When God's Grace Makes a Mess in Your Life

By Aaron Schulman 10-28-09

 

As I peered into the living room, I saw what looked like a small natural disaster.  Socks, blocks, stuffed animals, blankets and other debris were scattered around the room.  What appeared to be a ripe site for disaster relief team was created by a little Grace.  Standing at a whopping 30 inches tall and weighing a tremendous 26 lbs, our little Grace had made a complete mess in our living room – a relatively new and very common occurrence in our house.  

 

It was then that the proverbial light-bulb flashed in my mind as scenes from my own life began to come to my awareness, reminding me of countless episodes where a little Grace from God caused what appeared to be a mess in my life.

 

I was reminded of the messiness of my baseball accident at the age of 13, when I froze in the batter’s box and received a high fast pitch to the left side of my nose and frontal sinus (sending me to the hospital for 6 days for some emergency surgery, ending my hopes, dreams and career in baseball, subsequently opening the door to a lifelong love of another sport, golf).  I recalled another time in my life when I begged God to help me out of a mess I had created in my young life.  His delivery process, though apparently completely messy and extremely painful, would prove to be bathed in His Grace and Mercy.  Through another 3 year period of healing and restoration in my wife’s life, His Grace surrounded (and caused) what seemed to us to be the most painful and messy process of deliverance and restoration we had ever experienced, taking us both on a weekly and sometimes daily plunge into the depth of the pain of deep emotional, mental, and spiritual healing from deep traumatic wounds of the past.  The Grace that led us to and through the healing process was accompanied by the continual stirring up of deep, dark chaos and pain that often had us desiring and calling out for relief, even taking us to despair of our very lives.  Grace took us to the end of our desires for life itself, on many, many occasions.  It was then that we learned in the depths of our souls what Romans 8:28 (NIV) can look like in one’s life:  And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.  There is a purpose in the pain and temporary mess that Grace can cause.  

 

Looking back, I was taught by a 19 month old little princess named Grace how the Grace of God is so incredibly good, that He will often use an apparently messy and painful process to expose deep spiritual chaos, trauma and wounds that He desires to be painfully surfaced into the light (like the surfacing infection from a boil), so that He can bring true healing and ultimate healing.  Often times when He is using this process to bring things into the light, we experience a great amount of pain and temporary confusion.  As our little Grace looked up to our eyes seeming to communicate “why are you letting this happen?” while she was receiving her painful immunization shots from the pediatrician, we often look to God in a similar, perplexed posture, crying out to God, “why?”  When He allows us to experience any form of healing, it can often be accompanied by pain and emotional turmoil.  Only under His guiding care and Grace can we make sense of it. 

  

When we look to the Cross of Calvary, we see an apparent messy display of Grace (among many other things), yet this was the chosen path.  Arguably, no other single event in history has been more of a mess than the disfigured Christ on the Cross, yet this was God’s way to redeem, heal and completely restore all people for all time.  Isaiah 53:5 (NIV) says “But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed.”  The brutality of the Cross was not delightfully trite and clean process, and shows us the depth of the mess caused by sin which demanded a complete Holy sacrifice, and the apparently messy process by which Grace redeems and resurrects.  

 

In Jeremiah 1:9-10 (NIV), it is written: Then the LORD reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, “Now, I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.”  Often times in the healing process caused by Grace, uprooting, destroying, and overthrowing have to occur in order for the restoration and resurrection process leading to freedom to be complete.  Just as a demolition crew has to come and create controlled chaos for a period of time to raze a condemned building to make way for brand new construction, the Lord in His Grace has to raze buildings and constructs in our heart, minds and the depths of our souls.  Often times in this “Grace-bathed process”, relationships are tested beyond their capacity to sustain, and are seasonally ended.  Yet, it is through this process that new, lasting, deep and fruitful relationships can also develop.  But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. (1 John 1:7) 

 

Sometimes we are used as instruments of Light that trigger deep, dark emotional landmines, at times through our ignorance and selfishness, and other times through our gentleness.  Regardless, when the Lord is involved in triggering the event, His goal is to bring it to the light where He can uproot the nasty old roots so that new living plants can grow.  Often times this triggering process is messy and necessary.  Yet in the middle of the apparent chaos and pain, His Grace stands firm as the loving catalyst.  Even when we lose sight and desire of life in the middle of this process, He knows.

 

The messiness of Grace stems from an endless and All-Consuming Love.  God’s desire for all is to come out of bondage and live in the continual freedom of His Light and Love.  Often He will not spare us temporary pain and apparent chaos to bring us to a much better life in the Light:  a purification process that is both painfully bitter yet amazingly sweet.  Philippians 3:10-11 (NIV) says, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.”  Countless times in my own life, I have experience His resurrection life sustain me, lead me, and give me incredible wisdom and insight through the fellowship of His sufferings.  For a season, the suffering was mine and His alone.  Now I can see that He often uses that process in people’s life to bring resurrection and restoration into an individual’s life.  My personal relationship with Christ is far richer, much more alive, and far more real having gone through the personal messiness of His Grace in my life.  He messed up many things in me and my life in order that I would have True Life, even thing that were apparently good to me, yet he did not spare what I idolized as good for what He knows is best.  

 

Much of the fellowship of His suffering now is re-entering someone else’s pain with the Grace of Christ, which is always accompanied by His Strength and Wisdom.  In the crux of any issue, regardless of how hard it might seem at the time, we can always ask for wisdom and strength.  “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.” (James 1:5 NIV)  A simple prayer that I find myself uttering on a regular, daily basis is simply, “Lord, give me wisdom.”  When we ask for Wisdom, we are asking for God to come into the situation, for He is Wisdom.  Likewise, we can pray, “Your Kingdom come, Your Will be done.” (Matthew 6:10 – NIV)  Then, we are to wait upon Him to receive both strength and Wisdom. Where most of us run into complications is in self-sufficiency.  Developing a process of a moment-by-moment dependence on His Spirit, we can really see His resurrection power operate in our lives, and through our lives.  We also have access to call on His Strength while we wait for Him to do what only He can do:  I can do everything through him who gives me strength. (Philippians 4:13 – NIV)  But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. (Isaiah 40:31)

 

Through the messiness of Grace in our lives, it is clear that God is working to accomplish our restoration of fellowship with Himself, and our complete reliance / dependence on Him in all things.  Initially, the pain of the Cross applied in our own lives produces pain, yet the fruit of it is lasting life, more intimacy with God, and more deep understanding of His personal business.  If we can let go and learn to walk in surrender, we can truly live a supernatural life.  In our development, we can ask to be His friend and know His business, so that we can have fruit that remains.  The more I get accustomed to learning child-like dependence, the more I can experience the endless benefits of His Grace through friendship, and can even begin to hear and know His heart thoughts in any situation, because He makes Himself available, when we learn to quit relying on the self:  It is in an ever deepening relationship that we can make the transition from servants to friends of Christ: which has endless benefits.  John 15:15 says, “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”