Grace and Habit

I cannot remember when I first learned what we Presbyterians call "the doctrines of grace."  I only remember that it was a tremendous relief when I did.   The "doctrines of grace" is the knowledge that God loves me just the way I am, that He showed it  by dying on the Cross for me, even when I didn't deserve it. I don't have to prove anything to God for Him to love me--He already does. I don't have to choose Him--He chose me.  I don't have to be good enough to earn His favor--He already is better than good enough for both of us.  His  death on the Cross gave me complete forgiveness for everything I've done wrong, and for those unfortunate,  wayward tendencies which make up so much of my psyche. God is a forgiving Father, who keeps taking me back no matter how much I embarrass Him, or fail His instructions.  He loves me, and that is a good thing.

The doctrines of Grace liberates me from shame and the from the tyranny of perfectionism.  God simultaneously sets the bar of perfection too high for me to reach and acceptance too low for me to miss it.    In this, God is like my wife who loves me even when I act like a jerk and dress like a hobo.  Her love is not  affected by my many failures, and neither is God's.

Yet as satisfying as grace may be, there remains a nagging disquietude.  Deep down, I'm not that good of a guy.  I may be forgiven, but that doesn't make me  right.

The grace, at least as it is sometimes understood, is that it gets at the punishment but not the cause.  Sure we are forgiven, but are we changed?  Suppose I were an alcoholic, and God were to say me " That's okay, son. I forgive you for drinking,"   That would be good, but I can still be a slave to drinking.  Even if my drinking had no direct punishment, it could till wreak havoc on my life.  Forgiveness, however wonderful, is no answer without  change.

This sets up a conundrum. If our relationship with God demands change, that implies there must be a standard of living, a law, that defines the way ought to live.  If there is a law, then I am under it. If I am under it, then I ought to be ashamed and feel guilty when I break it. I cannot be guilty and not guilty at the same time.  How, can grace and the Law coexist?   Yet they do coexist somehow. 

More specifically,  how can I both believe in doing the right thing, and believe I don't have to do the right thing?  How can we  live with God, ourselves and others, seeking to please Him, yet failing at every turn to do it right?

I cannot say that I  have fully grasped intellectually or experientially this paradox, but I can say that may have found a way around it that preserves my freedom and leads me to live a better life

 It lies in the habits of the heart.

Most of what we do in life we never think very little about. We do them automatically by learned instinct. This  ability of human beings to do repetitive tasks or to make repetitive judgments is called habit.  Habits carry the force of momentum in the mind--if we don't make a conscious effort to stop, we just keep doing them.  We act by habit without paying attention.  That is the purpose of habits, to relieve our conscious mind of constant decision making by creating a bank of premade decisions. 

Habits do not always happen by accident. We can make or break habits by the repetition of the same small decision over and over.  Have devotions three or four days in a row, and it starts a habit.  Oversleep for three or four days in a row, and that becomes a habit, too.

 Some habits are positive,  such as kissing your wife good morning, while some are negative, such at overeating,  gambling, or pornography.  Once they are formed, they draw us  like iron to a magnet. 

Habits frequently supersede the intentions of our heart.  They are, like Paul said, another law in our bodies, drawing us to do thing our spirit says we should not do. 

Habits are in many ways are the opposite of laws.

Laws are imposed from outside--habits exist on the inside. Laws are hard to keep--habits are hard not to keep.  Laws are enforced by shame--habits are enforced by momentum. Laws are more of a burden the more we have--habits  are easier to follow the more we have. Laws demand perfection--habits are about inclination.

Habits are like gravity. Whether or not we defy them, they are still there, pulling us in one direction or another. 

Laws can become habits.  For example, we may be in the habit of buckling our seat belts when we get in the car,  when we also know it is the law we do so. Once we get in the habit, we no longer worry about obeying .  Once a law becomes a habit, it no longer becomes a burden. 

The intention of the Law was to help us develop of the right kind of habits.  We my no longer need to be told not to kill, because  we do not want to kill. We no longer need to be told not to steal, because we don't want what other people have.  We  may not be under the threat of punishment, but we still need to make good habits instead of bad ones.

