Prayer, simply put, is talking with God. Whereas the witness of nature and the Bible are monologues from God to man, prayer is the dialogue between man and God. Such dialogue is necessary for the kingdom of God to advance in the world. Fervency in prayer, or the lack thereof, ultimately reveals the love an individual has for God.
To take a common example, imagine the relationship between a husband and wife. A husband may learn every fact possible about his wife, may talk about her all day to his friends and coworkers, even build her a beautiful home and care for her children. But if he never talks with her, if he never seeks her heart and never lets her seek his, she will know that there is no real love between them. In the same way, the Christian is called to “pray without ceasing”. This constant, personal communication is evidence of the love he has for God. To serve God without communicating with Him personally is to engage in ritualism, for loving God, and loving the idea of God, are not the same thing. When Jesus was spending time with Mary and Martha it was Mary who was commended for sitting at His feet. Martha had the outward appearance of obedience (giving service to Him without listening to His voice), but it was communication with her that He truly desired. God, who is infinitely wiser than any earthly teacher and can see right through every empty phrase, knows what a person needs before he asks. Sometimes people think of God as a gatekeeper who only allows prayers to pass through if those prayers are in the right format and pleasing to the ear, like a child not letting his sibling into his room until she has said the proper password. But prayer is not about creating some special series of words that unlock a promise or blessing. What father would only provide his children gifts if they said the exact phrase he had hidden in his mind? It should also be noted that there are some things that prayer is not. Prayer is not a wish list to some genie, nor is it a replacement for inaction. The Christian need not waste his time praying for the problems he has already been given the power to remedy. He could spend Saturday night praying that God would send someone to talk to his neighbor about Jesus, or he could walk over to his door and deliver the good news himself. When Nicodemus sought out the truth Jesus responded by talking with him personally. Jesus stands at the door and seeks dialogue with each person individually. The topics may be difficult to discuss sometimes, but when the Christian looks across the table and sees the Son of God he will not hesitate to have that conversation. Now, for more information about why a Christian should pray (and how prayer actually works) look for the next post on prayer.
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Stephen showed that grace is not provided to remove an individual from a difficult situation, but grace abounds through suffering to make a person more like the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. When the people began to seethe with hatred, Stephen looked up and beheld a Trinitarian revelation, an opening of the heavens. Though he was dragged out of the city and stoned to death, he received magnificent grace with what he saw, and he gave much grace in death. His final words were not for his own comfort or blessing, but for the forgiveness of his murderers.
Grace costs the believer all that he has. Persecution does not only come to a few Christians, but is experienced by all Christians. It is easy to only give grace a thought when it does not seem too costly, or when its benefits seem to run out. The Christian can regularly measure the temperature of his relationship with God by seeing if he is currently enduring persecution for the name of Jesus. An absence of persecution in the believer’s life does not necessarily mean he has forsaken Christ. However, times of peace exist for more than carnal pleasure; those seasons of grace should be used to prepare for dark times ahead. Paul, when writing to the Corinthian church, taught that a Christian receives comfort during affliction so that he can comfort others when they are afflicted. Persecution may not be present in the form of a physical trial, but it may occur as an attack from Satan. James 4:4-10 teaches the Christian to resist the devil to make him flee, which most Christians interpret as just waiting him out. But James describes an active resistance against Satan, a resistance sustained by a kind of humility that comes through weeping and mourning and gloom. It will do the believer no good to resist the devil with pride, for that is a characteristic the enemy knows all too well. Perfect humility is something Satan does not honor, but God will reward it completely. Without this humbling a person is an enemy of God and cannot receive grace, or give it away for that matter. When the Christian chooses to decrease his own desires the grace of God will increase all the more. Getting the enemy to leave one’s life is not about convincing him with truth (he does not stand in it), nor is it about intimidating him (not even Michael, the archangel, tried that). The devil leaves when the Christian humbles himself and receives abounding grace from his jealous God. When the persecuted church scattered after the death of Stephen, the