Grace
in Ungracious Places
by Preston Gillham (Fleming H. Revell, a division of Baker
Book House, Grand Rapids, MI, 2002)
For
most of my life I have lived in pursuit of a concept – a godly ideal – called
grace, considering my quest noble and my goal spiritual. It simply never occurred to me that grace was
a Person and that He was pursuing me. It
has taken divine effort to break through my human effort to understand
grace. In a shrewd act of genius, our
heavenly Father reveals His grace in ungracious places, just as an astute
jeweler displays a diamond against a dark backdrop.
Grace is a
Person, and He is engaged in our daily life no matter where that engagement
takes Him, even dark and ungracious places.
Grace is God’s passionate determination to share His heart with me. Why?
In hopes that I will find in Him a new life rooted in His demonstration
of grace – Jesus Christ. In hopes that I
will discover His great gift to me of a new heart capable of bonding with His
heart of grace. I hope that the honesty
of my journey will benefit you. May the
profound realization of grace in your ungracious places inspire you to say,
“Oh, wow!”
Have
you noticed that pain and fear, like most special forces operations, use the
darkness of night to gain advantage during their attack? In recent nights an old adversary has
returned to joust with me for the hand of victory. He is a black knight on a gray horse who
rides at dusk with an entourage of mealy-mouthed knaves. Fear’s face is under the black helmet with
the slotted visor. With massive hands he
grips his lance and hoists his shield.
Behind his breastplate is a heartless chest housing an unscrupulous
soul.
For twenty years I have
wrestled with undiagnosed physical pain.
I have learned - the hard way mostly – what I can and can’t do. I can’t ride in a car for a long time; I
can’t lie on my right side; I can’t make the bed; etc. Lately I can’t sleep. Of all the twitching, wiggling, jerking,
groaning, gritting, and flopping you’ve never seen the like. As I contemplate lying down, the spasms that
will certainly begin, the tossing, the dark room in the wee hours of the
morning, and the clouds of fatigue, Fear lowers his lance, or swings his mace,
or stabs at me with the point of his sword.
And I feel ill equipped to fight, standing there in my robe.
But fight I must, or be
run through and bludgeoned. King David
said to Goliath, “You come to me with a sword, a spear, and a javelin, but I
come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel,
whom you have taunted. The LORD does not
deliver by sword or spear; for the battle is the LORD’s” (1 Samuel 17:45, 47).
Fear ominously jockeys
for position. I know from years of
experience that his accomplice, Pain, will not miss his appointment with my
bedtime. I will come to blows with
Fear. Pain will land hard, burning
punches on my body.
The outlook is grim,
and the enemy taunts, “Sleep is illusive.
The mattress is really a rack, and you are my prisoner. Morning is hours away, and I own the night
and its depths. You are mine.”
But the fight does not
belong to Fear. The battle is the
Lord’s. He is able. I may feel
ill equipped, wandering the dark house in my pj’s, but I am clothed with the
armor of God and armed with the sword of the Spirit.
The dark knight has his
gnarly knaves, but I am surrounded by warriors from the kingdom of light and
supplied by God Himself, who is love, and “perfect love casts out fear” (1 John
4:18). My body takes the brunt of the
battle, while my spirit and soul form an ever-tightening alliance with the
Lord. I may lose sleep, but I find
Father is more than sufficient. I may
take a beating in the fight, but the battle belongs to Him. Fear jousts about, but the “joy of the Lord
is my strength” (Nehemiah 8:10).
Fear.
Pain. Darkness. Sleeplessness. Disorientation. Dread.
These do not lend themselves to a nice, neat, surgical battle. On the contrary. It is a grueling, bludgeoning, hand-to-hand,
pummeling, spitting, kicking street fight so ungracious it feels
dishonorable. But there is no dishonor
in scrapping to infuse grace into the un-grace of a butcher’s blitz.
The dark knight and his knaves may boast that
they own the night, but Father promises He will give us treasures in the
darkest hours (Isaiah 45:3a). I know you
too encounter the dark rider and have bouts with Pain and Fear. I shout encouragement to you. Fear may not be assaulting the drawbridge of
your castle at this time, but that’s only the calm before the storm. Either he or Pain or one of their allies will
come strutting his stuff. Don’t even
think of trying to take him yourself.
The battle is the Lord’s, and the hand of victory is yours.
It took several days
before I could gather a cogent plan of attack I could execute when awakened
from a sound sleep by the vice-like grip of Pain. I flanked Fear with a small passage of
Scripture (Psalm 18:16-19) I kept
ready night and day:
He (God) delivered me from my strong enemy, and from those
who hated me, for they were too mighty for me.
They
confronted me in the day of my calamity, but the LORD was my stay.
He
brought me forth also into a broad place; He rescued me, because He delighted
in me.
As for pain,
it is relentless; but Father is constant.
What issue are you facing that might be manageable if you meditated on a
small passage of Scripture and determined to do whatever was necessary to
remember that Father is constant?
Father, I
thank You that You are constant, that You are the same every day, that You are
unflappable, suffer no surprises, and are without shadow. They say that pain makes cowards of us all,
and that is true. But my strength come
from You, and You are victorious.
Father, I’m not much to look at.
I’m scuffed and hollowed-eyed, scarred and limping. I’m in no shape to do much dancing after a
night of fighting. But I celebrate the
victory You have won and am proud to be part of the campaign to conquer the
final outposts of my flesh. I declare,
to all who will listen, Your grace is well suited to ungracious places. It is quite a journey we are on. Thanks Papa.