Grace Redux

April 12, 2011

Maria Grace, Isaiah, Philippians, Romans , Leave a comment

I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.  Phil 4:13

I have finally awakened to the PRESENCE of supernatural GRACE (“charis – # 5485”) in the new Maria.  What new Maria?  I’m referring to the new creature that I became when I was born again.  God’s Holy Spirit was deposited in me at that moment when I passed from death to life.  I am now a daughter of God the Father and equipped with a new nature and new rights.  As His child, He deposited faith in me and gave me access to all the grace needed to obey His will.  And if the HS was powerful enough to raise a dead Jesus to life, He can do anything in me that is His will.

Newly aware of the GRACE that is rightfully mine (according to the inheritance stipulations), I am sorting out logical implications.

What is this logic?  If God saved us by GRACE, can’t we now expect God to continue to provide us with GRACE to live faithfully day by day?  Why would we, once we began the life of faith, then revert back to living our lives powered by our own strength, skill, talent & knowledge?

To be honest, you & I probably were unaware that GRACE saved us, that it was not something we did ourselves.  (It might FEEL like we made a decision to follow Christ, but that only was possible once God made us alive in Him.  Dead men don’t choose God and we were born dead.)   A moment in time changed our status and destination forever.

And since that time, we are growing into mature Christians.  (If we are not growing, maybe we haven’t been born again!).  We are learning from Scriptures how we were saved by GRACE, through faith deposited in us by God.  Once aware of this GRACE as redeemed sinners in the process of being renovated, we have time to savor, to muse about this GRACE.

Understanding GRACE is important. Remember the silly Galatians?  Paul saves his harshest words for them.  He point blank asks them whether they intend to walk with God, powered by their own strength or in total dependence on God’s strength.   This is not a trifling point of doctrine.  Paul did not call them silly, but sinful.

The Bible is very clear that anything we do on our own, not relying on God through faith is sinful, disobedient and repugnant to God.  He calls all such works filthy, no matter how ‘good’ in the eyes of the world. (Isaiah 64:6)  In Romans 8, Paul calls deeds done on our own, ‘deeds done in the flesh’.  And what is done in the flesh God calls a hostile deed, leading to death and by definition SIN.  Further in Romans, Paul wraps up God’s view this way: “…. and everything that does not come from faith is sin?” (Romans 14:23b).  ‘Coming from faith’ means ‘done by/ powered by faith’

In conclusion, EVERYTHING we do in our own strength without relying on God’s supernatural, Holy Spirit is not even worth doing.  This morning I heard a pastor pray, “Lord, I have so little time left in my life at age 57 that I don’t want to waste my life doing anything that requires no faith”.  Francis Chan asks his readers in Crazy Love, something like, “What are you doing in your life that requires any faith?”

As we seek to avoid the sin of assuming we can do ANYTHING pleasing to God powered by human strength, let us not forget all we will be able to do in obedience to God IN/ BY/ THROUGH Christ.  This is reassuring and freeing.  We are like little one-year-olds, learning to walk.  Picture a daddy, holding on to both raised hands of his little one, ‘walking’ his precious child.  The child is being held up by his dad as his little feet move.  But Dad and all the family applaud warmly and with resounding ‘bravos’ as the soon-to-be toddler takes his first assisted steps.  This is how God wants us to be.  He gives us all the help we need to do His will and then praises us for depending totally on Him.  What a deal!

What’s the catch?  It feels costly, since it deprives our most precious sin of any food.  We can no longer boast that our deeds were due to us!  But, in both the long and short run, this is a small price to pay to please our heavenly father.

The blessing of Academic Freedom

February 21, 2011

Maria Thankfulness , , 2 Comments

May I never take for granted the gift of academic freedom to teach French the way that is best for my students and for me!

I am blessed to teach in a private school that supports me 100 % in how I choose to teach both French & Logic.

