grace – Jerry Lout ⚬ Writer ⚬ Speaker ⚬ Mobilizer

August 8, 2024August 7, 2024

Traction

A long Obedience in the same Direction.

Eugene Peterson’s book title strikes a chord in the heart of any who long for a joyous, unmasked walk with the Lord.. Apprenticeship to Jesus, while not for the faint of heart, yields dividends worthy of whatever time, effort and steady believing are called for.

Journeying with my ragamuffin C.R. buddies in the care of Roger’s guidance resulted in my celebrating more than one ’Twelve-step completion day’ event. I had been called upon in each of the nine-month-long treks to go toe-to-toe with an artificial defense mechanism. Denial. Some counselors contend that patterns of denial serve as a means for the brain to justify one’s addictive actions. I resonate. But am amazed at the power of raw honesty when embraced over the long journey of transformation.

Once an esteemed leader who had given many decades in godly service was approached by a young man with a question. He hoped to glean wisdom from the Christian sage regarding the pervasive fight against sexual sin. “Dr. D”, he asked, “could you tell me at what age a man moves beyond having to resist the pull of temptation?”

The minister (now in his eighties) responded with a query of his own, “Young man, once you learn the answer to that question, would you please inform me?”

Professor Willard of USC makes a masterful case in understanding that “grace is for whole life and not just for forgiveness. Grace is God acting in one’s life to accomplish what one cannot or will not do on one’s own. Grace is not opposed to effort, but to earning*”.

Leaning in to embrace and act upon such truths – continuing my pilgrimage in wholeness – brings immense assurance. Praises ever. To the divine father, to Jesus the beloved Son, and his indwelling Spirit.

April 11, 2024April 10, 2024

Stated Intent

A brilliant and beloved Southern California professor was fond of urging his fellow believers to live life on purpose, employing principles which he dubbed VIM.

Those lives that bear the marks of wholeness and flourishing for the good, Dallas Willard contended, tend to stem from persons who have firmly embraced Vision (the first letter of the acronym).

Alongside Vision come Intention and Means. Our infant ministry on the Tulsa campus – testing its wobbly legs with gangly stops and starts that are common to the very young – had started hammering out our Intention piece.

Just what were we sensing that God actually wanted? What would bring a ready smile to his magnificent countenance?

Jim Garton and I set out to give it our best in crafting a mission statement. It was clear that International Student Ministries needed one.

What shall we count as ISM’s Intention (the aim or aims that could be counted on to mark us and keep us grounded and focused through coming years). While we understood that a mission purpose can be tweaked and that often the best of aims can meet with course corrections, we felt daily the gravity of this assignment. It weighed on us.

At long last, with a lot of needed grace from above, we landed the plane.

The stated purpose carried two crucial features, neither of which could be realized apart from the other. Students needed to be able to enjoy the assurance that they are genuinely welcomed and cared about. Relationship must be key, with Christ’s tangible love and presence the heartbeat of it all.

The team’s next newsletter to be rolled out would herald our reason for being. Our Intention:

International Community Outreach exists to glorify God by meeting practical and spiritual needs of international students, through acts of service and through the proclamation of the gospel of Christ.

With our stated mission now in place, all that remained was to live it out!

This was to take some doing.

February 23, 2023February 23, 2023

Receiving

The wise apprentice acquaints himself with tools of the trade.

The disciple of Jesus is a person who desires and pursues gifts – tools God has given for aiding us in whatever tasks he may assign.

Yet, Christ urges us to something even better than his wonderfully stocked toolbox. He puts before us a thing that secures for us a way of living that is best of all. The way of love.

In his letter to the Corinthians, the tentmaker/teacher – guided by the Holy Spirit – makes clear the thing we would go after above all, “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”*

When false pride hits the wall and collapses under its own weight.

When trying and trying ends in discouragement, even despair.

Surrendering to our Lord’s best-of-all way opens before us the different kind of living he has promised. The flourishing kind, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly”.*

If you are like me, this flourishing kind of life itself can on some days (let’s be honest) feel elusive. It is in these times that faith in Jesus recenters us to the one thing, the best-of-all thing. God’s love in Christ.

