Redemption and Choice

Introduction: Reading A Book

Not long ago I mentioned how I’d virtually been on a reading fast.  I had literally not read a book for months.

Now for me that is a big deal.  Before my love of music comes reading.  Before my love of writing comes reading.  Before my love of football comes reading.  I can say to a large degree my understanding of God has primarily come through reading.  So for me to go months without reading, as I said is a big deal.

Anyway, the reading fast came to an end recently when I came into some money.  (It’s alright, nobody died and left me money in their will, neither did I rob a bank … well that’s the story I’ll tell the police, anyway.)  From having read nothing in months, I went crazy and started not one, not two, but five books within a week.  That’s right, I started reading five books.

Usually I’m not so impulsive in getting back into reading.  My regular habit was to have a main book, with one on the back-burner ready to take the mantle once I finished the main one.  Being a phase-reader, sometimes the backburner book can come to the foreground and the main book goes on the backburner.

So with five books on the go, there is a lot of room for different phases to kick in and dominate.  It’s good stuff really because the range of books means that I can find one to fit a phase relatively easy.  One of the books is on the nature of the church and kingdom.  Another book is on kingdom lifestyle and discipleship.  One of the other books deals with our attitude to traditions in Christendom and contrasting them with a Jesus-centred approach.  Another book is a biography on Margaret Thatcher.

It is the fifth book – which is the main one at present due to the phase I’m in – that has inspired today’s blog entry.

The Prodigal Comes Home

Michael English was a singer with the Gaither Vocal Band before starting a highly successful solo career that crashed and burned when shock revelations were made about him.  The fall from grace was heavy and the amount of difficulties he faced were large.  By the grace of God he came to himself, returned to his Father and made a slow but significant recovery.  He shares the story in the book The Prodigal Comes Home.  It’s one I’d already recommend heartily to read if you can get your hands on a copy.

The opening pages reminded me of the amazing grace of God that restores people.  Of course that hymn Amazing Grace speaks of saving wretches. A wretch as you can gather is hardly the most endearing commendation to describe your character.  What grace speaks of, however, is reaching people whose character may not endear them to others, but God is still able to reach them and love them and change their whole lives around.  Not overnight, but His glory can still be seen and experienced through them.

This amazing grace of God works for wretches – even those who have been church members for years.  Even those brought up in the church, well steeped in its expectations, and goes through the rites of passage to be accepted in the Family of God and still mess up big time.  There is often talk of the God of a second chance, but when you consider how many times we mess up, you’ll have to suggest that He is a God of multiple chances.  His patience with us is truly extraordinary.

What is also clear about the grace of God, is that it is able to work even when we don’t want it.

When We Don’t Choose Grace – Grace Still Chooses Us

A lot is made at times about the power of man to choose. Entire theological constructs are based on the supremacy of man’s free will as if that is the be all and end all.  Yet sometimes our state of mind, the environment that we’re in and other constraining factors are such that the free will – the ability to choose is severely hampered.

For example, if you find yourself in the depths of a drug addiction or other heavy type of dependency, it’s difficult to really say that you ‘choose’ to be enslaved.  That’s exactly because you are enslaved. Forces and circumstances – even if it might be as a result of choices you’ve made, though that’s always the case – put you in that devastating vicious cycle where at your very best, you know you’re only a few moments away from craving those pills or seeking that hit.

Sometimes you know it’s wrong, you’re desperate to do right, but you still find yourself going down that same path that leads to all kinds of mess.  You want to be strong.  You want to resist.  Sometimes it can be all too much for you. You simply don’t have the power. Your free will as it were is enslaved.

Herein lies the awesome power of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Where your power is insufficient, His grace is sufficient.

There are testimonies of people who look back on their lives and see quite clearly that it is this Amazing Grace that literally saved the wretch that was them.  Not their will-power, not their tenacity and other inherent characteristics.  It was solely the work of God intervening and plucking out those He calls His own. He redeems.

Conclusion: Redemption Is All God

I don’t dismiss the role of choice and our responsibility.  I’m just saying that to put it on a pinnacle of supremacy that we can do from time to time completely ignores the sovereignty and awesome grace of God.  The reality, if we consider it, that in as much as we can take the responsibility for certain things that happen in our lives, we must surely also give God all the glory for doing things for us and in us that we could never do – or even choose to do.

This is another reason why it’s so important for those who follow Jesus never to give up on God’s ability to restore people from whatever fall they may have experienced.  Rather than write them off, we should forever be grateful that God can redeem, no matter how hard and how long the fall.  We should be grateful that God has the fatted calf ready and waiting for prodigal sons and daughters to return home.

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

dmcd