believers initially spread the gospel exclusively to Jews. However, some of the men began preaching to Greek-speaking non-Jews (Hellenists) about the Lord Jesus. When a great number of people turned to the Lord, Barnabas (who was sent by the Jerusalem church to Antioch) recognized that the increase was due to the grace of God. So impressed was Barnabas with this amazing development that he went searching for Saul in Tarsus. When he returned to Antioch with Saul, grace abounded even more as they stayed and ministered for a year. The result was the transformation of people that even the secular world noticed, a transformation that brought about a name for which followers of Jesus would live and die for two thousand years. None of that would have occurred if that man of God, Stephen, had not lived a life of grace. Had he not done great wonders and signs in grace and power, not spoken truth with clarity to his accusers, not forgiven his accusers with his dying breath, then the grace given him would have been offered in vain. Only the grace of God could have changed Saul from a man who took delight in the death of Stephen, to a man used by the Holy Spirit to write half the New Testament. The grace of God will abound in the life of the weakest Christian, and it can save even the strongest of sinners. When you do the work of God and people despise you for it, when you speak truth to those you should be able to trust and they gnash their teeth and close their ears, when your body gives out from persecution and you are ready to either give up or give in, humble yourself. But do it the right way - like Stephen. Do not hang your head or return the reviling, but lift your head to the heavens, gaze upon the One who saves by grace, and let the power of God be made perfect in your life. For the grace He gives will be sufficient for all you need. The Christian receives tremendous insight into how grace exists in salvation through the text of Ephesians 2:1-10. Paul uses the first three verses of that passage to show that not only can dead men walk, but they are led by a spirit - the prince of the power of the air. That spirit, contrary to the Holy Spirit, would have its followers gratify the temporal, the flesh. God, however, saves man by grace and shows the riches of His grace through the placement of the Christian in heavenly places. All that is required is an act of faith for a person to receive that gift.
Romans 5:12-21 explains the relationship between the law and grace. Paul makes the point that sin and grace are different in two specific ways. First, he shows how the acts of grace differ in scope. Sin is linear, like going from zero to one, one to two, two to three, etc. Grace is exponential; a multiplication of goodness. Second, sin and grace differ in the results they yield. The judgment brought a deserved condemnation, but the grace brought an undeserved justification. Sin always gives man what he deserves, but grace always gives man what he does not deserve. Sin is restricting, but grace is freeing. The vices a person falls into, those sins, are not of equal value to an alternative choice. Sins are always the lesser choices; they are the options that restrict freedom, not expand it. Grace is much more powerful than the law; the law hems in all a person’s choices, but grace blesses all those choices. That is why the Bible says that a Christian will not continue in sin; an exonerated criminal would not truly be free if he kept going back to those walls of despair in his prison cell, that hopeless confinement of lesser choices. Continuing with examples of legality, it is important to distinguish between the terms grace and mercy. Those two words are often treated as synonyms, and while their meanings have some overlap, they do not mean the same thing. For example, when Zechariah prophesies about the crucifixion of Jesus, he mentions “a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy”. Additionally, the writer of Hebrews wrote about approaching (with confidence) the “throne of grace” to “receive mercy and find grace”, while Paul greets Timothy by mentioning “...Grace, mercy, and peace…” (Zechariah 12:10; Hebrews 4:16; 1 Timothy 1:2; 2 Timothy 1:2) Mercy occurs when punishment is not given though it is deserved; grace occurs when something is given even though it is not deserved. Another way to think of it would be that mercy is punishment withheld and grace is benefits bestowed. If Sally is wronged by Bernice, she may say to herself, “I need to show Bernice some grace.” What she likely means by that statement is that she will not treat Bernice poorly - the way Bernice deserves. However, Sally’s response would be an example of mercy, not grace. Were she to give Bernice some type of gift she would be exhibiting grace, but her withholding of retaliation is the practice of mercy. While mercy and grace are not the same thing, neither are grace and truth. Jesus came to earth full of grace and truth, providing grace upon grace. Jesus Christ is truth, so to provide grace without truth is to give someone a gift that has no security - a treasure that will either be stolen or destroyed. Stephen, described as being “full of grace and power”, accused the Jewish leaders of resisting the Holy Spirit during his speech in Acts 7. He delivered the speech after