An amazing discovery..

It’s been a great privilege this weekend to spend time with the leaders from City Church Cambridge. They have recently done a preaching series entitled ‘Amazed by Grace’ and Nick Green, who leads City Church invited me to speak on what it means at a personal level, to live a grace-filled life.
We started Friday evening over a Chinese meal & cheesecake, after which I spoke briefly of my own journey of the discovery of God’s grace – from younger days when although believing in God, I had a nagging sense that he was mainly frowning at me in displeasure, to the amazing realisation some years later that he actually likes me!

The discovery of God’s amazing grace towards us is life changing or it is incomplete. First, a simple definition: ‘Grace’ in this context is the underserved lovingkindness of God that sought us out and accepts as we are, all made possible through the gift of his Son, Jesus, given for us. And, of course, such a discovery changes everything!

Landmarks for me on my journey of discovery were hearing Terry Virgo speak on Enjoying God’s Grace on his co-called EGG tour, back in the late 1980’s. (still available I think - I’ll try find a link!). Next, the parable of the Prodigal Son was to make a big impact on me. When I began to realise that this story is there in the gospels to show me that God is an attentive, devoted father who, far from being remote, stuffy and irritated by me is actually animatedly enthusiastic about his children – even when they have messed up! He is the watching, waiting, running, embracing, kissing father who more than likes me – he actually delights in me!!! (see Henri Nouwen’s ‘The Return of the Prodigal'; Helmut Thielicke, ‘The Waiting Father’; and perhaps most recent & readable, Tim Keller’s ‘The Prodigal God’)

That leads me to another landmark for me, a passage in the book ‘Knowing God’ by JI Packer which has become perhaps my favourite quote outside the Bible. It’s quite long, but worth the read!

“What matters supremely, therefore, is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it – the fact that He knows me. I am graven on the palms of His hands. I am never out of His mind. All my knowledge of Him depends on His sustained initiative in knowing me. I know Him, because He first knew me, and continues to know me. He knows me as a friend, one who loves me; and there is no moment when His eye is off me, or His attention distracted from me, and no moment, therefore, when His care falters…. There is tremendous relief in knowing that His love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench His determination to bless me. There is, certainly, great cause for humility in the thought that He sees all the twisted things about me that my fellow-men do not see (and am I glad!), and that He sees more corruption in me than that which I see in myself (which, in all conscience, is enough). There is, however, equally great incentive to worship and love God in the thought that, for some unfathomable reason, He wants me as His friend, and desires to be my friend, and has given His Son to die for me in order to realise this purpose. We cannot work these thoughts out here, but merely to mention them is enough to show how much it means to know, not merely that we know God, but that He knows us.”

God’s grace really is amazing!

Goff
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