GraceNotes Podcast

OPENING THE GATES (July 3, 2020)

Within the castle of our fears, inside the moat well-filled with pride, we wonder why this life we chose seems lonely and unhappy. Our citadel seems much more like a prison. We wanted strength, we said, so we built battlements and gates to keep our painful secrets safe. We rarely let the drawbridge down, for we have much to guard. But from the turret we can see a joyous life we long to live—a liberated life, well-filled with love, with kindly people laughing, caring, trusting and forgiving. Grace always builds for us communities of hope. It brings companions who, like us, once lived behind grim castle walls. We learn, in time, the undefended life, where broken people are made whole, where we admit how much we need the healing freely ours in Jesus.  We trade our fears for faithful friends: we drain the moat; we plant peace lilies on the walls. “For freedom Christ has set us free” (Gal 5:1). And so we find the life we crave—where we are neither lonely in our sins nor alone in our salvation. The grace we’re given gradually becomes the grace we share with those still trapped behind dark castle walls. “Come down; come out,” we chorus at the stones. “Come live the shared, abundant life Christ promises to prisoners.” And all who do can stay in grace. -Bill Knott

Note: If you are blessed by GraceNotes, we invite you to subscribe.

ONE GOOD WORK (June 26, 2020)

Our stories are distressingly familiar. We start each week, or each new day, with adamant intention: I will lose weight; I won’t lose patience with the kids; I’ll treat my colleagues kindly; I won’t waste hours surfing on the Web. And only hours or days later, we note the uptick on the scale; the strangely quiet children who endured our angry words; the whispering around the water cooler; the useless rantings of a hundred posts that only fenced us off from love. Our best intentions are like “ropes of sand.” Convinced by all those self-improvement books that mastery is within our grasp, we measure all the transient things that never plumb the depths of our true brokenness. There’s only one good work worth mentioning, according to the God who made us and redeemed us: “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent,” Jesus said, referring to Himself. When we admit our inability to makes ourselves leaner, kinder, wiser and more patient, we open up our lives to Him who says, “I am making all things new” (Rev 21:5). Our wholeness is the gift of grace: we cannot reach it by ourselves. If virtues ever grace our lives, it will be grace at work in us. Invite grace in, and give it room. And it will stay with you.

-Bill Knott

Note: If you are blessed by GraceNotes, we invite you to subscribe.

WALKING TOGETHER (June 19, 2020)

We haven’t lived the same life stories, or even understood each other from the start. Our differences are many and profound. Our ancestors didn’t share the same small towns in Poland, Ghana, Mississippi or Nebraska. We didn’t attend the same schools; have similar access to good jobs; like the same food or music at our picnics; or experience equal pay—or equal justice. We hurt differently, but we know what pain is. We grieve our losses and celebrate our joys in ways uniquely meaningful to us. We may share faith, but not the same one. Our beliefs are often different. And yet we choose to walk together, trusting that the time we spend in listening and in telling will build trust, ease conflicts. We can share a kind and valued humanity as sons and daughters of a loving Father. “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all” (Titus 2:12). The miles ahead are dusty and unknowable. And yet we choose, because of grace, to take the next step forward on the road. We trust the miles we share and stories we tell to lead us to God’s gracious destination. So walk with me, and let me learn from you. And we will stay in grace. -Bill Knott

Note: If you are blessed by GraceNotes, we invite you to subscribe.

RIGHTING OUR OWN WRONGS (June 12, 2020)

My story of grace starts with an admission I was wrong—lost, stubbornly resistant—and will be many times before my journey is complete. In the overarching narrative of grace, there’s only One who ever got it truly right—only One who both believed and lived perfectly. It was Jesus—not me—who never needed to apologize, or make amends, or ask forgiveness for a fault. And so the community that gathers around Him—the believers who follow Him wherever He goes—are men and women increasingly aware of their own brokenness. They know that every heart has corners where the Spirit doesn’t yet dwell—unredeemed attitudes, prejudices, rusting vats of bitterness. In grace, they bring these to the light where each may be identified, confessed, and yes, through grace forgiven. A legal religion, more committed to correctness than redemption, will always chase away the broken and the flawed, for they can never seem to measure up. But Jesus says to all discouraged by their deficits in holiness, ““Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matt 11:28). By grace, we can still build communities where apologies abound and forgiveness flourishes. The future of our healing starts today. So stay in grace. -Bill Knott

Note: If you are blessed by GraceNotes, we invite you to subscribe.

