The Healing Power of Love


02/13/2011 - Who You’re Not



In his outstanding book on grace, called What's So Amazing About Grace?, Philip Yancey opens with a true story that he says continues to haunt him. Yancey has a friend who works with those who live on the streets of Chicago and one day a homeless prostitute came to him. She was sick, poor, and unable to buy food for her daughter. Through sobs and tears, she told him that she had been renting out her daughter -- two years old! -- to men for kinky sex. She said she could make more in one hour doing that than she could earn in a whole night turning tricks on her own. She had to do it, she said, to support her drug habit.

Yancey's friend said, "I could hardly listen to her story. It was so disgusting, so repulsive. I was speechless and had no idea what to say to her.

"Finally, I asked if she had ever thought about going to a church for help. And I'll never forget the look of pure, naive shock that crossed her face."

"Church!" she said. "Why would I ever go to church? I already feel bad enough about myself. They'd just make me feel worse!"

Yancey goes on to say, "What struck me most about my friend's story is that women, much like this prostitute, flocked to Jesus. They ran TO Jesus, not AWAY from him. In fact, the worse a person felt about themselves, the more likely they were to see Jesus as a refuge."

What's happened in 2,000 years? Has the church lost that gift? The down and out, who flocked to Jesus when he lived on earth, don't flock to the church anymore. What's gone wrong?

This morning we continue the series called The Healing Power of Love with a teaching I've called "Who You're Not." Last week we talked about who you are when you look in the mirror of God's word and see the truth about you. This week I want to flip that over and talk about who you're not when you look in that same mirror because that's also the truth about you. And that's just as important. We need to know who we are, but we also need to know who we're not.

Throughout this series we've said that the church needs to be a hospital, a place of hope and healing. A place where people come not to get beat up and made to feel worse about who they are, but a place where people find love and acceptance and forgiveness and discover the amazing grace of God. Maybe if more churches were like that that woman wouldn't be on the street doing what she's doing with her daughter.

In our vision statement called Imagine a Community we say, "imagine a community that dares to dream of heaven on earth, a community of grace where everyone is accepted and respected and their journey valued ... a place of hope where we can find help and healing and the power to change, no matter how desperate our situation may be."

That's the community we want to be, but in order for that to happen the church needs to be filled with people, like you and like me, who have been knocked off their feet by God's amazing grace. We need to be soaked in grace. If grace is an ocean we're all sinking as John Mark McMillan writes in his song.

The song "Amazing Grace" that we're going to sing after the teaching today is the most popular hymn ever written. And I think it is because the story of grace resonates with people all over the world because that's what we all need, grace. The song was composed by a man who had experienced grace first hand. His name was John Newton and to understand why he was so amazed by grace, we need to understand a little bit about his life.

John Newton was born in London in 1725 to a very godly mother. But his father was a tyrant, a godless, hard driving sea captain who was absent from his life most of the time.

When John was only 7 years old, his mother died of tuberculosis and at the tender age of 11 he went to sea as an apprentice sailor on his father's ship. By the time he was 20, Newton had become a militant, outspoken atheist whose life was dominated by alcohol and sexual immorality. He was a far cry from the little boy who once sang hymns at his mother's knee.

A number of times Newton tried to change his life, vowing to do better, but every time he failed. And for ten years he trafficked in the African slave trade, until finally through a series of circumstances, he became a slave himself. John Newton was running from God as fast and as hard as he could. And it finally took a shipwreck to turn him around and bring him to Jesus.

It happened in March of 1748. Newton was on board a ship called theGreyhound and early one morning the boat was caught in a vicious storm that collapsed part of her side. And from 3:00 in the morning until 12 noon Newton along with others pumped water out of the vessel until he fell asleep completely exhausted. But less than an hour later he was called back on deck to steer the crippled ship until midnight.

Of that nightmare experience Newton later wrote in his journal, "Things continued this way for 4 or 5 days, or perhaps longer. Provisions began to grow very short. Much labor and little food wasted us fast. One man died. Yet our sufferings were light compared to our fears. We faced the terrible prospect of either starving to death or feeding on one another. The captain, whose temper was quite soured by distress, was hourly blaming me as the sole cause of the calamity. He was confident that if I was thrown overboard, the ship would be saved. I thought it was very possible that all this had happened to us on my account. I was at last found out by the powerful hand of God."