So, now that we know that love is the answer do we trade one kind of trying for another kind of trying (“I must now, out of the grit of my will, generate love”). How despairing is that! No, we get to be done with the trying. That is forever behind us. Effort yes. Purposeful motion. But not of the grinding, disheartening kind. God’s grace to the rescue!

Love, authentic love, issues out of God’s grace.

If you are a dog lover, think of the most affectionate and loyal canine you can imagine. Those special endearing qualities are simply expressions of his nature.

A common animal may not serve as the best metaphor, as we seek to illustrate a feature of the creator and sustainer of the cosmos. That said, love is God’s nature. He is himself the source, the fountain of love. Scripture condenses it down in straightforward language so that we don’t miss its impact, “God is love”*

You and I can never manufacture such a precious life-giving element. Yet, all the Christian life is to be marked by faith at work through love. The one thing that we can do, the thing we are ever called upon to do, is to receive love. And continue receiving, and receiving, love. Christ’s love alone generates love, and his love alone fuels power to do and become all that he intends for us, “Apart from me you can do nothing”.*

Receiving and living out of his love is doable. It is a case of meeting with him in simple practices. It is a faith journey in apprenticing.

*1 Corinthians 13:13; John 10:10; 1 John 4:8; John 15:5

January 22, 2016August 28, 2017

Rhythm

I think we all need – really need, this to navigate life.

My friend Roger continued. Bringing less frazzle, more sanity. More life. Roger, was on a roll. Not unlike a drum roll.

When I hear drum rolls or things to do with foot-tappings, knee-slappings, fingertip-rappings, I think, Cody.

Not the Cody, Wyoming of other blog posts here recalling bus rides westward, motorcycle adventure, romance.

Rather the Cody from Southeast Oklahoma – my first grandson. Is he twenty-two now – Really?

For years his hands, wrists, even shoulders have unleashed pulsating energies.

What’s that distant rat-a-tat? More than one head-scratching visitor has posed the question to my daughter – his mother. She smiles, Oh, that’s Cody out in the game room. Drumming.

Distracted family members have implored little drummer boy – Umm, Code-man, could you ease up on the finger tapping. Focusing on our card game ain’t going well.

From eighth grade he began wowing us (grandparent bragging rights are constitutionally-protected.) Ten years beating away on drum heads, cymbals, chests of drawers, kitchen counters, bathroom mirrors, pickup hoods. God be praised he drums in rhythm.

Our lives need rhythm, Roger went on. My wife and I take a ‘couch time’ break most days. Breaking for fifteen minutes from all the action swirling around us. To connect, to catch up. To be in each other’s worlds. On purpose.

Rhythms. On Purpose.

Call them practices. Call them disciplines.

Whatever we call them – practices, disciplines – thoughtful people weave them into their calendar. Stewarding ebbs and flows of on-purpose living. On purpose.

Much like ancient Jesus-followers did, like mothers and fathers of the faith did – century by century.

Like the master Jesus himself did,

“Rising a great while before day he went into a solitary place, and there prayed”.

And Paul, “as his custom was he entered the synagogue”. Prayer, Scripture, Church community, Service, Solitude, Rest, Labor.

I ponder such a list and an appetite stirs. I’m homesick to ebb and flow like this, in my own design.

As surely as I am made for God, I’m made for rhythms. He moves in, takes up more space in my affections. Helps me live my design.

Going to Youtube I watched several drummers – really accomplished drummers. Not all were specimens of health. So physically disabled were some they struggled to mount the drum stool. Then magic took over. How?

Their disciplines – repeated practicings – carried them to astonishing mastery. Melodious thumpings and swishings, clangings and tappings easily flow from their wrists and hands. Amazingly they have long stopped thinking their limbs into action. The body takes over. It is trained.

Such is the way of the Jesus-follower. More becoming his, in the ebb and flow of spiritual disciplines. Trusting his help, his ready strength at every step. Entering the easy yoke.

