you.” Victoria Ruvolo did. Months later, she stood face to face with her offender in court. He was no longer cocky. He as trembling, tearful, and apologetic. Six months behind bars, five years’ probation. Everyone in the courtroom objected to the light sentence. He sobbed, but she spoke. The light sentence was her idea. She said, “I forgive you, and I want your life to be the best it can be.” Grace does this. Grace chooses to give the forgiveness that’s been received.
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If hurts were hairs, we’d all look like grizzlies! So many hurts. When teachers ignore your work, their neglect hurts. When your girlfriend drops you, when your husband abandons you, when the company fires you, it hurts. Rejection always hurts. People bring pain. Sometimes deliberately, sometimes randomly. So where do you turn? Hitman.com? Jim Beam and friends? Pity Party Catering Service? Retaliation has its appeal, but Jesus has a better idea.
Grace is not blind. It sees the hurt full well. But grace chooses to see God’s forgiveness even more. Hebrews 12:15 (NIV) urges us to, “See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.” You see, where grace is lacking, bitterness abounds. But where grace abounds, forgiveness grows. Forgiveness may not happen all at once. But it can happen with you.
Attempts at self-salvation guarantee nothing but exhaustion. We scamper and scurry, trying to please God, collecting merit badges and brownie points, scowling at anyone who questions our accomplishments. The result? The weariest people on earth. We so fear failure that we create the image of perfection. Call us the church of hound-dog faces and slumped shoulders. Stop it! Once and for all, enough of this frenzy.
Hebrews 13:9 (NCV) says, “Your hearts should be strengthened by God’s grace, not by obeying rules.” In Matthew 11:28 (NASB) Jesus said, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” There is no fine print. A second shoe isn’t going to drop. God’s promise has no hidden language. Let grace happen. You have his unending affection. Stretch yourself out in the hammock of grace. You can rest now.
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I became a Christian about the same time I became a Boy Scout, and I made the assumption that God grades like the Boy Scouts do: on a merit system. Good scouts move up. Good people go to heaven.
So, I resolved to amass of multitude of spiritual badges. I worked toward the day when God, amid falling confetti and dancing cherubim, would drape my badge-laden sash across my chest and welcome me into his eternal kingdom, where I would humbly display my badges for eternity.
But some thorny questions surfaced. How many badges does he require? How good is good? And then I was corrected. Ephesians 2:8 (NASB) says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.” Unearned. A gift. Our merits merit nothing. So let grace happen, for Heaven’s sake.
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