FIRST PERSONAL PLURAL (June 5, 2020)

The Biblical prophet Daniel, about whom no mistake is ever recorded, is found in the book that bears his name “confessing my sin and the sin of my people” (Daniel 9:20). This is how grace acts in times of national and international tragedy—not for “me and mine” but for “us and ours.” Grace doesn’t say, “It wasn’t my fault: I kept myself pure from disease,” or “I’m not responsible for the sins of my ancestors.” Grace moves us to accept responsibility for our neighbor’s faults and the bigotry we inherited from great-grandparents; to pray for the generational sins that have endured in every nation, tribe and people. In this, we begin to fulfill the Biblical counsel: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal 6:2) The heart renewed by grace is freed to admit responsibility even for mistakes transparently not its own in some specific, legal sense, for grace always moves toward the first person plural—to “we,” to “us,” to “ours.” As those bought by the blood of Jesus, we’ve come to realize that nothing human is foreign to us[1]: my neighbor’s sin might well be mine tomorrow. It’s our pride and ignorance makes us pray as the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people” (Luke 18:11). Grace teaches us our place among the broken and the wounded. So, “Lord, teach us to pray.” And stay in grace. – Bill Knott

[1] Edward G. Robinson

Note: If you are blessed by GraceNotes, we invite you to subscribe.

WIDENING THE CIRCLE (May 29, 2020)

An old and wintry tale records a farmer’s frozen prayer: "God bless me and my wife, our son John and his wife--us four and no more. Amen." We smile, for we’ve known Christians who sometimes prayed like that. Sometimes we were those Christians. It’s in our nature to want good things for ourselves—and the grace and blessings of the Father are certainly good things. We spend our praying on the things we need—patience with our children; forgiveness for our wandering; stamina to get through one more week—or day. But it’s in the nature of God to give His blessings freely—to shower His grace on more than those who ask Him. “He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt 5:45). And from our resurrected lives we pray for grace on those who least deserve it—the angry boss; the callous “ex”; the enemy whose joy is causing pain. Grace is an “all or nothing” virtue. If we’ve received it, we extend it. And we pray that other undeserving souls discover grace as well. Unclench your fists. Unfurl your heart. Pray widely now. And stay in grace. -Bill Knott

Note: If you are blessed by GraceNotes, we invite you to subscribe.

RECEIVED—AND GIVEN (May 22, 2020)

Those who most need grace from us are those who see us at our best—and at our worst; the people who share houses, schools and cubicles with us. They sleep on the other side of the bed, or in the bedroom down the hall. They are the parents who seemed never to believe in us, or relatives who expect us to give endlessly. They work in the corner office, behind the counter, or any of a hundred places where expectations sometimes clash. They differ on food choices, paint colors, politics and faith. In short, they’re near enough to know if grace has left its mark on us, if gospel values of forgiveness and reconciliation really fill the spaces of our lives. They see the choices that we make—to hold our tongues; to apologize when needed; to not hold grudges; to release our claims on vengeance. And they measure our religion, not by creeds or preached theologies, but by the cold cloth on a feverish night, and the love that has no need to shame. Grace can’t be sought from everyone, but can be shared with anyone. “Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another” (1 Jn 4:11). “Put things in order, listen to my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you” (2 Cor 13:11). This is the sum of practical religion—adding grace, subtracting faults. Live the gentleness of Jesus. And stay in grace. -Bill Knott

Note: If you are blessed by GraceNotes, we invite you to subscribe.

GRACE WITHOUT FEAR (May 15, 2020)

Those who fear that a rich embrace of grace always leads us to be careless about following Jesus only illustrate how fear distorts reality. Grace is not—nor ever was—permissiveness. In the center of the story, Jesus dies upon a cross—because the Father’s perfect law required every sinner’s death, or the death of the only One who could atone for them. Grace is not—now or ever—forgiveness without consequences. Lashed and beaten, Jesus bore the punishment we earned, the wages of our sin. “He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed” (Isa 53:5). Grace is not—nor ever will be—a declaration by the Father that rebellion doesn’t really matter. If nothing less than Jesus’ sacrifice could make us whole, trust me—no, trust Him: nothing matters more. It’s the deepest proof of the Father’s unfathomable affection for us that He whose law was terribly offended also offered us the way to be restored to Him. And it’s the greatest evidence of our sanity that we choose Jesus, healing, and renewal. Grace is what God says it is—love defeating brokenness. So stay in grace. -Bill Knott

Note: If you are blessed by GraceNotes, we invite you to subscribe.

