John Lynch not only talks a lot about grace, he embodies grace in his interactions with those around him. And when he doesn’t, he’ll talk about that too. Besides his transparency, we love John because he is good at seeing people as God sees them, and calling it out to them. Plus he wears fun shoes. John will be speaking at Sandy Cove this summer during Family Camp Week 4. This article is shared from JohnLynchSpeaks.com
It’s not hard to fall into the trap of thinking that because I can articulate the tenets of freedom, I have learned how to live relationally in these freedoms.
After a while, we can get anesthetized by these truths if they haven't affected the way we relate to our world. We can become rough, arrogant, smug, and caustic. We can become the “grace police.”
Grace and identity are not theological positions to club others down with any more than joy and delight are types of mustard. Yes, we will experience a theological shift; a taking off of a moralistic filter from our eyes. But those who’ve experienced such, eventually become more intent on getting freed to love – freed to protect others who are not yet free to experience your freedoms. Anything less is probably cheap self-entitlement – "Hey, look at me! I can do this, and I get to do that and, look at me, I'm doing this. I'm not tied up in the religious rules anymore!" To those who may zealously find themselves in such bravado, I say this: “Great. Go play poker until dawn, have a beer, have another beer, wear the same shirt twice, wear shorts to a funeral...and then get over it.” Eventually, the free don't talk about their freedom much with their closest friends. They're too busy building up the body, guarding the hearts of those still weak in their conscience.
Yes, the Pharisees will always be in the corner, scribbling down notes at your party. They are not really your audience. At least not until God challenges their hearts. Love is most concerned about limiting its own freedoms for the sake of the weaker brother, until God, in His time, frees their hearts to join you in your behavior…or not.
We are free to see ourselves in Christ – alive, free, and without condemnation. We are free to see ourselves as righteous. We are free to love and be loved, beyond measure. We are free to know the endless love of the Father and to see ourselves as adored, even on our worst day.
But, we are not free to flaunt our freedom and impose it onto those whose God-given conscience has not yet made them aware of the freedom they have to live out what you so freely can. It could harm them. It can undermine the beautiful process of faith between a human and their God. We’ve got much better things to do than to push our limits to see what we can get away with.
Free lovers, love. They are the most free of all.