What this means for me is that as I learn through what I read and listen to, I can tailor content to fit my students.  I adjust throughout the week.  As a result, I feel free and affirmed as a professional. I derive immense joy at this unconstrained ability to grow with my students.  In addition, my content in French is driven by my students’ imaginations and interests as well as my own.

For example, after 8 ½ years of using TPRS™ (teaching proficiency through reading & storytelling), I now feel both skilled and competent to go into class and do the following two activities.

a)   As an opener or warm up, I can have a conversation in French with any of my 3 levels of class (French 1, 2, 3) that is both comprehensible to them and personal.  We talk about their weekend, their interests, and their problems.  They learn new vocabulary as the conversation meanders.  I write essential words on the board as the conversation progresses.  Curriculum does not constrain or drive my classes.

b)   As my planned activity, I can go into class with one sentence and let this slim basis for a story grow where it will, emerging from my students’ input.  They then embed and adorn that sentence with themselves and a story emerges that is tailored to that particular class

For example, my sentence last week with my French 1 students was:  “Laura’s grandparents were still living”.  Laura was a character they had made up in the previous week’s story.  Going into this class, I had a phrase in mind that I wanted to teach them the following day (they have the tendency to _____).  But first we had to develop this fictional grandpa and grandma.

This couple became Bob & Cherrie who were both 2 feet, 2 inches tall.  Bob, a former soldier, turns out to be addicted to video games in his old age.  Cherrie, a former buyer for a clothing store, is depressed by Bob’s habit and turns to vodka.  I flow with the kids, making sure to make everything comprehensible. I work the details, so that the new words and details are repetitive enough to stick in their long-term memory.  They provide the personal interest, because the details are theirs.  I learn new words (had to look up how to say “addicted to”) so it’s good for me.

Another example of the blessing of unconstrained curriculum is what has happened when a French teacher in Mulhouse France contacted me.  We have set up a loose exchange between her students learning English and mine.  The other day she sent papers they had written about some pressing issues in America and asked for my students to respond.  I have the time to formulate a plan and work that into my lessons for the following week.  We can spend class talking about issues of immigration and ‘the American dream’ and what French teens might think.  If I had to follow a weekly plan imposed on me from the administration, I would have to let that go.

The methodology and thinking behind TPRS™ guides my daily activity, but in a non-constrained way that allows for expansive growth and unlimited possibilities.  I can do whatever I want as long as the French is comprehensible, repetitive and interesting to my students.  I can incorporate music, history, the Gospel, vignettes from my life, random stories from the paper, ANYTHING as long as I make them comprehensible and repetitive.

I am a very satisfied teacher.  Thank you, Jesus for giving me a passion for language and leading me away from the shackles of textbook teaching.  Thank you, Summit Christian Academy for believing in me and supporting me.  Thank you, Michael for working a job that is not your cup of tea but provides income so that I can work in a private Christian school.  Thank you, Blaine Ray for birthing this method and fellow TPRSers for fleshing it out and sharing unselfishly.

My prayer – Lord, keep me grateful.  Keep me growing.  Keep me depending on You!

 

This bears repeating-or how to remember what is important.

February 2, 2011

Maria Uncategorized Leave a comment

It all started with a dream last weekend about my grandmother, Mimi.  Mimi lived with me my whole life until I went away to college.  Yet I cannot remember a single thing she said, except for an embarrassing pet name she bestowed on me, “Maria Baby Ball”.  Ball was a family name 3 generations removed and also my middle name.

When I awoke from my dream I stayed disturbed for almost a week. First I asked my husband what he made of my foggy remembrances.  In the process of sharing my angst, my husband and I started talking about school teachers and those we recalled.  As our memories were stirred, we could only access feelings, no words.  For Mike, the teachers he could name were all ones who had liked him.

