Avenues of Grace
Jeff came to college as a very sensitive, timid young man who struggled with a low view of his impact on others. His knowledge of the Bible was minimal, as was his vision for ministry.
But in college, something happened to Jeff, something changed about him. He began to spend time alone with God, praying and reading the Bible; he attended a few Christian conferences; he became part of a small group; and I spent a few hours with him. Through all of these things, Jeff began to look honestly at his life.
Jeff became one of the most influential members that InterVarsity chapter ever had. He led students to Christ, recruited people to go overseas, became a friend to both popular and disenfranchised students. I felt his love as did many others.
What happened to Jeff? The Bible, the Holy Spirit, and the rest of us began to expose the real Jeff and the hunger in his heart that only God could fill. He read about grace, was prompted internally by it, and experienced it through the faces and words of his friends. He began to surrender to grace — the more he saw, the more he surrendered.
What helped him? What enabled him into a position where he was continually choosing?
It seems to me that there are three avenues by which people, like Jeff, are confronted by grace:
1) The Word of God
2) The Spirit of God
3) The People of God
Jeff’s story is similar to most of ours. God uses some mixture of these three avenues to bring about our maturity. In these avenues, our sin is exposed, our hunger is aroused, and the Gospel is proclaimed and demonstrated.
The Word of God
The Bible is a written account of God’s grace. It is grace that we can handle, underline, study, read, and reread. Written from the viewpoint of kings and fishermen, experienced by cultures and children, expressed by poets and former Pharisees, it tells the story of God’s action toward people. It presents a panoramic view of God’s holiness and grace in a literary form that can be translated, examined, understood, and passed on.
The Bible is also the inspired Word of God. As such, it is reliable to guide, correct, and enable our response to His grace. Therefore, it is not only expedient and necessary to enter the Bible as an avenue for responding to grace, but it is also very foolish not to.
As disciplers, we want to bring people to the Scriptures, so that they will be confronted/invited by an accurate picture of grace.
There are many ways that this happens. I remember one student who was extremely confused by large group speakers and others who said things like, “…and we all know what happened with Zeltaph….” This student had no understanding of the overall flow or content of the Bible, or why Jesus died and rose again four times in the four gospels. It was one of my more enjoyable staff experiences to photocopy the table of contents from my Bible and spend a couple of hours with her, teaching her that Genesis means beginning, that the books aren’t in chronological order, and more. As simple as that was, I believe that I helped her into a better position to hear God’s grace.
I also remember the first time I led a manuscript study using the inductive method. I was amazed at what I could learn, even without gold-edged pages. Expositions of important passages of Scripture helped me pull together a more complete picture of the message of the cross, and convicted me of my part in it. And leading a Bible study revealed the shallowness of my skimming study habits.
All of these opportunities, from fun facts about the Bible to heavy expositions, are part of discipling. They are part of discipling, not because they are an end in themselves, but because they move us toward grace. They expose sin and hunger, and provide the answer of the Gospel.
The Spirit of God
God has ways of surrounding people. Even when we try to shut out His love by closing our eyes and ears, God can speak directly to our hearts. This is the realm of God’s Spirit.
The Holy Spirit convicts us of sin, increases our hunger, and speaks of Christ. His timing is extraordinary. As a result, we want to help people into the arena of the Spirit.
Three words come to mind when I think of that arena: worship, prayer, and meditation.
Let’s not pretend that by labelling a 20-minute segment of our large group meeting as “worship,” we guarantee an encounter with God. Instead, let’s allow the possibility for such a supernatural event to occur. We must trust that God is eager and active in revealing Himself to the students in our care.
Times of singing and testimonies, concerts of prayer, and retreats of silence aren’t spirituality themselves, but they provide an opportunity for us to meet with God at the heart. These sorts of things ought to be scheduled, financed, encouraged, and attended for the sake of that opportunity. Training in and providing examples of the disciplines of worship, prayer, and meditation encourage the possibility, hope, and belief that we can encounter God. And when God encounters us, we must choose whether to respond or withdraw. We want our disciples to be in that position.
