HeartWork: Saving You from You
The Beauty, Complexity, & Power of God's Grace
A friend went through a divorce - that she did not want - a couple of years ago. We talked recently. She gave me permission to share what she said told me:
“My family and co-workers think I’ve moved on. They think I’m over it. I’m cheerful. I’m productive. I’m moving on with my life. I DON’T WANT HIM BACK! But I can’t seem to get over what he did to me. Although, I know I’m never going to get it, what I want is an apology. I want to give him a list of all the ways he hurt me and have him just acknowledge each.
I’m so hurt. I’m so angry.
I find myself doing little things that are completely out of character for me. I’ve never been passive aggressive, but I’m intentionally mispronouncing his new wife’s name. I’ve lost several of his checks. I avoid saying his name anywhere, anytime.
Sometimes, after he gets the kids or we’ve had a normal polite conversation, I find myself cussing under my breath as I walk away. A couple of times recently, I shocked myself and cussed out loud, and then quickly looked around to see if anyone heard me.
John, I don’t cuss! But this is consuming me, and I must get free.”
As I listened, I knew she needed what Jo and I call “Heart Work.” You see, the daily changes most of us need to make just require behavior modification – intentionally changing small behaviors that then become habits and eventually begin changing our thought processes and even our perspectives. The principle behind behavior modification is that if we change our actions, our feelings will follow. However, the depth of my friend’s betrayal, pain, and anger require something deeper than mere behavior modification. It requires going well below the surface. It requires Heart Work.
True Heart Work begins with what I believe is the most beautiful, complex, and powerful word in the English language – grace, specifically God’s grace.
God’s grace reserved a place in heaven for the thief on the cross without any record of decency, acknowledgement of his crimes, or a changed life.
God’s grace invites my friend who killed his best friend in a drunken car crash to worship in eternity right next to the elders of his church.
God’s grace gives Mitchell, who stabbed his little brother to death, and my friend Alvin, who killed his brother-in-law, the opportunity to sit with me at the wedding feast of the Lamb.
God’s grace allows my friend, a pastor with a secret pornography addiction, to preach the Gospel without being fried to a crisp by God’s wrath.
God’s grace calls a business owner who has sacrificed his friendships, marriage, and even his children at the altar of success to know the same warm embrace and genuine celebration experienced by the prodigal son when he returned to his father.
God’s grace offers the angry Christian, who is so obsessed with what he’s against that he’s forgotten who he is for, the same simple question Jesus asked Peter after Peter forgot who he was – “Do you love me?”
God’s grace shelters the senior citizen who would scoff at being included in this list from His rebuke for her smug self-righteousness.
God’s grace is God’s limitless capacity and insatiable desire to love us unconditionally before, during, and after the worst things we’ve ever done. God’s grace far exceeds a grandmother’s love for her grandchildren.
But God’s grace crashes head-on into human nature. It collides with our sense of justice, even our sense of reason and fairness.
God’s grace is so extraordinary, so unfathomable, and so spectacularly life-changing that to espouse it in the same way a child recalls a rhythmic prayer before meals, says the pledge of allegiance, or completes a vocabulary test - knowing the extreme price Christ paid for us to experience God’s grace - feels arrogant, insincere, glib, or at best terribly incomplete.
Romans 3:23-24 says, “all sinned and fell short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
In Ephesians 2:8, Paul wrote, “it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is a gift from God.”
Certainly, Paul is referring to eternal salvation. Certainly, he’s telling us that it is God’s grace which frees us from the eternal consequences of our own foolish and destructive choices.
But what if Paul is also telling us that God’s grace can save us from the on-going effects and control of other people’s foolish and destructive choices?
We have such limited grasp of God’s grace. It would be easier to collect every drop of the Ohoopee, Canoochee, and Altamaha rivers in a Yeti cup than it is for the human brain to fully comprehend God’s grace.
But when I explore the depth my own depravity,
when I consider the foolish, impatient, selfish, prideful, fearful, dishonest, vain, self-righteous, mean, devious, hurtful, lustful things I have done,
when I consider where my own mind still goes when reacting to unfavorable or undesirable challenges,
and I consider how much God loves me,
what Jesus has done for me,
and what He has offered me,
I get a tiny crumb of understanding God’s grace.
And when we catch even a crumb of God’s unreasonable, unrelenting grace in our own lives, it inspires a feast to share with others.
It’s God’s grace that inspires a heart-broken husband to seek reconciliation with his unfaithful wife.
It’s God’s grace that inspired the parents of the teenagers killed at Columbine High School to place two crosses, one for each of their children’s killers, on the hill there among the crosses for their own children.
It’s God’s grace that inspired a nun to visit her rapist in prison and offer him her forgiveness.
It’s God’s grace that inspires a wife to raise and love the child her husband fathered with another woman as her own.
Grace like that rarely emerges from an ungrateful person. Gratitude for your blessings – health, wealth, family, career… - will shape the lens through which you see the world. It will shape your interactions with others. It will shape your reactions to circumstances.
But when your pain runs deep, when the dark toxic roots of betrayal or malice entangle your heart, your gratitude for God’s blessings will not save you from yourself. Only gratitude for God’s grace in your own life will start the Heart Work that frees one from such captivity.
Grace & Peace,
John Crosby