This pursuit of good habits is purely personal.   Failure in habits, at least at first,  is to be expected, but it doesn't need to stop us from trying.  We don't stop trying to develop good eating habits because we overindulged in a meal last week. We just get up and try again.  We don't stop talking to God because missed devotions one morning--we just try again. 

Whether we are trapped in bad habits or failing at good habits, there is no habit which cannot be changed with God's help.  Paul says that there is no sin which is not common to us, but God will with each temptation give us a way of escape, so that we may be able to bear it.  With God's help we can break every binding habit. 

I am grateful for God's universal forgiveness in my life. I am also grateful that He can help me develop positive change though positive habits .   The struggle for  sanctification is a struggle to develop new habits. Change our habits and we change ourselves.

Living Water

Joy and I had dinner with some friends. They announced they wanted to share in a special occasion. When they were married some thirty years before, someone had given them a bottle of wine, made that year. They had been holding onto it for all that time, and had decided to uncork it that night. They wanted us to share in tasting it. Though we rarely touch wine, felt that it was important that we sample a glass.


Our friends uncorked the bottle an poured us each a small glass. Then-disappointment! It was not very good. It had not only fermented, but gone beyond fermenting. It was barely drinkable.

Think about that wine. For years it sat in their house, waiting to be uncorked, waiting for that special moment. In the bottle, the anticipation of it brought a special sense of joy. But they waited too long. The right time slipped into disappointment.

Don’t we behave that way when it comes to the Gospel? When we received it, it was the greatest gift we could imagine. God almighty wants to be our friend and give us eternal life. We always intended to share it. But we are too cautious. What if we don’t do it right? What if they laugh at us? There are a thousand reasons for not sharing the Good News.

The Gospel doesn’t change. But we do, and so do circumstances. We let opportunity slip though our fingers. There is never a better time to share than now.

God has a moment for us to share. That moment is now. If now now, when? Tomorrow is not as good as today.

Presbyterians are cautious people. We want to pick the best time and the best place, to minimize our risk. It’s amazing they ever get married. It’s even more amazing that we ever see anyone won to Christ, when we are so timid about opening our mouths.

Our Lord was not that way. Jesus was driven by an overwhelming desire to see others in the Kingdom of God. One place we see that is in John 4. 4-30. In this story, Jesus did not sit down and rationally plan a strategy for bringing the Gospel to the Samaritans. Instead He was compelled by the Holy Spirit that this was the right time, and he was compelled to do so.

The story begins like this--And he had to go through Samaria. Now why did Jesus have to go through Samaria? There were two other and better routes from Jerusalem to Galilee that did not involve going through Samaria. Both of them were safer and more comfortable.

Samaria was hill country. Anyone would get tired going up and down those hills all day.

But that wasn’t the real problem. Samaria was unsafe for a Jew. The relationship between the Jews and the Samaritans was very bad. No one wanted to go through there.

I read recently that the most dangerous neighborhood is in Chicago. That neighborhood t is so bad that there is a one in four chance for someone walking in broad daylight to be attacked. Most of us would not even think about going there. That was what Samaria was to the Jews.

But Jesus had to go through Samaria. Why?

He had to go through Samaria for one reason. It is where the Samaritans were. The Samaritans needed him, and somebody had to take it there. He had the Gospel, and it was time had to uncork it. If he waited the wine of the /Spirit might turn to vinegar.

Let’s set the scene. Samaria was, by the standards of the day, a slum. It had once been an important place, the capital of the Northern Kingdom. Jacob’s well was there, probably, covered with dirt and graffiti.

Even so, Jesus led his disciples there. They came to Jacob’s well about three in the afternoon. The disciples went into town to get food. Jesus stayed behind at the well.

The well was deserted. It was too late for the breakfast crowd, and too early for the supper crowd. But one woman did come--the kind of woman your mother warned you about.

In those days you did not talk to strange women. But Jesus did, breaking a social taboo.

“Give me something to drink.”

She looked at Jesus contemptuously. The probably assumed that this strange man was about to proposition her. These Jews were all alike, she thought. They pretend to be all high and mighty, but they are no different from other men.