Beyond all this, we as disciplers must not only teach students to pray, but we must also pray for them. We must pray, as the Spirit Himself prays, for the encounter to occur and for the response of repentance and faith. We are merely allies of His work.
The People of God
Not only does God use His Word and Spirit to bring people to surrender to grace, but He uses us as well. He uses our words, friendship, and hands. We are conduits of His grace, through which people can actually experience Him. We are also messengers of His grace. Through us, hunger for intimacy can be awakened, sin can be exposed, and the Good News of the cross can be spoken.
Encounters with hunger and sin occur innumerable times every day. Through everyday openness and love, we can offer others growing chances for life.
I think of two students as examples of this….Jill experienced grace when she was invited to Pizza Hut. She made some movement closer to Christ’s invitation by her warm response to the students who invited her.
Jack was offended and hurt by Rob’s intimidating manner, and gently confronted him about it. Rob was given a chance to look at his life. By choosing to hear the feedback, he made another small choice of surrender.
We can also disciple people through more formal means.
I think of Marsha, who heard the idea of conversion for the first time in a small group. Puzzled, she asked her leader about it, and they now meet weekly to study what Jesus said about salvation. By being together and examining the words of Christ, Martha’s questions have been answered, and her ideas have been challenged. Marsha is being invited by grace as she encounters it in the gospel of John, in the care of her small group leader, and by the Spirit.
A more extended example. I met regularly with Sally, a petite, gentle-mannered, and engaging woman. She once told me about a time when her best friend deserted her in a vulnerable moment in favor of someone else’s company. She felt deeply hurt and betrayed. When she had opportunity, she later berated her friend for leaving her. Her words to her friend were scathing.
I asked Sally if her attitude was as vengeful as her words indicated. It was a simple and honest question. Sally choked in relief as she admitted the hate in her heart. As I was able to feel and understand her hurt, and to expose what she did with her legitimate pain, we were able to move towards the Gospel and love.
Now her block to loving her friend was not her pain, but rather her sinful self-focus. Her self-focus was deeper than mere vengeance, for she had believed that she could somehow ease the pain in her soul by taking revenge. That sort of scheming betrays the existence of an inner belief that is arrogant and self-committed.
Of her sin, Sally can repent. There is a solution to it — she needs to be taken to the cross. The cross offers all of us hope that our hungers will ultimately be filled, and provision for the sin that will block us from our hope. As a result, we become freer to respond to those around us in love. The focus isn’t on us or our ability to take care of either our pain or our sin, or both.
As Sally realized that she had been forgiven for her efforts to control her life, she became freer to love. (Luke 7:47) Because God overwhelmed her with the hope of all she wanted, she became grateful and secure in her connection with Him. She could afford to give herself away, even to those who might betray her.
As all this began to be exposed, Sally was confronted with a decision about grace. Her options were limited.
She could try to deny the hurt, and possibly restrain herself from revenge on her friend. But pretending that the hurt didn’t exist would only have been a variation of controlling her life.
She could try to devise a scheme so that her friend would never betray her again. For instance, she could become even more sweet so that her friend wouldn’t leave, or she could make her friend pay emotionally any time she was tempted to leave. But scheming would have been yet another variation of controlling her life. And in this case, controlling someone else’s life as well.
Or she could acknowledge her hunger to be cherished, admit her sin of self-commitment, and ask for forgiveness, trusting that God could somehow take care of all.
As I discipled her, my task was to continually bring her back to that choice by speaking to her legitimate hunger, while at the same time exposing how her sinful heart conspired to control her world (God included) to meet her hunger. All the while, I prayed that she would surrender. If she would face her hunger and sin, they would drive her to the Gospel — she was hopeless to fill her hungry soul, and helpless on her own to do away with her sin. And when you can admit that you are hopeless and helpless, the Gospel sounds like good news.
As disciplers, we try to cooperate with the ministry of the Bible and the Holy Spirit in exposing people to their hopelessness and helplessness, in order that they might repent and receive God’s forgiveness, and thus be released to a life of love.