How Amazing is it?

     

     I have been thinking about grace and its power to change how we see ourselves and therefore how we live.  God teaches us often through the people He brings into our lives. I want to talk about my relationship with a man that I have gotten to know even before I started in street support with New Life Prison Ministry.  I first met him at a soup kitchen and when I did I could see in him someone who had a very dark life.  It wasn’t just the ominous tattoos on his shaved head and all down his neck and arms, he also had a hard face and cold, aggressive eyes. He was obviously there that day to make connections with other known drug users and many seemed to know him. I remember throwing up a prayer that day:  “Lord, I want to get to know that man.”  He seemed very, very far away.

    He and I did meet months later, when he came looking for me with two friends, a man and a woman.  They were high on something when they came to my office.  They were boisterous; laughing at their own private jokes, loud and crude.  They asked me for help in finding them an apartment.  The two men told me they had just been released from prison and were homeless.  The woman with them seemed obviously unhealthy, very thin and unsteady on her feet. I told them I couldn’t help them that day but would be thrilled to do so the next day when they were sober and we could work together.  They didn’t come back. In fact, it took my friend about a year or so before he eventually did return and ask me for support to make the changes he wanted to make in his life.

    It is now two years later and a lot has happened. There have been many ups and downs in our relationship but slowly trust between us has grown.  A lifetime of addictions, deceit, violence, theft and incarceration has meant a great deal of instability in his life. People from his past who seek him out easily influence him. He has been re-arrested two times, relapsed many, many times, been housed and then lost his housing one time and lives under the constant threat of eviction in his new place. Each day he walks a tightrope of recovery and could easily fall off. Looking at him from the outside and you might not see much change. Something is happening on the inside though. He is using less street drugs.  He has been in his own apartment now for almost 2 years, the first time he has been able to hold onto an apartment for decades.  It has been over a year since his last arrest and he is coming to the end of his probation time. He is lucid and alert much of the time, able to paint, reading books again. 

   Last week things took a turn for the worse and I thought we were done.  I got a call from the hospital telling me he was in emergency, bloodied and high on drugs.  By the time I got to the hospital he had been discharged and had started walking back to his apartment.  I drove the route but didn’t find him until I pulled into his parking lot. He had just arrived at the front door and was standing outside: shirtless, unsteady on his feet, one pant leg ripped off.  I have no idea how he made it back safely. He hadn’t remembered walking home and thought I had driven him from the hospital and that his keys were in my car. It was obvious he had been in a fight as the corner of his eye was cut and a thread of dried blood wound its way down from the gash to his jaw. He was angry, as he couldn’t find the key to get into his apartment. The people in his apartment responded to his yelling and banging and opened the door for him. I followed to make sure he was going to be okay.  Once in he went right to the coffee table and started preparing another pipe to smoke. His “guests” then became acutely aware of my presence and yelled at him to stop. He yelled at me to leave, so I did.

     I left that scene pretty certain that our relationship would never be the same, that we had crossed a line and that he was lost again to that lifestyle of addictions and crime.  I felt defeated and was resigned to the fact that he was going to lose his housing and that all the other progress he had made would be reversed.

     I have been taking him to church for a number of months now.  Most people in the community who know him are amazed that he is going.  I wouldn’t say he exactly blends in or that he even really understands everything said and done, as church is such a foreign environment for him. He sometimes comes and sleeps through the sermon but most times is attentive. He tells me he feels good there, enjoys the music and the Bible messages.  He attributes his most recent bout of stability and near-sobriety to God and his daily prayers to Him.  He tells me that God has made the difference this time for him. I felt that this was over because of what had happened and the condition I had seen him in during the week. How could I go back this coming Sunday and expect him to join me again?  Would he feel ashamed?  Would he feel he had let me down and therefore distance himself? Would he feel like giving up because he had failed?

    I had decided I wasn’t going to “bother” him that week about joining me in church. Then, on Sunday morning, I felt God directing my heart a different way and I changed my mind as I was driving.  I decided that I would drive by his house just on the off chance that he was ready and willing to go to church.  I said to myself: “I don’t want to be the cause of his giving up on God and on himself.” As I pulled into his parking lot I was very surprised to see that he was there, waiting for me, with one eye purpled and the cut above it still swollen and scabbed. In the car we talked about what had happened a couple of days before.  He acknowledged that he wasn’t doing very well and was allowing others to influence him.

   The message spoken by the preacher that morning touched on who we are in Christ.  He spoke about faith in Jesus that brings about new birth. He highlighted the truths about us being a new creation and how the weakness and sin of Romans 7 doesn’t define us anymore, but that we live in the truth of Romans 8 and the power of the Holy Spirit in us to live up to our new reality in Christ. He spoke about us seeing ourselves, as we are, a new creation in Jesus; “the old has gone, the new has come.”  As I looked at my friend my question was: can that message of a grace that totally transforms us and changes for eternity our destiny really work for someone so enslaved by a lifestyle of defeat? Can that message be powerful enough to empower my traumatized, addicted friend to see himself differently and live in his new reality?   Can I believe that God’s grace is sufficient for him and will see him through to a life that glorifies God? Can I treat him and others I meet with the same grace that I experience? I said to my friend: “It doesn’t matter how much you have failed during the week- I never want to hear you say that you feel too ashamed to come to church, because God will never close the door on you. He will never give up on you. He loves you that much.” In the car, as I drove him home afterwards, we listened to a song by Big Daddy Weave from the album “Come to Life” called “Redeemed.”  It seemed appropriate.

   (see it at http://www.godtube.com/watch/?v=0BBCCCNU )

“Seems like all I could see was the struggle
Haunted by ghosts that lived in my past
Bound up in shackles of all my failures
Wondering how long is this gonna last
Then You look at this prisoner and say to me "son
Stop fighting a fight it's already been won"

I am redeemed, You set me free
So I'll shake off these heavy chains
Wipe away every stain, now I'm not who I used to be
I am redeemed, I'm redeemed

All my life I have been called unworthy
Named by the voice of my shame and regret
But when I hear You whisper, "Child lift up your head"
I remember, oh God, You're not done with me yet

Because I don't have to be the old man inside of me
'Cause his day is long dead and gone
Because I've got a new name, a new life, I'm not the same
And a hope that will carry me home”

  I must believe the message of the grace of God that has transformed us. It is what gives us cause to hope.  Can we live in the reality of that grace that allows us to live up to what we have already been made? 

“But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.”

1 Corinthians 15:10 (NIV)