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How Would You Feel if You Met Someone Famous?

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Maybe It’s Easier Than You Think

Meeting famous people can be exciting. We’ve all seen people fawn over some famous person. If we meet or know someone famous, we tend to drop names like we’re old friends. I know I’ve done this on occasion.

Why is this?

I think often it’s because we have a low perception of ourselves, and it makes us feel more important and valuable.

This low self-perception is a lie. We’re all just as important as anyone else.

If you’ve ever had a chance to get to know someone famous, more often than not, you find that they aren’t that different than anyone else.

After all, God made us all in His image. (Genesis 1:27) That sounds to me like we’re all pretty important!

When Jesus was just starting His ministry, John the Baptist introduced Andrew, one of his disciples, to Jesus as “the Lamb of God”. Andrew then went and found his brother Simon and invited him to come meet Jesus, whom he called the Messiah.

Jesus was someone pretty famous.

Andrew invited Simon to come meet Jesus…he didn’t just tell him about Him.

We know Simon as Peter, the Rock on which the Church was built. (John 1:35-42) Peter also became pretty famous.

So, if Jesus is famous and we know Him and He knows us, (John 10:14) doesn’t that mean that we are important and worthy?

People are interested in famous people. It’s no different with Jesus. People are curious and want to know more about Him. If people are invited into a community of authentic Christian believers…they can get to know Jesus, rather than just being told about him.

People need to be invited to meet Jesus.

This invitation can come from Christians in a church. There’s also an invitation that comes from within each of us.

Preceding or prevenient grace is a way to understand how God’s grace works in our lives even before we become saved. 

Prevenient grace is the idea that God’s grace enables people to respond to him. It goes out to everyone, enabling them to respond in faith to what Jesus has done for us.

The theory of prevenient grace was developed to reconcile the tension between God’s sovereignty and human free will. It allows believers to exercise the free will God has given us.

Prevenient grace is a form of grace that only acts on a person before they are saved. It is distinct from sanctifying grace in that way. There is a change in the type of grace a person receives once they enter a relationship with God. The process of sanctification is still similar; it is still a yielding to God’s perfect will at our own expense. In sanctifying grace, however, the Spirit helps us as we become more and more like Jesus.

Prevenient Grace is at the very beginning of that process.

The idea of prevenient grace developed in response to Calvinism by Jacob Arminius. At the time, it emphasized the Calvinist idea that God had unconditionally chosen who would believe, and he also condemned those who were not chosen.

Prevenient grace became prevalent because Arminius opposed the idea that God has already unconditionally chosen who would believe and who would be condemned. He saw predestination as an affront to God’s justice.

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, further popularized it. He saw prevenient grace as the first of three stages in the believer’s life. These were gestation (prevenient grace), birth (justifying grace), and death (sanctifying grace). So, prevenient grace is how God prepares the believer to respond to Him. It is the links in the chain pulling someone closer and closer to God.

Prevenient grace is a way to reconcile how God’s grace is extended to all people, even though not everyone responds. It differs from Calvinism, which says God has already predestined and elected the people he has chosen to save.

Before a believer comes to Christ, he is dead in sin. Therefore, we need God to intervene before we respond to him. Those who believe in prevenient grace also believe that man cannot respond to God unless God acts first. Genesis 6:5 supports this because it says fallen humanity will only seek and do evil without God’s intervention.

Prevenient grace means that Jesus died for everyone, but his atonement only affects those who believe in him.

Knowing the famous Jesus starts with being aware of the pulling of this grace. The next step is understanding that there is a pulling. Third is information and instruction on what it is. Fouth is learning more about it and accepting Jesus as the only way to Heaven.

If you already know that famous person Jesus, feel free to drop His name.

Don’t just tell people about Him, invite them to meet Him and get to know Him through an authentic community of Bible-following believers!

We All Need Grace, and Getting It Comes Down to a Choice

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This Is True for All Life’s Important Decisions

Our whole life is made up of decisions. It’s up to us to make the right choices.

Too often we don’t.

Sometimes it’s because our life situation is all we’ve ever known.

This was the case for Johnny Lee Clary. He grew up in a family full of hate and fear. His family was racist and full of aggression.

“There was a lot of alcoholism in our home and fighting all the time. My mother was constantly cheating on my father. My mother drove my father into bankruptcy, and then my father was faced with losing everything he had worked hard for.

I watched my father, one night, take a pistol and put it to his head and blow his brains out.”

Johnny was only 11 years old when his father died. Immediately after the funeral, his mother put him on a bus and sent me out to California to go live with his sister.

“That just made me hate that much more. So, I was hating everyone. At 14 years old, I felt like committing suicide myself.  I was thinking seriously about ending my life so I could go be with my dad.”

Then he saw David Duke, head of the Ku Lux Klan on television telling everybody that the White people needed to stick together. This made him feel some kind of a weird connection to his dad.

