May 22, 2004
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grace and ungrace
Yancey starts off his book by sharing this true story which has remained indelibly etched on my mind:
A
prostitute came to me in wretched straits, homeless, sick, unable to
buy food for her two-year-old daughter. Through sobs and tears, she
told me she had been renting out her daughter - two years old! - to men
interested in kinky sex. she made more renting out her daughter for an
hour than she could earn on her own in a night. She had to do it, she
said, to support her own drug habit. I could hardly bear hearing her
sordid story. For one thing, it made me legally liable - I'm required
to report cases of child abuse. I had no idea what to say to this woman.
At last I asked if she had ever thought of going to a church for help.
I will never forget the look of pure, naive shock that crossed her
face. "Church!" she cried. "Why would I ever go there? I was already
feeling terrible about myself. They'd just make me feel worse."What do you say to someone who has given up on church? to someone
who is sick of all those "messed-up" people there? to those who've
hardened their hearts toward God because their one taste of church was
judgment, condemnation, cold indifference, or calculated assaults? I
believe that the church is God's divinely appointed instrument for
reaching the world and yet somehow .... the church has also
become for many their greatest obstacle to knowing Christ. Christians
have consumed so much of their energies debating and proclaiming truth
and defining and clarifying practices that we've lost that one thing
that distinguishes us from the world -- grace. These were the
parting words in a letter by a loving pastor, "But grow in the grace
and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both
now and forever! Amen." (2 Peter 3:18)Yancey wrote, " ... I see now what pulled me along was my search for
grace. I rejected the church for a time because I found so little grace
there. I returned because I found grace nowhere else."
Comments (4)
wow...
for the last quote.. did something change about the church.. or did Yancey change in his understanding of grace?
ahhh maybe I should read the book again!
I came over here from your CEA Missionster ink. Yancey is an amazing writer. That book changed my perspective and my approach to evangelism, too!
In that last quote, yancey shares about his own spiritual journey with all of it's "wanderings, detours, and dead ends" ... like many others in the world, he too was seeking grace. yancey saw the world and the church rightly and recognized that this sin-laden, blemished instrument called "the church" was also our world's only hope. Let us continue to pray that our church might reflect the one true light of the world.
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