           

GRACE WHILE WE WAIT (May 8, 2020)

If red lights linger more than 60 seconds, we blame bureaucrats who don’t understand real-world traffic patterns. If checkout lines at the local market are 10 shoppers deep, we grumble at inattentive managers who make us needlessly wait. When wounds won’t heal and pain endures, we wonder why God doesn’t act as quickly as we need, or chooses not to intervene. We weren’t wired to wait, we say, even though each day, each week, requires we do more of it. It takes great grace to learn to wait. We’ve made our plans as though each traffic light will always be green, each errand will flow seamlessly, each scar will quickly disappear. We count the hours we spend waiting as something less than fully living—an exasperating gray zone between what we’ve imagined and when we think it should occur. But waiting well is time in grace, a window to reflect on God’s long, unfolding calendar where “in everything God works for good with those who love Him” (Rom 8:28). The same grace that waited patiently for us to come home, through all our sins and misadventures, now holds us as we wait the end of separation, loss, and pain. “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Psa 90:12). Grace waits. And so do grace-filled people. So stay in grace. -Bill Knott

Note: If you are blessed by GraceNotes, we invite you to subscribe.

GRACE REACHING (May 1, 2020)

An old—and unworkable—policy from the Chicago trainyards once declared: “When two engines approach each other on the same track, neither can move until the other moves first.” It reads like an all-too familiar description of what happens when we find ourselves in conflict with someone. We stay put; we sit tight. We wait for the other to make the first move toward apology or reconciliation. Just as soon as our wounded pride is soothed and our correctness underlined, we’ll become—we promise—the forgiving persons we’ve pledged to be. It’s marvelously fortunate for us that the Father doesn’t act that way—that He takes on Himself the responsibility for moving toward us when we’re stuck in shame and brokenness. “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation” (2 Cor 5:19). Grace always moves toward pain and guilt and bitterness. It doesn’t pause to grind in wrongs, or tally all infractions and offenses. It seeks the peace for which we were created, the friendship that’s infinitely more valuable than the sum of others’ failures. “Be kind to one another,” the Scripture says, “tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you” (Eph 4:32). And you will stay in grace. - Bill Knott

Note: If you are blessed by GraceNotes, we invite you to subscribe.

ALL OF GRACE (APRIL 24, 2020)

On our best days, we just can’t save ourselves. And on our worst, the story is the same. When all our words are moderate and cheerful; when every deed is generous and sweet; when all our weaknesses recede, and all our strengths are trending up—we need God’s grace to save us from unholy satisfaction with ourselves. And when we’re stuck in bitterness and hurt; when we’ve got nothing good to say about ourselves or any of our peers; when we seem chained to old, destructive habits like prisoners to a wall—we need God’s grace to save us from dejection. The acts that save us all belong to Jesus. We offer nothing—deed or word, good or ill—that makes us more entitled to His love, or threatens His affection for the broken and the lost. “For there is no distinction,” the Word of God reminds us, “since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom 3:22). Remember now the great unchanging, undeterred, and undeserved love of Christ. And stay in grace. -Bill Knott

Note: If you are blessed by GraceNotes, we invite you to subscribe.

TRUSTING WHAT'S TRUE (April 17, 2020)

Is grace, at heart, believable? ‘Of course,’ you say.  Why not believe?  It’s the noun that always follows “Amazing,” the tune the bagpipers skirl at dawn; the soaring hymn a tenor lifts into a vast cathedral. For some, it may be what the sermon is about, or what we learned in Bible class. But is grace believable at the baseline of our fears—in those tough places in the soul where shame and memory combust to make us cringe again, again?  Does grace reach down below the intellect, the wonderful idea, and heal those wounds we so much never want to show the world? At its heart—and in our hearts—grace offers us what no one else is giving.  Redemption is for real—for all those moments and those years we’ve blown it big and ruined all our future.  “All we like sheep have gone astray. We’ve turned every one to his own way.  And the Lord has laid on Him”—on Jesus, the only righteous one who ever lived—"the iniquity of us all” (Isa 53:6). It seems too good—too kind; too merciful—to be true.  And so we linger in the half-light of our fears, humming a tune we dream might yet be ours. The hymn has outlived every copyright.  God’s grace is clearly in the public domain. Make this song yours.  And stay in grace. - Bill Knott

Note: If you are blessed by GraceNotes, we invite you to subscribe.