Johnny wrote Duke a letter telling him his life story. Before long, there was a knock on the door.

“I opened up the door, he shook my hand and said, ‘I’m a friend of David Duke’s.  We’re here to protect you, son.  What you need is a family.’”

The Klansmen taught Johnny the ways of the KKK. When he was 18, he returned to Oklahoma to start his own Klan chapter. Eventually he rose to the rank of Imperial Wizard, the Klan’s top leadership position.

“I finally felt like I’d found something that I could amount to in life.

The FBI opened an investigation on Johnny. He knew it was just a matter of time before he was going to end up getting arrested.

Johnny decided his only shot of staying out of prison was to step down as Imperial Wizard. But when he did, the Klan turned on him, fearing that he was an FBI informant.

Once again, he became a person without any friends. He started drinking, and the fear and hate consumed him.

“I thought of my daddy and I thought Daddy had the right idea. I sat down and was looking at the gun and there was a Bible sitting there. I thought that there is no possible way that the good Lord can forgive somebody like me, because I had been so full of hate. I had all the violence and lived such a bad life.”

He flipped open the Bible and it opened to Luke 15, the story of the prodigal son.

Johnny read Jesus’ parable of the young man who demanded his inheritance from his father, then squandered it all. He returned home to the father remorseful. His father did not chastise him, instead he celebrated his return.

“I finally got on my knees and said, ‘God, my life is screwed up.  God, I’m in a mess.  I need Your help.’”

He went to a nearby church. What he saw there amazed him: Blacks and Whites sitting together.  This moved Johnny’s heart, and at the end of the service, he gave his life to Christ.

“I felt like a new person, brand new creation.  I felt like I had had a weight lifted off my shoulders.”

Johnny wanted to share this with others but didn’t know how to get started, so he called on the Rev. Wade Watts, Minister of an African-American church that the Klan harassed.

“The Klan had set fire to his church and did everything under the sun to harass this man. I remember he debated me at a radio station one time. He looked right at me, and he goes, ‘You can’t do enough to me to make me hate you.  I’m going to love you. I’m going to pray for you whether you like it or not.’”

Johnny went to Rev. Wade Watts and they became good friends.

Johnny learned how to love and live in unity with all people.

“Not only has He given me a good wife to stand by my side, but He’s given me good friends. He’s given me a good life here on earth.  He’s given me hope, gave me the gift of love. Taught me what love’s all about. Isn’t that what God is? 

God is love. 

I’m not that mixed up kid looking for a family anymore.  I’ve got a family. I’ve got a relationship with my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

More of Johnny’s story

Most of our have not experienced or done the things that Johnny did, but we all need grace. If he can receive it, so can you.

Receiving grace is a choice and available to anyone who asks for it.

The Worst Thing We Can Do Is Nothing

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We Are Living in The Grace Period

According to Wikipedia, a grace period is a period where a penalty or other action is waived after a deadline or an obligation has passed. This can apply to the starting of a new job, paying a bill, a rental agreement or the meeting of a legal requirement. All of us have experienced the benefits of a grace period.

In Luke 13:6-9 Jesus tells a story about a man who planted a fig tree. After three years the tree had not produced any fruit. The man told his gardener to cut it down. The gardener asked the owner to give the tree one more year. He would work the soil around tree and fertilize it. Then if in another year it still isn’t producing any fruit it will be cut down. This was the tree’s grace period.

Many of us go through life, just like this fig tree, doing nothing and wasting our talents. Too many times we don’t believe that we have what it takes. We think that for something to be valuable, it has to be fabulous and incredible. This isn’t the case. If we all would do the little things that we have the chance to do, the accumulated result will be amazing.

We need to do what we can, where we can, whenever we can.

Too often we hide our gifts afraid that we might make a mistake. Jesus shows us how wrong it is to waste our talents in the story of the three servants, Matthew 25:14-30. In this scripture a wealthy man gives three servants varying amounts of gold (some versions refer to this as talents) to care for and use while he is gone. When he returns two of the three have used their gold (talents) wisely. They are rewarded for this. The third hid his, so the wealthy man took it away and threw the man out into the street. There is a price for not using the gifts we have been given.

Every day is full of opportunities to use our gifts to help others by:

  • Providing a service or product through our vocation
  • Listening to others
  • Getting involved in ministries
  • Treating people with respect
  • Loving our family and friends
  • Smiling at someone
  • Teaching and leading
  • Saying a kind word
  • Donating goods, services and money
  • Opening a door
  • Saying thank you
  • Saying you’re welcome

God has given each of us a purpose. He expects us to use the talents we have been given to fulfill this purpose. As long as we are alive, we should work to accomplish His plans. Each of us is living in the grace period.

Choosing to do nothing with our gifts is the worst thing we can do.