Could there be a more obvious lie in all of retail sales?  “One size fits all.”  Of course it does, if you call fitting one person like a circus tent around a beanpole and another like a sausage in a casing a couple of perfect fits.  There is a reason that a custom tailored suit costs about 200 times more than a one size fits all tee shirt, and it’s not just the material.
            Yet there is one instance where the phrase is as apt as can be.  Sin is a “one size fits all” commodity.  For we before laid charge both of Jews and Greeks, that they are all under sin…For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, Rom 3:9,23.  And we do not get that sin from some mystical contagion.  Therefore as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death passed unto all men for that all sinned, Rom 5:12.  We are under the charge of sin, because we sin, every one of us, no matter how good we think we are. 
            And sin is sin is sin:  For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is become guilty of all.  For He who said, You shall not commit adultery, also said, You shall not kill.  Now if you do not commit adultery, but kill, you have become a transgressor of the law, James 2:10, 11.  And in that context, James was talking to people who discriminate against others.  Bigotry, he meant them to understand, is as bad as adultery and murder.
            Even righteous men in the Old Testament understood that the Law could not save them.  As sinners, they counted on the grace of God.  David wrote a Psalm about it, the fourteenth.  Jehovah looked down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there were any who did understand.  They were all gone aside; they are together become filthy; there is none that does good, no, not one, v2,3.  We are all in the same boat—none of us deserve salvation.
            But Christ came to offer us a salvation that would fit all of us, too, no matter how many times we have sinned, no matter the heinousness of our sins, as men would categorize them.  Christ does indeed fit all, and not only that, His one size is available to all as well, no matter who we are or what our stations in life.  All we have to do is put it on.  The grace of God will always be a perfect fit.


For the love of Christ constrains us because we thus judge that one died for all, therefore all died; and he died for all that they that live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto him who for their sakes died and rose again, 2 Cor 5:14,15.



Dene Ward

On a recent camping trip, we had one full day of rain.  Twenty-three hours in a tent went faster than we had expected since we had taken books to read, crossword puzzles to do, and a Boggle game.  But at supper time we needed more room and a table to cook on, so we carried our food and our propane stove under the shelter of an umbrella through the steady drizzle and down to the pavilion in that State Park to prepare our meal. 
            A nine year old girl pulled her bike into the shelter as the rain picked up.  She talked for a few minutes, and then we asked her name.
            “Grace,” she replied.
            “”Hmmm,” began Keith, “that means full of mercy and compassion.  Is that you?”
            She gave a wry grin beyond her years and said, “I don’t think so.”
            We talked awhile longer, and then she politely excused herself.  Later I thought, “How incredibly honest.”  Could I look at myself and give such an assessment without making qualifications and rationalizations?  I doubt it.  And woe to anyone who tries to do it for me.  No grace to him!
            But here is the irony—as an innocent child, this little girl Grace is a whole lot closer to the ideal of grace than I am.  Yet as a child of the God who gives grace abundantly, I must strive the harder to emulate my Heavenly Father, giving grace to all I meet just as He does for us—even though, as the very definition of the word states, we do not deserve it. 
Today let us all remember to be as generous as our Father, giving grace where none is due.
 
By grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. Eph 2:8
 
Above all things be fervent in your love among yourselves, for love covers a multitude of sins…minister among yourselves as good stewards of the grace of God. I Pet 4:8, 10

