Grace lived is better then grace preached

This is an excerpt out of a new book of mine coming out called 7 keys to Intimacy with Jesus. This is out of chapter 7 on friendships.

I had another friend for a number of years, her name was Sarah and she was a pastor’s daughter. She was the daughter of the pastor that led our church for a time. She was very loving and she believes in the gospel of grace. She believed in a God that wasn’t an angry God, wasn’t a disciplinarian God; but a God of love and a God of favor and a God of compassion.

Through her involvement in my life, I was able to come out of the thinking that God is a cranky God, and an angry God. I was given books by Sarah that showed me the message of grace and the liberty of grace, and the understanding of how Jesus really loves us and how he wants us to see ourselves. She not only believed in the grace of God, but she actually proved the grace of God, and she proved how grace operated with the way she lived her life.

She demonstrated that unbiased and unrelenting grace of God. She was someone who didn’t just speak about love, but she loved in an extraordinary way. She loved in a way that was overflowing and abundant with meaning and purpose. She loved me, even though I was an angry person, even though I was frustrated and angry and stuck in my old covenant understanding of an angry God.

I was an angry man and I was a man who believed he was right all the time and couldn’t be told that he was wrong. She took the time to get to know me. She took the time to listen to my stories. She listened to me for many, many hours and let me talk, and talk, and talk, and she just listened and asked questions; and took the time to love me.

Then eventually she started to question some of the beliefs I had. She started to ask me questions about certain things. And then she came out and point blank refused to believe certain things I said and told me that I was wrong in this instance, and told me I was wrong in this instance. And when I did more research, when I did more reading and research on the things that she said I was wrong about, I found out that I was wrong. 21 times she told me that I was wrong, and 21 times out of 21 I found out that I was wrong.

It was through here demonstration of love, it was through her active engagement in my life and her understanding, and love and compassion she had for me that it gave me the chance to reevaluate the things that I believed in. It gave me the chance to reexamine the things that I’ve been bound in and the understandings and the doctrines that I believed in that were wrong. It was through her love and compassion for me that I came to find teachings on the gospel of grace and was finally set free by books like Destined to Reign by Joseph Prince.
I found a loving way to live my life. I found total freedom in my expression. I found happiness. I was able to become a happy Christian and not one that was angry and believed in a judgmental God.

A friendship like Sarah is one that I’m talking about that good friendships are essential for you to develop a closer and more intimate walk with Jesus. As my beliefs are about God and understanding of God changed, I come to realize that Jesus was the image of the invisible God. Jesus perfectly represented God. I came to realize that God is a God of love and a God of understanding and a God of compassion.

When I come to realize these things about God and my opinions of God changed, so did my intimacy with Jesus. My relationship with Jesus changed. I didn’t believe he had an angry Father anymore and I believed that my sins were forgiven and covered by the blood of Jesus. I come to draw closer to Jesus in a more meaningful and deeper relationship.

This was brought about by the relationship with Sarah. Sarah was the beginning and the fostering and the opening of new understanding. She opened my blind eyes.

I was blind and I was sitting in the prison house like the scriptures I shared and I was bound up with religion, and she came in to my prison. She listened to me. She un-blinded my eyes and she showed me the knowledge of the truth of the gospel of grace. She not only showed me the knowledge, she not only shared the knowledge with me, but she demonstrated that knowledge. She demonstrated that grace to me.

When I was angry and when I was argumentative, she didn’t argue and she wasn’t angry back. When I was being hard to live with and hard to cope with, she coped with me and she bore with me. She had the compassion and love to understand me and listen to me.

For hours and hours, I talked to her. Hours and hours. She used to tell me when I was telling the story to her for the third time, she used to say that “I’ve already heard this story two times”. She had the understanding to listen to one of my stories for two times. She could allow me to repeat a story, but on the third time she’d tell me that she’s heard the story two times before.

She was a complete expression of grace to me. I find that particularly important to share that she had the relationship with me. She spent hundreds of hours in relationship with me, and caring and loving me. She didn’t push her grace message on me. She demonstrated that message to me.