Archive for category: upwords

by Max Lucado

 

One day it dawned on me.  I had become the very thing I hate. A hypocrite. A pretender. Two-faced. I’d written sermons about people like me. Christians who care more about their appearance than integrity.

I knew what I needed to do.  I’d written sermons about that, too. 1 John 1:8-9 says, “If we say we have no sin, we are fooling ourselves, and the truth is not in us.  But if we confess our sins, he will forgive our sins, because we can trust God to do what is right.”  I needed to confess.

What is confession? Well, confession is not complaining. If I just recite my problems and rehash my woes, I’m whining. Confession is a radical reliance upon grace. Maybe you need to do what I’ve done in the last few days. You just need to confess. God will hear your confession.  And in your confession you will find a wonder of God’s grace. You see grace creates an honest confession. And then great grace, receives it.

Read more Grace: More Than We Deserve, Greater Than We Imagine

 

 

by Max Lucado

 

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.

Read more Grace: More Than We Deserve, Greater Than We Imagine

 

 

by Max Lucado

 

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.

Read more Grace: More Than We Deserve, Greater Than We Imagine

 

 

by Max Lucado

 

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.

Read more Grace: More Than We Deserve, Greater Than We Imagine

 

 

by Max Lucado

 

We are incarcerated by our past. Our low road choices, our high minded pride. We have been found guilty. Our executioner’s footsteps echo against stone walls. We sit on the floor of the dusty cell, awaiting our final moment. We don’t look up as he opens the door; we know what he’s going to say. “Time to pay for your sins!”

But we hear something else. “You’re free to go. They took Jesus instead of you.” The door swings open and the guard barks, “Get out!” And we find ourselves shackles gone, crimes pardoned, wondering, what just happened?

Well, grace just happened. Christ took away your sins. Romans chapter 3 explains that God in his gracious kindness declares us not guilty. For God sent Jesus to take the punishment for our sins. We are made right with God when we believe that Jesus shed his blood, sacrificing his life for us. What happened? Grace happened!

Read more Grace: More Than We Deserve, Greater Than We Imagine