Amazing grace

Submitted by Stephen…

All my life, I have grown up in the church, assuming the role of the good church kid, attending service every Sunday, and going to the occasional retreat or church outing. I heard the gospel often, and soon it became just another Bible story among the many I had already heard. Church grew more and more into a routine, and my relationship with God became less important to me as I never really took what I learned seriously or applied it to my life. Nonetheless I would call myself a Christian, naively thinking that attending church and not committing any major sins qualified me for what I saw as merely a title.

However, away from church, I was quite arrogant, proud, and disrespectful. My false assumption of me being a Christian caused me to see myself as better than others. I had the “holier than thou” mindset, and felt that my attendance at church weekly somehow made me far superior to my peers at school. Ultimately, I thought that good works merited me the title of Christian, and it became nothing more than a trophy or an accomplishment. It never occurred to me that there was much more to being a Christian than going to church.

Through Sunday school, I had learned that God was loving and caring. However, I had developed the idea that these were conditional terms, and that I would receive this love and care only if I was a good Christian and didn’t sin. I understood God to be like a scorekeeper, tallying up the good and bad things I did and based upon which I did more of, I would gain his approval and acceptance.

In the summer of 2003, I attended a church retreat and our speaker gave a message that really showed me the depth of God’s love and what it truly meant to be Christian. He told a story about a poor beggar on the streets who lived in front of the castle of a very rich king. As the king was walking through the streets one day, he saw the beggar on the ground and was filled with compassion for him. The rich king adopted the beggar, and cared for the beggar as he would his own son. The speaker went on to explain how the King was God, and how he willingly adopts us as his children, and that he loves us unconditionally. We learned about Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross and how he came down to die for us and offer us this new life as his followers. God wanted me as I am, not because of anything I did or could ever do. Nothing could earn this gift, and the idea that I was accepted though a rotten sinner was amazing to me. I saw how I had rejected God, opting to live life like a beggar outside a king’s palace. However God made a great sacrifice to offer me forgiveness and an opportunity to repent and be with him in his kingdom. We were then asked if we wanted to accept God’s offer to become his child. Though I had heard this message many times, the story gave it a new meaning for me, and for the first time, the story moved me. I accepted Christ that night.

I returned from the retreat with a strong resolve and dedication to my newfound faith. However my understanding of what it meant to be a Christian was incomplete. The idea that accumulating good deeds would somehow earn me the right to be saved was something that was so ingrained in me that I struggled with letting it go and fully accepting the idea of God’s gift of salvation. Another idea that I did not quite understand was letting go of control of my life and giving it entirely up to God. I accepted Jesus as my Savior, but the implications of Jesus as my Lord and the Lord over my life were not there. I did not see the importance of applying Christianity to all aspects of my life, and not just making it a Sunday thing.

Thus, the next few years were full of ups and downs as I struggled to maintain my identity as a Christian. I regressed into my old habit of compartmentalizing my life, keeping my church experience separate from school life. I was quite the hypocrite at school, and though I didn’t do anything drastic, I would make small compromises such as lying or cheating from time to time that lead to continual habits. At church, I was constantly comparing myself to other Christians, looking to see who was more “sinful,” and evaluating how faithful I was compared to them. I turned my faith into nothing more than a shallow competition – a contest to be the greatest.

I soon joined our church youth group, Element, and there I was challenged more to really live out my faith sincerely.  Through bible study and retreats, different speakers brought up the issue of hypocrisy and lack of enthusiasm in faith. These talks did little to motivate me to drastically change, however. Though I recognized the sin within me and felt impacted by these talks, I was never moved to the point of repentance. Though I had accepted what Jesus did for me on the cross, it never occurred to me that it was something I could keep going back to. I thought that it was a one-time thing and from then on it was up to me to do more good than bad and rack up “points” for myself so I could call myself a good Christian. My warped view of Christianity caused me to go through some rough times as I struggled to do good and achieve the impossible goal of earning salvation.

The real turning point for me in my walk with God came at our mission trip to Tijuana in 2007. I could see how much of a hypocrite I had become and how much I struggled with it. I was beginning to feel really hopeless and worthless as a Christian, because I felt like I would never do enough good in the world to somehow earn God’s grace.

The opportunity to go on a mission trip came up, and I went hoping to learn more about what it means to be a Christian, and to gain new direction and guidance. We spent half a week at the mission operations base in San Diego to be trained up before going into Mexico. On the last night, we had a time of prayer, and one of the volunteers came up to me. He said God was telling him to come and pray for me, and so he began to pray for me. He prayed that I would be able to remain true to my faith, and that I would be able to be a powerful witness to my friends and to my school. Afterwards, the speaker gave us each small rocks. He emphasized the redemptive quality of the cross and how Jesus’ sacrifice allows us to come to him continually for repentance. We wrote our sins on the rocks and broke them, symbolically destroying our past sins. That night really was unexpected for me, and everything that happened seemed to address exactly what I was going through. I decided then and there to make Christ the Lord of my life, and committed also to living out my faith not only at church but everywhere, uncompromisingly and passionately.

It is a daily struggle to keep this kind of commitment, however because of it I am able to truly experience the love of God and the kind of compassion and forgiveness that he showers me with constantly. Since making this commitment, my life has been drastically changed in several ways. I now no longer see grace as something to be earned, but as something that is freely given. It is an amazing gift and sacrifice that no amount of good deeds on my part could equal. Instead of struggling to do good deeds, I now remind myself that I can come back to the cross for repentance, and that Jesus is willing to forgive me every time. I also live differently in that I have to take every day that I live and how I live seriously, no longer compartmentalizing my life, but applying my faith to every aspect of it. How I act and respond to others daily is a reflection on my faith and others. I need to make sure that I do not compromise in any way, whether it is a larger issue or a minor one. I also must be faithful in little things, such as doing DT or making sure to pray daily. Failure to do so may result in a continual habit and could be threatening to my faith. This new commitment has also changed the way that I view people and my relationships. I see them now not as competition, as I once did, but as fellow children of God, people who share the same brokenness and the same problems. They are not people that I need to overcome, but people that I need to support me and may need my support also. Instead of struggling against them, I have learned to struggle with them and grow closer in helping one another to live out our faith. God’s grace alone has allowed for the way in which I have changed.

Ephesians 2:8-10 says, “For 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. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

It is solely by God’s grace and His salvation that I have reached this point in my life. Though I still struggle daily, his ultimate sacrifice allows me to come back to the cross and repent, and once again pick myself up and continue on in my effort to serve him and glorify him with my life.