lies were spread about his treatment of the Temple, and most significantly, the law. His speech centered around the fact that Jewish leaders had persecuted their prophets throughout history, culminating in his statement that they “betrayed and murdered” Jesus Christ. His final point, the last moment of his great moment of oratory, rests on the failure of his accusers to observe the law, the same law that had been miraculously delivered centuries before. Stephen chose to show grace and truth in how he responded to false allegations made against him–allegations which centered on the interpretation of the law. Stephen did not earn his salvation through his actions, but his choice to study Scripture and stand for truth made possible an increase in grace in an evil situation.Stephen could have used that moment of grace, when “his face was like the face of an angel”, to smooth-over his defense and make it less antagonizing toward his accusers. He could have tipped the scales of grace and hidden just a little truth. After all, wouldn’t the council be more accepting of the truth if they had first been lathered with grace? More about grace during suffering in the next post. The word grace occurs frequently in the Bible, with explanations of its purpose throughout, but one of the greatest examples of grace can be seen in the life of Stephen. The lives of Stephen and Paul (who mentioned grace in all his letters) intersect at a seminal moment in Christianity. Paul wrote much on grace, but in a way it seems that the majority of his writings on grace can be summed up in how Stephen spent his time on earth.
The early Church appointed seven men to the duty of administering the daily distribution of food to widows in their community; they considered good works an essential action of the body of Christ. So important was this work, that the men they chose were “men of good repute, full of the Holy Spirit and of wisdom”; men like Stephen, who is described in that passage as “full of faith and of the Holy Spirit”, and later as “full of grace and power”. Approving of the seven men chosen by the community, the apostles prayed and laid hands on them. The works of caring for the weakest in their midst allowed grace to increase within their community. According to 2 Corinthians, grace abounds to the believer that good works may abound from the believer. The Christian should have a desire to do good for others, giving freely, because he has received freely (Matthew 10:18). God blesses His people not to make them prosperous by the world’s standards, but for building up the kingdom of Jesus Christ. The preservation of grace requires obedience from the Christian; Jude attests to this when he uses the titles “Master” and “Lord” when instructing that grace is not given to live a luxurious life on earth. He teaches that grace becomes perverted when it is used for pleasure rather than for selfless reasons. In The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.” Good works do not passively happen in the life of the believer; they occur when the Christian is disciplined, sacrificial, and intentional about building the kingdom of God. Paul teaches Timothy that Christians should be “rich toward God” and “rich in good works”, while also instructing Titus (twice within six verses) that believers should “devote themselves to good works.” This devotion, according to verse 8, comes after the believer has received sound instruction. Stephen, as shown by the speech he gave to the Jewish leaders, knew the Old Testament so well that those who disputed with him “could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he was speaking.” Learning what the Bible teaches about grace will equip the believer for every good work. Where grace is often misunderstood is in thinking it is some random gift that God gives out. Like a rich man throwing scraps to a peasant, many today view themselves as one of those lucky ones who, by sheer happenstance, received a morsel of grace from Heaven. However, an increase of grace in the Christian's life depends upon the choices he makes. Someone may object to that notion, thinking, “But what about Ephesians 2:8-9? Grace is a gift that no one can work to obtain.” Such a question leads directly into the topic of the next post - how grace works in salvation. The word “grace”, like the word “love”, is one of those words everyone feels comfortable employing, but very few care to know how it works. It is great filler for any Christian conversation. The believer says grace at dinner, thanks God for the grace He has given him in his daily life, and stands ready to tell his neighbors that they need to extend grace to that other neighbor down the street.
Take the example of a familiar commodity - gasoline. The person shopping next to you in the produce section is all too eager to inform you how gasoline could be cheaper, or more accessible, or how to exterminate it all together. That same expert, however, may have a slightly different demeanor if you were to press him on what gasoline actually does in the engine. Grace is fuel for the soul; therefore, the believer needs to understand what it actually does in order for it to be used, and appreciated, correctly. The next few posts will examine how grace exists:
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