When I met for coffee with Kris, my dear friend, she shared about how significant a role her grandmother had played in her childhood and spiritual formation.  She has vivid memories of her grandmother reading her Bible and sharing Jesus with her. Kris’ opposite experience with a live-in grandmother strengthened the remoteness I felt when thinking of my grandmother. The more I sifted through my childhood years, the more I realized that my grandmother was just background.  I next phoned my cousin Darby who is a few years older, to see if she could fill in some color to my two-dimensional recollections.  Our conversation was animated, but produced minimal fruit for either of us.

Remembering is an important theme in the Bible.  Hebrew history is littered with sad tales of generations who failed to remember and subsequently suffered serious trouble.  Many were the warnings, so calamity should have come as no surprise.  But human nature being what it is, we, too are startled when we forget significant past events of God’s lessons.  Being more modern and civilized has not helped us.  (Who seriously believes men are evolving into less evil beings?)

So what are we to do?  What should Mimi have done if she had wanted to bless me with any profound lessons or insights gained from her 95 years?   Verbal repetition is the key.  Repetition sears content into our brains.  I know this from negative experiences.  When I rehearse the hurts done to me by two or three people in my past at various times, I speak the details out loud to a friend or to my husband.  I formulate the thoughts, I say the words, I feel the pain, I hear the words and the intensity of my voice and that memory groove is deepened.

God knows us. (After all he made us).  He knows how our brains work, how we flit to the next event in our lives.  He repeatedly commands us to work at remembering. His word is filled with exhortations to remember and not forget:

Ps 106:13- But they soon forgot what he had done and did not wait for his plan to unfold.

Ps 78:42 – They did not remember his power- the day he redeemed them from the oppressor.

Deut 4:23a – Be careful not to forget the covenant of the LORD your God that he made with you.

Josh 1:8- Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.

And a more positive resolution –

Ps 119:16 -I delight in your decrees; I will not neglect your word.

Ps 119:93 – I will never forget your precepts, for by them you have preserved my life.

So why does this matter?  Well, for one thing.  I, too am Mimi – to little Chloe Isla Cochrane, aged 19 months.  And there is another Cochrane grandson on the way.  My friend Kris is a grandma to 3 grandchildren.  My cousin Darby is Mimi to 5 grandchildren.  A lot is at stake.  What and why do you need to remember?  What are you going to do about it?

“Far as the curse is heard” – applying Oswald Chambers

December 13, 2010

Maria Peace, Prayer , , Leave a comment

First – here is Oswald Chambers’ post for 13 December – I’ve cut just a few sentences to make it shorter.

“Men ought always to pray, and not to faint” Luke 18:1

You cannot intercede if you do not believe in the reality of the Redemption;  (otherwise – my word) you will turn intercession into futile sympathy with human beings…… In intercession you bring the person, or the circumstance that impinges on you before God until you are moved by His attitude towards that person or circumstance. ……..

Our work lies in coming into definite contact with God about everything, and we shirk it by becoming active workers. We do the things that can be tabulated but we will not intercede. ……

The thing to watch in intercession is that no soul is patched up, a soul must get through into contact with the life of God. Think of the number of souls God has brought about our path and we have dropped them! When we pray on the ground of Redemption, God creates something He can create in no other way than through intercessory prayer.

My application –

Reading this exhortation to pray on the basis of the redemption made me realize how SHALLOW are my prayers.  Normally I pray, “Dear God, please bless Sally and help her with her busy day.”

That’s a wimpy prayer.  Come on, Maria, you can do better. Put some muscle in that prayer! Pray like you mean it!  Here are the two options, depending on my friend’s status with God:

  • Lord, you have paid the price to rescue Sally from being under the curse of God’s justifiable wrath.  She now has peace with God and access to His throne and you as her heavenly intercessor. Awaken her awareness of all the spiritual blessings and promises of future grace at her disposal because of the work you did at the cross.  Help her to remember THIS TREASURE. Remind her of your promise to provide all the grace she needs for each need this busy day.