John Newton felt very much like Jonah caught in a storm, running away from God. But by the grace of God, the Greyhound survived and when she finally limped into the harbor at Liverpool, England, she carried a very different John Newton than the rascal he was when he boarded the ship. Later he wrote, "Because of that experience I began to know that there is a God that hears and answers prayer. Though I can see no reason why the Lord singled me out for his grace."

John Newton went on to become a fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ for the next 60 years of his life and became one of England's greatest pastors and hymn writers as well as a political activist dedicated to ending the slave trade in the British Empire. He served God faithfully until he died at the age of 82.

But for the rest of his life he never recovered from the grace of God. So he wrote, Amazing Grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind, but now I see.

What does Newton's story have to do with the healing power of love? A lot. Over the last few weeks we've been talking about how we relate to ourselves. We've said that if we're going love our neighbors as ourselves, we need to have an accurate view of who we are. And then we said that there are three components that make up a healthy self-image. We need to feel like we belong. We need to feel like we count. And we need to feel like we can.

And God is his wonderful wisdom has addressed all those needs. That's the truth about you. That's what we see when we look into the mirror of the Scriptures. But there's another truth that we see when we look in the mirror and that's the truth that we are not perfekt. We are not perfekt and nobody else is either. We need the constant grace and forgiveness of God. And if we don't understand that then we don't have an accurate view of ourselves or of others or of God.

In his bookHealing for Damaged Emotions David Seamands writes, "Perfectionism is the most disturbing emotional problem among evangelical Christians. It walks into my office more often than any other single struggle. Perfectionism is the constant and all-pervading feeling of never quite measuring up, never quite being or doing enough to please. To please whom? To please everyone - yourself, others, God.

"Perfectionism produces a distorted picture of God with feelings of doubt, rebellion, and anger against a God you can never please. The three favorite phrases of the perfectionist are, 'could have,' 'should have,' 'would have.'

"The perfectionist lives by the tyranny of the 'oughts.' I ought to do better. I ought to have done better. I ought to be able to do better. Always standing on tiptoe, always reaching, always striving, always stretching, always trying, but never quite making it."

Do you struggle with feelings of perfectionism? Do you set a standard for yourself that is unattainable and then beat yourself up for failing over and over and over again? Has your relationship with Christ become a burden to bear rather than a joy to revel in? Another duty to perform? Another task to accomplish? Another person to please?

Trying to be perfect will wear us out and destroy our relationship with God. It will make us bitter and angry and judgmental and critical and very difficult to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength because perfectionism creates an impossible God. It creates a caricature of a God who is never satisfied. A God we can never please. A God who's always upset and angry with us. A God who may look a lot like our earthly father if he was all those things, but who looks nothing at all like our heavenly Father who is hopelessly in love with us and craves a relationship with us and knows better than anyone else all our flaws.

He's the God that Jesus came to reveal. He's the God who is filled with grace and truth. He's the good shepherd, in Luke 15, who leaves the ninety-nine to look for the one stray sheep that got away. He's the woman who empties her house looking for the lost coin that fell down between the cushions on the sofa and she finds it calls her friends with the good news. He's the lovesick Dad who waits by the mail box day after day after day until his wayward son comes home. And when he finally does he throws a party to celebrate!

We can't be perfect in this life. We'll never be the perfect person, the perfect husband, the perfect wife, the perfect the father, the perfect mother, the perfect child, the perfect friend, the perfect student, the perfect boss, the perfect worker, the perfect pastor. It cannot be done.

If God thought we could be perfect in this life he wouldn't have sent Jesus to pay the penalty for our sin on the cross. The truth is we all need help. So when you look in the mirror next time you need to say, "I belong. I count. I can. But I'm not perfect. And God loves me just the way I am."

There's only one ultimate cure for perfectionism and it is as profound and as simple as one word, "grace." What is grace?

The word "grace" shows up 123 times in the New Testament. It's the English translation of the Greek word "charis." And it means in its simplest form "unmerited, undeserved favor." That's what grace is. Grace is getting what we don't deserve.

John Newton knew he didn't deserve to be spared on that ship. He knew that God would have been perfectly just if he would have drowned at sea. But God graciously not only spared his life, but he saved his soul, and gave him a long fruitful ministry and heaven to boot. That's amazing grace! That's what he never got over.

