power and grace are no longer mutually exclusive

If you’ve been listening to the talks from Grace East recently you will have gathered that this is an assumption that we are seeking to challenge. If we are to build the “best church in the world” (yes you did read correctly) then we better recognize that to do that we will need both grace and power. Last weekend Hayley and I were heading out somewhere and I noticed an advertisement what the car manufactures Mercedes have dubbed “The new generation SL.” I’d driven past the billboard several times that week and whilst I had noticed the gleaming new car I hadn’t read the strap line. On Saturday I read it and it was one of those prophetic moments of divine revelation, confirmation affirmation all rolled into one. The strap line boomed “No longer are power and grace mutually exclusive.” What a truth and what a truth for us to grasp this Pentecost.

I know I have said this before but you know there was a time when God used to talk to the world though the church but increasingly he seems to be talking to the church through the world. This weekend we celebrate Pentecost it ought to one of the most important days in the Christian calendar yet for many people in the Exchanged Life community the day will pass almost without notice. That is a great shame it really is. The battle lines seem to me to have been clearly drawn, if your for grace then your against power and if your for power then your not likely to be drawn to grace teaching

Well we return home to London today, (Friday) in order to get home in time for our Sunday meeting at Grace East. It has been a great trip. We always enjoy spending time with Steve & Melanie McVey but this trip held extra meaning for us as we not only ministered together at the first of this year’s Radical Freedom conferences, we also got to travel with them to their home in Atlanta. We had quite a road trip. Among the many neat things that we did, yes of course we went to Gone with the Wind Country but frankly my dear I could give a da-yam about that compared with our visit to the Martin Luther King Center; that was a profound experience for all of us.

I don’t mind telling you I sat and wept as I watched the video presentation of the life and work of Dr. King. It was made all the more profound for me given that I had been speaking at the weekend about focussing on our “destiny” more than our destination. It was amazing how the decision of one woman, Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery that proved to be her moment of destiny and flung wide the door of opportunity for Dr. King to step into his!

Reliving the story of the Civil Rights struggle has heightened the sense of destiny that I feel about our struggle for the freedom to worship Jesus free from the guilt and the oppressive hand of legalism. Standing outside The Ebenezer Baptist Church (the church that Dr. King pastured) and walking through the home where Dr. King was raised for the first twelve years of his life really stirred something inside of me.