She answered, “How is it that you, a Jew ask me, a Samaritan, for a drink? The Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans.”

Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water."

“Living water” meant running water. It was not a stagnant pool, like this well. It was good, clean water like a mountain spring.

"Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?"

Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

Clean, clear water is symbolic of a Spirit set free by the Holy Spirit. It washes us clean and keeps us clean, so we can stay fresh in the world.

Wouldn’t any of them want some living water? Wouldn’t they want some joy that would keep coming even if everything else seemed to be falling in around them? That sense of resilient joy is what Jesus had to offer.

The Gospel is resilient joy. No matter how far you have fallen, no matter many times you fail, God forgives you. Even if you were the worst person in the world, you could be clean if you turn your sins over to Jesus, and experience His love and forgiveness.

Here’s the problem with us Christians. We have the Gospel but we don’t believe it. We say we believe that Jesus has the power to make a saint out of the worst of us. But then we have a whole list of people who we believe will never change. We’ve got whole classes of people that we think we don’t have to love or care for—other races, other nationalities, strangers, aliens, and so on.

We might come around to loving them eventually. But in the meantime, we hesitate too long. We can’t wait until they are gone, and then pretend to be looking for them. We might as well be fishing in a bathtub as to be seeking the lost only when they come to us.

He told her, "Go, call your husband and come back."

"I have no husband," she replied.

Jesus said to her, "You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true."

Jesus is not condemning this woman’s bedroom behavior, nor is He condoning it. He is demonstrating His knowledge and power. He knows her secrets but doesn’t care. He is not interested in her past, but her future. He wants her to have eternal life.

People look at our past. Jesus looks at our future. He loves us where we are. He wants to see them have that pure water coming up from inside us.

When do we truly walk like Jesus? When we know that we have to go through Samaria. We cannot be truly Christians and not love those whom Jesus loves. God despises our churchy pretensions and wants us to embrace his love for lost sinners.

This woman was impressed.

"I know that Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us."

Then Jesus declared, "I who speak to you am he."

Incredibly, this was the first time Jesus told anyone He was the Messiah. He hadn’t told his disciples, but he told this woman He was the savior, because she needed a savior.

Do you need a Savior? Do you think your sins are bad enough to send you to hell? If you don’t need a savior, you don’t need Jesus, because that’s what Jesus is.

Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, "What do you want?" or "Why are you talking with her?"

There is no difference in God’s eyes between you and a bum on the street. You both need Jesus. Only by God’s grace and the accident of birth are you not a bum on the street, if you don’t know Jesus. He has come to seek and save the lost, and we are among their number.

The end of this story is inspiring.

Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people,

"Come see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?" They came out of the town and made their way toward him.

There is a moment when the Good News must be told. This woman told. When she told, they came. Hundreds, maybe thousands of Samaritans poured out of those hills to meet this man that the woman told them about. As they met him, they changed, too—lepers were cleansed, sick people were healed, the demon possessed were set free, addicts were made whole, all kinds of things happened, because this woman believed. The living water flowed from her, into the lives of so many other people;

I have always wanted to see one of those moments, like the disciples experienced in Samaria and elsewhere, where people came down of their own accord, looking for the Messiah. We can’t call it a revival, because there was nothing there to revive. It is a move of the Holy Spirit, where He reveals Himself through changed lives, answered prayers, and unusual power and love. I have spent my whole life trying to get people into churches. It would be nice just once to see people who didn’t have to be persuaded to come. These Samaritans experienced the move of the Spirit, and th came.

I attended a Methodist school in Kentucky which had experienced such a move of the Spirit. That move swept across this country in the Seventies. For thirty-five years, I’ve wanted to be in such a flow of living water. But I have never seen it in this denomination. I am convinced that is why we are so small.

We have the Gospel of Christ, but we have kept it to ourselves. We have put it on the shelf and left the cork in it. We keep saying one day we are going to let it loose, tell the world, but we do not. The time never seems ready. One day it will be too late. There are other believers who will be obedient and willing to be channels of the Spirit, if we will not. If we do not use what we have been given, God will give it to others. But if we are willing to turn the Spirit loose, God can do great and mighty things.