The apostle Paul who in this series has already helped us understand that we belong and that we count and that we can also helps us understand grace. One of the best passages is found in Ephesians 2.

In Ephesians 2:1-9 he writes, As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. 4But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions - it is by grace you have been saved. 6And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7in order than in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast.

God's grace rescued us, saved us, raised us, seated us with Christ in the heavenly realms when we deserved to be condemned. That's not just for John Newton. That's for you and for me.

Max Lucado in his excellent book called In the Grip of Grace tells the story of Chuck Colson's visit to a very unique prison in Brazil. Twenty years ago the institution was handed over by the Brazilian government to two Christians to operate. With the exception of two full-time staff members, all the work is done by inmates.

After his tour Colson wrote this, "When I visited the prison I found the inmates smiling - particularly the murderer who held the keys, opened the gates and let me in. Wherever I walked I saw men at peace. The walls were decorated with Bible verses from Psalms and Proverbs. My guide escorted me to the notorious prison cell once used for torture. Today, he told me, that block houses only a single inmate. As we reached the end of a long concrete corridor, he put the key in the lock and then paused and said, "Are you sure you want to go in?"

"Of course," I said. "I've been in isolation cells all over the world." Slowly he swung open the massive door and I saw the single prisoner in that punishment cell... a crucifix, beautifully carved by the prison inmates, the prisoner, Jesus Christ hanging on a cross.

My guide said softly, "He's doing time for the rest of us."

That's grace. The perfect, sinless Son of God, Jesus Christ, has served our sentence. We did the crime. Jesus did the time. Not in a prison cell, but on a blood stained cross.

Seamands writes, "Many years ago I was driven to the conclusion that the two major causes of most emotional problems among evangelical Christians are these: the failure to understand, receive, and live out God's unconditional love, grace and forgiveness. And the failure to give out that unconditional love, grace and forgiveness to others ... We read, we hear, we believe a good theology of grace. But that's not the way we live. The good news of the gospel of grace needs to penetrate the level of our emotions."

We can't be perfect. We're going to mess up a lot until we finally see Jesus face to face. And every time we do we need to grow in God's unconditional love, grace and forgiveness. And grow in our ability to extend that unconditional love, grace and forgiveness to others. We need to be soaked in grace.

The apostle Peter closes out his second letter by writing in

2 Peter 3:18, But grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

This week I read a story about Dr. Joseph Cooke. Dr. Cooke was a professor of anthropology at the University of Washington in Seattle. He was a brilliant man who loved God and became a missionary to Thailand. But after a few years in that country he left an angry, broken man no longer able to preach or to teach or to even read his Bible.

In his bookFree for the Taking he writes, "I was a burden to my wife and useless to God and to others. I invented an impossible God and had a nervous breakdown. God's demands on me were so high, and his opinion of me so low, that there was no way for me to live except under his frown. All day long he nagged me, 'Why don't you pray more? When will you ever learn self-discipline? How can think such thoughts? Do this. Don't do that. Work harder.'

"God was always using his love against me. He'd show me his nail-pierced hands, and then he would glare and say, 'Well, why aren't you a better Christian? Get busy and live the way you ought to.'

"Most of all, I had a God who deep down considered me less than dirt. When I came down to it, there was scarcely a word or a feeling or a thought or a decision of mine that God really liked." Cooke's perfectionism created an impossible God.

But fortunately Dr. Cooke got help for his false view of God. And came to understand grace to the point where he could later write these words, "Grace is the face God wears when he meets our imperfection, our sin, our weakness, our failure. Grace is who God is and what God does when he meets the sinful and undeserving. The healing of perfectionism takes place in day-to-day believing, living, and realizing the grace relationship we have with a loving, caring heavenly Father."

We belong. We count. We can. We're not perfect. Thank God for grace!


Questions of the Week

  • What does grace mean to you? How has grace been important to you in your spiritual journey?
  • Why do you think we sometimes struggle with perfectionism? What does this struggle tell us about how we view God? Ourselves?
  • Many of us have stories of a time when we've experienced grace. What story can you share about your experience with grace? How are you different as a result?
  • What does it look like to be a community of grace, where everyone is accepted and respected and their journey valued, as our vision states? How can we continue to live out this vision together?