The modern pencil was invented in 1795 by Nicholas-Jacques Conte.  Those of us who grew up thinking the black in the middle of a pencil was lead, at least until we discovered the dangers of that material, are wrong.  It has always been graphite, one of the softest minerals there is.  Graphite itself was discovered in Bavaria in the early 1400s, but centuries earlier the Aztecs had used it in chunks to write with.  It took this French scientist, who was serving with Napoleon's army, to construct the first wood-enclosed stick of graphite we call a pencil.
            Erasers were invented after Charles Goodyear invented the process called the vulcanization of rubber.  And finally, on March 30, 1858, Hymen Lipman received the first patent for attaching an eraser to the end of a pencil.  Another piece of trivia for you:  the metal piece holding that eraser is called a ferrule.
            This morning I brought four pencils in here by the desk to sharpen.  I gather them up from here and there, all colors, all brands.  Ticonderoga yellow may be the most famous brand, but I haven't a one of those to my name.  The erasers are all in different levels of use.  A couple already sport one of those separate ones you put on the top because the one they came with is totally flat.
So I will grab my old fashioned school sharpener, the one with the hand crank, and get them all back to their pointy selves and ready for use.  Then I will carry them back to the windowsill next to my chair to use with my crossword puzzles.  No, I do not do my puzzles in ink.  Well, if it's a Los Angeles Times Crossword, even their Sunday crossword, I do.  But a New York Times Crossword—no way.  It will wind up a mess if I try.
            The Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword is so easy I can do it in ink in just about 15 minutes.  Once in a great while it will take 20.  I might have one or two squares where I have had to go over a mistake in darker ink to correct it, but most of the time it is clean and legible, without a single blotch.  But the New York Times' puzzle takes me nearly an hour and quite a bit of erasing.  If I tried it in ink, I probably wouldn't be able to read it for the mess I made.  I may love to do those puzzles, but I am not an expert by any stretch of the imagination.  You know those people who finish the marathon three hours after everyone else, coming in while the banners and signs are being taken down?  That's me doing a New York Times Sunday Crossword.  All I can say is, I get it done.  And hurray for pencils and, especially, erasers.
            Jesus is my pencil and God is my eraser. 
           The Lord's sacrifice is far larger than we usually give him credit for.  Not to diminish it in the least, but he didn't just die for us and rise from the dead for us, a process that took no more than three days.  He lived a lifetime for us as a human being, experiencing the same trials and sorrows we do.  God, mind you--and he did it without the failings we so often want to excuse because we are "only human."  When we do that, we insult that sacrifice, because he became human and made himself susceptible to sin so he could show us how, to demonstrate that we most certainly can do it, especially with his  example and his help—or will we insult those, too?
            No, life is not a Los Angeles Times Crossword puzzle.  God never told us it would be easy.  He promised us "thorns and thistles" and "sweat of the brow."  He said we would have to kill our old man (crucify it) and become something brand new.  He may have said, "My yoke is easy and my burden is light," but it's still a yoke and a burden.
            But then he tells me that all is not lost if I do fail.  After all, this life is written in pencil if we just repent, get back on our feet, and try again, determined to go farther than the last time, determined to improve—not to make excuses.  If we are not using the pencil the Lord gave us, is it because we have just given up?  Have we lost our confidence and just decided to do nothing at all so we won't make a mistake?  Have we lost our trust in the eraser God uses, the one that will erase that error like it never happened, leaving clean, white paper without even a smudge, ready for the next attempt?  And with his help, we might even get the right answer the next time.
            When we refuse to try, when we make excuses for our failure and refuse to admit our wrong, that's when we are writing in ink.  We can go over it and over it and over it, making it darker and uglier with every try, and everyone will still see the obvious error.  Maybe everyone but the one who needs to see the truth the most--me.  And it can never be erased, if that is the attitude we have.
            Far better to follow the Lord's example.  Far better to be tough and work hard and try again and again and again.  Pencil is, after all, easily erased.
 
If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 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 cleanses us from all sin.  (1John 1:6-7).
 
Dene Ward

Today's post is by guest writer Keith Ward.

It seems to be popular to make comments about the old church of Christ attitudes as though the last generation knew little of grace and faith and focused only on obedience, exact obedience.  I have made a few of those comments myself and can point to sermon outlines from 35 years ago where I endeavored to change such attitudes. However, when the comments become disparaging and self-serving (look how much better I am), then perhaps it is time to consider.
 
They grew up in tough economic times, faced tough spiritual battles to be allowed to exercise their faith in the way God commanded, and they did not express emotions as readily as today’s generations. They did not talk a lot about God’s grace for that was God’s business. Their business was to obey God.
 
That they did understand that obedience must proceed from faithful trust and was founded on God’s grace can best be understood by the songs they sang:
 
“True hearted whole hearted, faithful and loyal…..
“My faith looks up to thee……
“Looking to thee from day to day, trusting thy grace along the way….Sure of thy soul redeeming love….
“Trust and obey, for there’s no other way
“I know whom I have believed….
“He will give me grace and glory…where he leads me I will follow, I’ll go with him, with him all the way
“Faith is the victory….
“Is thy heart right with God?
“To Christ be loyal and be true in noble service prove your faith and your fidelity, the fervor of your love
“What a friend we have in Jesus….
“Purer in heart O God….
Take time to be holy….
“Only in thee….trusting, I’m cleansed from ev’ry stain, thou art my only plea….
 
And it was in those days and by one of those men that “Lord I believe” was written.
 
And, the list could go on and on.
 
 Because some treated service like a checklist and may not have expressed as much heart as some do today, please do not mark them all as empty. In fact, if a checklist religion was the spiritual ceiling for some, “who art thou that judges the servant of another?” (Rom 14).  More people should fear minding God’s business about God’s servants!
 
And, if all the expression of heart and trust and faith and grace today makes one careless toward obedience, then how is that one any better before God?
 
These were our parents and grandparents, our spiritual fathers in the faith.  Most knew more about the grace of God than many today who spout fancy words, but they just tended to their own business of serving faithfully.
 