“I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” -Jesus

March 22, 2016August 28, 2017

Evidence of a Resurrected Carpenter

There in the Africa savannah where flat-topped acacia trees dot the landscape, a young cattle-tender was seized by thieving attackers. He tried to seek refuge among his father’s herd, the bounty his assailants were after. The horrifying moments raced like short distance sprinters toward the finish tape until the boy was seized and beaten to death by these neighboring tribal warriors.

When I learned the news, words like heartless and senseless sprang to my young missionary mind.

In the thinking of the tribesmen who had slain the boy merely for his father’s cows, there was nothing senseless about their deed. For generations nomadic lore had dictated that all cattle were created by God as a gift for their people. Any and all means to retrieve what was rightfully ours was deemed justifiable. The retrieving of cattle was in fact, to them, a kind of duty.

Pastor Nathan was alerted of his young brother’s death by the high-pitched wailing of nearby village women. Afterwards, through the grapevine medium common to rural Africa, word of the tragedy made its’ way to our mission station some miles away.

I mounted my orange and aging Suzuki dirt-bike. With fidgety forefinger and thumb I ran my helmet strap through the cinch ring and secured it beneath my chin. Pastor Nathan needed a friend nearby – even a relatively new friend whose culture and land were much different from his own. I hoped to somehow be such a friend.

Aware of an involuntary tensing of my eyebrows, I tried to push back my growing sense of lack. Comforting loved ones who’ve experience the quiet and expected death of, say, an aged family member can be daunting enough. But this defied classification.

What will I say an hour from now once my piki-piki is brought to a dusty halt and I enter the humble, thatch-roofed hut? How do I myself digest such troubling news. How do I frame words to comfort a grieving young pastor whose brother just lost his life in this brutal way?

Bwana Ah-see fee-weh. Nathan, only barely my junior, offered a warm smile – greeting me with the Swahili words, “the Lord be praised”. Though the most common of greetings among believers, the words seemed unusual (maybe less than fitting?). We were near a tree at the elevated ridge of East Africa’s Great Rift Valley. The Lord be praised?

Nathan was a modest and gentle spiritual shepherd, entrusted with the care of a small Christian community. He had labored as pastor just under two years – this with little formal Bible training. But Nathan’s heart was rooted in Christ’s love and in his clear calling to serve.

We sipped hot chai and spoke in a softer, more subdued manner than usual. Finally I rallied my best voice to offer comfort. This would not be easy.

In unusual irony, Nathan sympathized with me in my struggle. His eyes conveyed compassion. He leaned forward in his simple, primitive-like chair. Its crude design was more suited for one given to half-reclining than to sitting.

Brother Jerry, he began, I want to say something.

It was my turn to lean in and listen.

I forgive these men who have done this thing. I forgave them actually once I learned of the sad event.

Was I hearing correctly? Not a trace of insincerity belied his calm, low voice. The faint tilting of my head along with some puzzlement in my look provoked him onward.

I know these people do not understand the badness of what they have done. They do not know. They do not understand. They need Jesus and I have begun praying for them that they should know him and gain his peace.

Listening to this humble shepherd-leader I was perplexed. I felt myself deeply moved. And I was suddenly aware.

I was aware of the presence of God. Here, just beneath the long grass weavings forming the roof of this Kuria home. I was seated in Solomon’s magnificent, newly-dedicated temple of the Living God. I was next to Isaiah, trembling at heaven’s voices crying Holy, Holy in the hallowed sanctuary. And the earthen floor under my feet might have easily dictated with hushed voice that I remove my shoes.

A reversing of roles had occurred. I, the missional teacher had come to give comfort. I sat voiceless now as the young, ill-educated, near-impoverished pastor had stepped up – so to speak – to his lectern. His non-sermon to me, this audience of one, conveyed with conviction and decisive action the message of an ancient, extravagant grace. Radical forgiveness issuing from one baptized in mercy.

The Lord be praised. Indeed.