Johnny Cash - Just As I Am (In memory of his death 15 years ago this month)

Redemptive Grace

The following quote is from Christopher W. Brooks, writing in his book, Urban Apologetics: Why the Gospel is Good News for the City

"A difficult reality that must be acknowledged is that although Christ is perfect, His followers are flawed and susceptible to all the vices that weaken humanity and limit human flourishing. This fact may be the greatest disappointment for those who, like me, look to Christianity as the hope for the spiritual and moral renewal of our culture. However, we must remember that the gospel is not that Christ came to seek and save those who were perfect or morally mature. Rather, the message of Scripture is that Jesus has shown mercy to those who recognize their brokenness and lack of virtue and look to Him for salvation (1 John 1:9). It is through this redemptive grace that a person's heart is renovated and mind is renewed." Christopher W. Brooks



"If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 1 John 1:9

Eighteen Years

This October marks the eighteenth year of my being born again in Jesus Christ.

I’ve been thinking how my development since my first encounter with Christ has followed the same trajectory that we follow when we are born into this world as babies, and until we turn the actual age of eighteen. 

In the secular world, we spend those early years learning motor skills, how to ask for our physical needs to be met, and to play. Then we enter public school and begin to learn all about the world in which we live: history, science, sociology, psychology, math, English and writing, among other things. And then we graduate, prepared for the future that is just beginning at eighteen.

I was 38 years old when I was born spiritually. So if we begin at zero, and go eighteen years, then this October, in spiritual years, I will turn eighteen, prepared for the future that is just beginning for me at this age.

This intrigues me very much. 

I look back over the last eighteen years and definitely see how I went from newborn babe to young adult in Christ. That excites me, because I believe the most difficult part is over and the defining, maturing and honing of spiritual muscle can now flourish at full throttle. All the gunk of trial and error in learning what it means to be a Christian has been mucked through, with confidence in who God is and who I am in Him and who I will yet become in Him rising to the fore. 

I’m not going to lie, it’s been a slog, at times, to get to where I am today. I wince and shake my head at some of the ways I behaved as a Christian just learning to walk. It took some time for spiritual discernment to kick in and for what I was learning to translate into action and attitude. The language of Christianity was much easier for me to read than to always apply or live out. 

And so I have been and still am one of those Christian hypocrites so many people love to point at as their reason for not coming to Christ. (But if you look around, hypocrites of the secular school also abound. They just don’t get called on it). 

Not to excuse this hypocrisy in Christians. Not at all. We are to see it less and less in every believer as we adhere to maturity in Christ. 

Certainly I would have desired to understand everything about Christ and His Word perfectly, heal from sin instantly and mature gracefully in the first few minutes, hours and days of becoming one in Spirit with Christ. 

But God in His wisdom doesn’t set it up that way. And the many ways I was wrong as a new believer, and the numerous ways I hurt other people due to my lack of having any clue as to how not to hurt those people by the changes I was going through and the sin I was, for the first time, facing into….was all part of the maiden voyage that I firmly can say lasted these last eighteen years.

In that time, I was discipled, led to read excellent apologetics, attended several churches of various denominations, submitted my self and my marriage and my children to God and attempted, albeit very sloppily and always imperfectly, to instill the Biblical Christ into our home. 

And now, having learned from my many mistakes and also the victories, I honestly can say I feel enough dross has been squeezed out of me that I can bid adieu to the ship and, arriving on solid ground, navigate with the heart, mind, eye and spirit of someone who no longer needs mother’s milk, but who has determined the priority of the mind of Christ and has set her compass there. 

The rock group Five For Fighting has a song called 100 Years in which they sing, 

“I’m fifteen for a moment

Caught in between ten and twenty…

Fifteen there’s still time for you

Time to buy and time to lose

Fifteen, there’s never a wish better than this

When you only got a hundred years to live.” 

Today I’m eighteen for a moment

Caught in between 0 and whenever

Eighteen there’s still time for me

Only time and nothing to lose

Eighteen there’s never a prayer better than this

When I’ve only got the future years to live.

I love arriving at eighteen, but I don’t plan on staying here. The maiden voyage now over, I release my baggage and set out unencumbered upon the twilight cruise of faith in Jesus Christ.

copyright Barb Harwood

It's Who God Is

On August 20th, I celebrated 35 years of marriage to my best friend, Brad. 

On August 28th, Brad woke up in the morning in the midst of a stroke.

After we arrived at the emergency room, and as he lay on the bed with his stroke symptoms worsening, I watched at his side and thought, "This could be it. I could lose him." 

As the emotion of the reality of the situation overtook me, the very next thought that came to me is, "God." Just God Himself.

And the thought was this: 

"It isn't what God will or won't do, it's who God is." 

With that, a peace enveloped my being, and I said to God, "Okay, God. Whatever happens, good or bad, okay."

And that assurance of God Himself in Christ stays with me today, fourteen days in to Brad's recovery. 

I am overjoyed that Brad is doing well, and responding to the rehabilitation of his left side that was affected by the stroke. His mind is fine and good and healthy. 

We are truly fortunate.

My husband and I have considered during these last two weeks how thankful we are to God for building, throughout the past eighteen years, our faith in Him and His Son Jesus Christ. 

It is that established relationship with God in Christ, rooted and prospered in the daily ups and downs of life, that came through when the rubber of major crisis hit the road.

A few days after the stroke, I read these verses, and they couldn't be more true for a time such as this:

"In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God's people in accordance with the will of God." Romans 8:26-27

Brad and I are entering new territory together. And God in Christ, as always, is right here with us.