Life of David [1 Samuel 27, 29 & 30]...

cheap grace...

deitrich bonhoeffer coined the term...

he wrote about it this way...

"Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession...Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate."

God calls us to something far deeper than cheap grace.

romans 8:38-39 says:

"For i am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to seperate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

in the wake of those words, how can we not wake up to an understanding of grace that is far deeper than cheap.

we must encounter God's true grace...and the outpouring result will be 1 Peter 4...

"Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms."


if you are interested in listening to this whole teaching, you can check it out by clicking here...

Life of David [1 Samuel 25]...

beauty...true beauty...beauty based in shalom...based in the way that God intended things to be...

always has the potential to do two things...

1. to stop us dead in our tracks

2. to bring us back to what is right and true


last night, we look at a beautiful illustration of this in the life of david as he encounters a woman named abigail in the bottom of a ravine. david is caught up in a moment of sin...full of anger and rage and vengeance. abigail represents beauty.

here's a eugene peterson quote that sums up well much of the teaching:

“When some Abigail or other shows up – a sudden beauty in song or face, in aspen or iris – we see ourselves in a larger, truer light. David had been living in the huge, vast world of God – God’s love and redemption, prayer and holiness – and it nearly got away from him as he pursued his puny, small-minded revenge. Abigail’s beauty – her double-edged beauty of character and countenance – recovered the beauty of the Lord for him. Abigail on her knees put David back on his knees.”

paul talks in 1 corinthians 10:13 about the fact that when we are tempted, God will provide a way out. and yet, in the moment when we feel sin barreling down on us, it can feel challenging to actually recognize that way out.

and i wonder if more than anything, our inability to recognize that way out, is a result of the fact that we have lost our eyes and appreciation for beauty. that we need to allow beauty, true beauty, to cause us to stop dead in our tracks and to be brought back to what is right and true.

what if in our moments of temptation, when we are caught up in anger and rage, we actually went out hunting for beauty. believing that it would realign our compass and bring us back to our true north.


if you are interested in listening to the entire teaching, you can check it out here.

“When

Life of David [1 Samuel 21 & 22]...

last night we entered in to the story of 1 samuel 21 & 22 and saw that david continues to turn to God as his sanctuary...as his place of refuge...as the place he goes to when he needs filled up. and we observed then, that in the first two verses of chapter 22, some 400 people are drawn to david. an absolutely beautiful picture.

my guess is that as a result of the sanctuary david turned to, he had an aroma about him that attracted others. it was an aroma of where he had been.

was it the aroma of Christ that paul talks about in 2 corinthians 2:14-15?

saul on the other hand, went to the sanctuary of the world. as a result, his aroma was that of the world...an aroma that drew others in to his evil-dominated imagination...and left them turning to the ways of the world as well.

the story leaves us pondering two questions...

what sanctuary are you turning to in your life?

what aroma are you carrying?