.Taking Back Grace.

Part Two: (Part one is here)

Growing up I watched grace being touted. I listened to the words salvation is by grace through faith. It's not from works! But then a strange thing would happen, once the sinner was saved, it seemed as if grace was erased and legalism took its place. I have written so much about one of my biggest weaknesses - fear. As an adult, and with hindsight, I can look back and confidently say that legalism breeded this fear in me. I am fully responsible for letting that fear penetrate my heart, but legalism introduced the fear to me.

Because legalism erased grace, I was afraid of letting people see and know the real me. Like most people in our kind of church, I became really good at the outward appearance thing - I wore a mask. I said the things I was supposed to say. I did what I was supposed to do. I threw on a mask of self-righteousness, and tightened it with fear and insecurity. I was good enough on my own, with this mask on to make me appear to be better than I was. Because when I looked to my left and to my right everyone else was wearing the same mask. I had to keep mine on, or I would never measure up. We were all plastic, or most of us were anyway. Most of us were pretty adept at pretending to have it all together, when really so many of us were falling apart. Because everyone is cloaked in these masks, we would look around and think in our hearts Wow, I am the only imperfect one here. I am the only one continually messing up. And we gripped the mask over our imperfectness even tighter in an effort to keep up the masquerade.

It wasn't until just a few years ago that God slowly began peeling off my mask. I had a lot of layers to peel, from a lot of years of legalism and pretending to have everything together. Each layer He has removed has revealed a new truth to me and brought grace crashing over me. God had seen through the mask all along -He could see through every messy, dirty layer, and yet He continued to love me perfectly, unconditionally, and completely. When it really sunk in that there is nowhere I can run from His Spirit, and that I could never escape His love or His grace, I started wearing less and less layers of that mask to church and in front of my brothers and sisters. Because I began to realize that measuring stick I was using of comparing side to side was all a mirage. I was comparing my mask to his mask to her mask. It was all fake. No one is perfect.

We all need grace, not just for salvation, but for life.

I feel passionate that now is the time to take back grace and erase the legalism that has permeated the church for so long. The only way that this can be accomplished is through Jesus helping us to peel away our masks, to be real, vulnerable, transparent, and yes, broken and imperfect before others. It is not an easy thing to do, especially if the mask has been worn for a long time. It's not easy to be vulnerable and exposed before others, when one has pretended to be something for so, so long. When we truly lean on God's strength and stop erasing His grace in our life, the mask doesn't fit well anymore - it stops making sense. And the truth is, as much as we think we are keeping up the charade, we always trip up and the mask always slips once in awhile. The charade is too much to keep up.

Today I am choosing to walk in grace, to erase the legalism, and to loosen the mask - the layers of fear and insecurity, because God has seen the real me all along. I am not perfect. My life is messy. I am broken in so many ways. I need Jesus, and I cannot live my life dependent on self and a check lists of rules. That leaves me empty. That leaves me fake. He loves me, and He has accepted me.

Will you loosen your mask today? I promise to cover you in grace, because He, who knows the real you - the you without a mask, has covered you in grace.

You have searched me, LORD, and you know me.

You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue you, LORD, know it completely.
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

Psalm 139: 1-4, 13

.Religiosity & Legalism Lied to Me.

The kind of church and the kind of faith family that I grew up in lent itself to favoring legalism. It was as if we all needed this external measuring stick to really believe we were spiritual and to make ourselves appear pious. It truly was so much about appearances. Whether in words or not, I was constantly taught to look from side to side to determine how I was measuring up. Did I dress more godly than that person? Did I listen to Majesty Music and hymns alone while that person blared country music in her car? Did I mask my sins and put on a good show of being Christian better than they?

And I swallowed it all hook, line, and sinker.

On the outside I did a pretty good job of following most of the rules - spoken and unspoken to me. But I did not follow these rules (some, yes, ridiculous, but some wise) because I loved my Savior, Jesus Christ so much, and the very outflowing of my heart was pure obedience. No, I followed these rules because of fear. I was motivated to obey, not because I loved God so much, but because of fear of what people would think about me if I did not obey. I obeyed in order to be accepted by my church, by my faith family, by my friends, etc.

While a relationship with Jesus Christ was something verbally toted, the actions pointed to something much different - a fleshly works righteousness - religiosity. I knew the Gospel, I believed the Gospel, but I was not living out the Gospel, I was living out a man-made, religion. And as much as I tried, I was never measuring up or living up to the unrealistic expectations.

This truth about religiosity and legalism has been squirming its way into my heart for several years now. My husband and I have had numerous talks about the way we both grew up, and the way that legalism and religiosity breeds a false sense of superiority and spirituality "I am better than you, closer to God, further along in my sanctification, because I avoid this". Religiosity and legalism taught me to affirm things about myself at the expense of others - even brothers and sister in Christ. It is not wrapped in the grace-filled love of Jesus Christ. We have witnessed people and whole families completely destroyed by legalism and religiosity.

Yes, I understood the Gospel, and I accepted it, but I was lied to in some form or another and made to believe that the only way to Jesus was the Gospel PLUS something.

We are determined to teach our children differently - to teach our children to not look for acceptance because they obey the rules, but rather to obey God because HE has accepted them. I want their motivation to obey to come from the overflow of a thankful, grateful heart, not from fear of what people will think. I want them to understand the true Gospel, that they are saved by sheer grace, and that there is no need to look to the left and the right but only up to God.

Our small group has been studying Timothy Keller's Gospel in Life:Grace Changes Everything this trimester. It is opening my eyes in brand new ways. One lesson in particular just knocked me off my feet. It is still swirling in my thoughts. We studied the parable of The Prodigal Son, and for the first time in my entire life I finally understood it. Tim Keller taught me that there are actually three ways to live, where before through my legalistic lenses, I had only seen two - the correct Gospel way to Jesus Christ and rebelling from Jesus. When in all actuality there are two ways we rebel against God (in irreligion & religion) not just the one as I was taught and believed.

The younger brother (the prodigal) in the story obviously rebelled against his father. We all know this, and can easily see it in the story. He lived as he pleased. The younger only wanted his father for what could be given to him. He was outright rebellious.

The older brother in the story, however, also rebelled. I NEVER saw this before. I thought he was a little whiny at the end of the parable over the fact that his brother was getting a party thrown for him, but I never noticed his rebellion or the fact that he was just as far removed  from his father as his younger brother had been. The older brother only obeyed to gain something from his father, and to make himself look good. He was entrenched in religiosity. The older brother thought that if he could be so good, so obedient, moral, and religious than the father would have to bless him. He was caught up in legalism. He was lost.

The true gospel is neither of these two things -trying to be our own savior and lord by running off and doing our own thing or by coming to church and praying, and studying the Bible and following all of the rules. The Gospel is the wonderful news that we are already justified by Jesus Christ through grace alone. With legalism and religiosity we will always fall short of God's perfect, holy standards, BUT God, Himself, fulfilled all of those requirements in Jesus Christ! Our legalism and religiosity gets us nowhere. We are saved by grace alone, and then out of the gratefulness of knowing what Jesus did for us flows a daily, life-long obedience. An obedience that has nothing to do with fear of man, with legalism, or with religiosity.

Have you been lied to by religiosity and legalism?

It's time to stop listening to the lies, and living in the fullness of His amazing grace and truth.