After reading Steve McVey’s book Grace Walk, I want all of us to come down with a disease described in the book: grace rabies.
McVey says those who are stricken are infected by God’s grace and need to pass it on to everyone around them. What an interesting description of one’s own spiritual life!
Most of us might mention grace as a part of our conversion experience, but that’s about as far as it goes. Oh, we may teach about grace, refer to grace in counseling, write about grace in an article. But do we live grace? We live it less than we preach it. That’s because we are caught between two theologies.
In fact, many of us have two theologies. One theology is for everyone except ourselves, while the other theology is for us. Let me explain.
Troubling Trends
The Francis Shaeffer Institute surveyed 1,050 evangelical leaders in 2006. Their findings mirrored many other such surveys:
• 89 percent considered leaving ministry at one time;
• 57 percent would leave if they had a better place to go;
• 71 percent felt burned out, battled depression on a weekly basis;
• 77 percent felt they did not have a good marriage;
• 72 percent read the Bible only for preparations;
• 38 percent were divorced or currently in divorce process;
• 30 percent had been in an ongoing or one-time sexual encounter with someone to whom they were ministering.
Why do statistics such as these describe or define us instead of a condition such as grace rabies? Something crucial has been lost. We know the role of grace intellectually but not experientially! Without grace, life and ministry become heavy and joyless.
Paul said as much in
How did you receive Jesus as Lord and Savior? Was it not by faith in His grace and mercy poured out on the cross? Did not the love and grace of Jesus so overwhelm you with joy and wonder that it consumed your entire being? Didn’t you feel as if you were going to explode if you didn’t tell someone—everyone?
So what happened? Could it be that you, as so many of us in ministry, were saved by grace only to begin to live by our performance/our works.
Between Two Theologies
Many of us have two theologies. One theology is for everyone except ourselves—one theology is for us.
Many of the Christian leaders who come to our retreat center in Colorado understand grace, at least intellectually. They preach, teach and counsel grace. They offer grace to the people they serve, with one exception: themselves.
We often encourage them to sit alone with Jesus, asking Him to help them hear and write down their negative self-talk, the negative things they say to themselves about themselves. It is astounding the ungracious things that fill the hearts and minds of so many of us. Here is part of the list of one beautiful, gifted young youth worker:
• I am ugly;
• I am stupid;
• It will never get any better than this;
• I will never be loved;
• If anyone really knew me, they would abandon me.
This youth worker is not alone in her theology. Where is the grace she preaches to others?
When we allow the immense, pursuing, relentless, unconditional, all-encompassing, everlasting, incomprehensible, amazing grace of God to become a faint whisper in our lives, we revert to a theology of works or performance. We are constantly trying to earn our worth. It is an exhausting way to live, robbing us of joy and passion.
Life is not easy. Pressures come from all directions. Ministry is complex and overwhelming. That is why grace is so essential!
Are you living in the wonder of grace? Does it consume you to the point that a phrase such as grace rabies could describe you? Maybe it is time to give grace the same place in your life that you did in your salvation.
LARRY MAGNUSON, CEO, SonScape Retreats, Divide, Colorado.