Or for a friend who is not yet a believer

  • Lord, thank you for the painful need (whatever the circumstances) in Sally’s life.  Continue to make her aware of her inability to handle life on her own.  Open her eyes to the real and present danger of living under the curse of God’s wrath.  May she SEE Jesus and realize that through his death on the cross, he absorbed the judgment due her.  May she embrace and receive that act on her behalf as the most amazing gift of all.  May she then treasure her new relationship with God and learn to come frequently and easily to your throne with each detail of her life.  May she learn EARLY that she is not meant to handle life on her own.  Thank you for this circumstance in her life that you are using to bless her.

Please pray that I may care enough about my friends and family members to invest this kind of time and energy in praying for them.  And pray for me this way!

Dead to Sin and Remembering

July 25, 2010

Maria Disciplines, Reflections, Sin Leave a comment

In Romans 6:2, Paul says, “We who died to sin, how shall we any longer live therein?

I am a typical human.  I forget most of what I hear or read.  When I wake up in the morning, I have to remind myself of God.  I’m usually awake 2-3 minutes before I think of Him, even if my last waking thoughts were about God.  Like morning mist, He has vanished and has to be beckoned back.  But this is an improvement on my earlier life.

I used to live my life not even thinking about God.  The first time I was in church was when I was in a children’s choir in 2nd and 3rd grade.  We didn’t go to that church or any church, but my mother must have thought it was a good idea.  At the end of the year, we kids would sing at the two services, making for a long Sunday morning.  But that had nothing to do with God.  That was just choir and I even came to dread Thursday afternoon rehearsals because I wasn’t very musical.

I share this with you so you know that my early childhood was not spent in church.  I have come to God gradually, regularly attending from age 9 on, initially as a church-goer, not yet a believer.  But even when the Gospel became real to me at age 23, I still wasn’t in the habit of thinking about God all the time.  And now, at age 53, although my conscious thoughts go more often to God, I still find myself even going a couple of hours at a time without a thought of God.  That is a dangerous place to be.  It’s like being unarmed in a war zone.

If there were any verb that I would rate next in importance to BELIEVE or TRUST, it would be REMEMBER.

Psalm 78:42
They did not remember his power— the day he redeemed them from the oppressor,

Deuteronomy 7:18
But do not be afraid of them; remember well what the LORD your God did to Pharaoh

Deuteronomy 15:15
Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and the LORD your God redeemed you. That is why I give you this command today and to all Egypt.

Psalm 137:6
May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy

Psalm 106:7
When our fathers were in Egypt, they gave no thought to your miracles; they did not remember your many kindnesses, and they rebelled by the sea, the Red Sea.

There are a host of verses like this.  They tell the truth about God and about who we are.  They call us to remember God’s past provisions to us, how He has rescued us when we called out to Him.  They remind us of God’s amazing promises – our true riches.  And finally they emphasize how we are new creations, recreated in Christ with certain powers and different duties and delights.

This brings me to the fact (that daily bears repeating) that we are NOW dead to sin.  Frequently I have to remind myself that I have a new nature with Holy Spirit power actually in me to resist those things my flesh tempts me to do.  Sometimes I forget and fall back into embracing as truth, the lies that call out to me:  eating this will be pleasurable/ sharing a juicy tidbit about someone will grant me the floor and everyone will listen for a moment / bragging on myself or my kids will make me feel important and I like that feeling.

So remembering who I am (an adopted daughter), where I am (in Christ at God’s right hand ……as well as…. here on earth with the HS in me) and what privileges and power I have (more than I can ask or imagine) all help to break the spell that sin has on me.

We would pity an heiress to a fortune who has forgotten that she has access to financial blessings and privileges.  It would be silly for her to live as a beggar-woman.  We, too, are rich beyond belief.  To the extent that we remember who and whose we are, then we can be free from the power of sin over us and live the life of the spirit which Paul tells us IS life and peace.   Now that is worth remembering!

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