grace.

a journal entry from last week:

just got back from KCM! i am so grateful things worked out and i was able to make it to KCM and also get home tonight. today's message was so perfect. you know when there's something on your mind and you go to church (or KCM in this instance) and God seems to send you an answer or response? weird.

well what i'd been thinking about actually stemmed from a lengthy conversation i had during the car ride back from norcal with one of my non-christian friends. youknow, it's really awesome to get to hear what they wonder and think about christianity because, as a christian, you tend to only hear things that you agree with, aka you remain a bit oblivious to the other >25% of the US population (yes, i just googled that). anyways, among many many other thought provoking topics. he brought up the frustration and disgust he felt from christians themselves. typical. it's so sad that as flawed christians we are often unable to be good representatives of God. he asked about the whole situation with a serial killer finding salvation in the last minutes of his life, what separated a sinful christian from a righteous non-believer, and one of the hardest questions, why did it have to be necessary to worship and believe in God to go to heaven. definitely hope all this questioning will get me ready for small groups on sunday, though i also hope things wont get this heavy with 6th and 7th graders. i tried to explain to him how it was the struggle and the awareness of the sin and sincere repentance that separated us from non-christians. he claimed that he hardly believed we struggled. how was i suppose to describe internal struggling? i should have told him to read my blog... it was extremely difficult to explain the idea of God's grace and how perfect it is because, honestly, it's pretty unbelievable. after almost 2 hours of conversation we encouraged him to come out to KCM the following week (today) and maybe ask the pastors or just listen to the message.

UNFORTUNATELY, he did not show up because he had a midterm to study for. i really really wish he had though because the sermon today answered a lot of his questions in a far better way than all of us had attempted. the passage was from romans 3, we first looked at verses 11-20. it explained a law that said nobody was righteous and everybody was a sinner. and in romans 3:20: "Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin." at first i was super confused. conscious of sin? how is that possibly a good thing? we went on to read in verses 21-26, how being conscious of our sin --> recognizing God's grace --> believing in Him --> finding righteousness through our faith. everything fell in place. romans 3:22-24 reads, "This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus." so the pastor explained in order to truly understand God's grace, we had to first acknowledge our sins and realize that even with our sins and flaws, God forgives us.

the ones that are morally upright, actually have it worse. often times they become prideful and believe they are "more upright than others" or simply can not recognize their sins or idolizations. until we are completely honest about our idols and sins, God's grace cant be amazing. grace is like a pool of water. we cant know how deep it is until we see the bottom. our sins and the depth of our sins make God's grace all that more amazing and incredible. i have no idea if what im writing here makes any sense. my hand hurts. and a quote from the pastor that i had to type into my cellphone to remember "grace will be nothing until we point our finger at ourselves."

we were completely sinful when Jesus died for us. we worship a God whose love and grace is so great that He came and died for people who deserved nothing.