But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness (Rom 6:17-18).
 
 
Keith Ward
 

I was flying back from a retreat in Pennsylvania where I had spoken twice to a great bunch of sisters from all over the Northeast.  My traveling companion, a good friend and also a sister in the Lord, sat next to me and we were laughing yet again about something that had happened at that fun and edifying event.  We had left snow on the ground in the heavily wooded hills of the Poconos that April morning, but now it was full afternoon and we sat on the west side of the plane, already feeling the Southern heat as we crossed the Mason-Dixon line. We both reached up to adjust the small round overhead vents to blow away the warming, stale air around us.  Out the small window the cloud shadows painted the rolling landscape and then the waters of the Chesapeake Bay as we flew on over the Washington Navy Ship Yard. 
            About forty-five minutes north of Atlanta, our stop to change planes, the pilot came over the intercom.  "Ladies and gentlemen, we have just declared an emergency.  Please follow the directions of your flight attendants as we will need your cooperation."
            Suddenly, all talking ceased.  We looked at one another as did many of the other passengers in the seats ahead of us.  As I recall, the flight attendants walked up and down the aisle once to reassure everyone that we had great pilots and were in good hands, never losing the smile on their faces, then sat down and strapped themselves in.  We heard a cough or two which seemed like a signal because once again people began to talk, in a much quieter and calm way than I would have expected after such an announcement.  I even heard a chuckle or two from somewhere behind us.
            A lot of things ran through my head in the next forty-five minutes, but as my friend said, "There really isn't anything we can do about this. If we go down, we go down."  Airliner crashes seldom leave survivors.  So we sat and continued our talk as we had before, and so did everyone else.  No tears, no screams, no panic of any kind at all.  And on we flew.
            Just before we reached Atlanta, the pilot spoke again.  All other planes had been told to circle and wait until we were safely on the ground.  We were to all keep our seat belts fastened and remain in our seats as the plane landed and came to a stop.  (If we made it down safely, he did not say but most of us were thinking) we would not be taxiing to the gate.  Instead, an emergency crew would circle the plane.  When we were deemed "safe" to be in close contact with other planes and passengers, we would approach the gate and disembark.  And that is exactly what happened.  We landed in a normal manner and came to a complete stop in the middle of the runway.  We all watched out the windows as three or four trucks, including a fire engine, circled us at a snail's pace.  Then they moved off to the side and we taxied to the gate and unloaded.  Somewhere along the way we heard that it had all been because of a faulty indicator light that showed that the plane was on fire.  Evidently, it was not.
            But what if it had been?  Let me tell you something, folks.  When you have a near miss, you get real serious about your life.  Even though you think you have been doing just fine, suddenly every mistake you ever made comes to mind.  And you find yourself thinking this, "Have I done enough?"
            And the unequivocal answer is, "No.  I haven't."  Not because I don't try.  Not because I don't do the best I can every day.  But because the best I can do is still not good enough.  At some point, we have to learn to trust God's grace.  Too often, young people "raised in the church," listening to prayers about how "we sin all the time," have been made to feel that there is no hope.  That they must try and try and try and no matter what they will still fall short and they just might not make it to Heaven.  Well, you know what?  You will fall short, but that does not mean you won't make it to Heaven.  God did not leave us in a hopeless situation, and He certainly didn't dangle an unreachable carrot in front of us for His own amusement.  In fact, His word speaks of hope constantly--one of the biggest differences between Christianity and other religions.  We consign grace to Jesus on the cross and fail to see it in his example of overcoming, of praying, of knowing the Word so well it springs to our lips constantly.  We fail to see it in the help of the Spirit as we live and the offer of mercy when we fall. 
            You will not be perfect, but you can overcome, you can grow and get better, and even when you slip, you can be forgiven.  If the plane starts falling out of the sky, you don't have to scramble around trying to ask forgiveness for every single thing you think you have done wrong lately before it hits the ground.  Let the "God of hope" fill you with peace.  Trust Him and say, "I tried, Lord.  I did my best.  Please take me home."
 
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope (Rom 15:13).
 
Dene Ward

It is a danger, even for people who love Christ, that we not become so concerned with doing things for Him that we begin to neglect hearing Him and remembering what He has done for us.  We must never allow our service for Christ to crowd out our worship of Him.  The moment our works become more important to us than our worship, we have turned the true spiritual priorities on their heads.
            In fact, that tendency is the very thing that is so poisonous about all forms of pietism and theological liberalism.  Whenever you elevate good deeds over sound doctrine and true worship, you ruin the works too.  Doing good works for the works' sake has a tendency to exalt self and depreciate the work of Christ.  Good deeds, human charity, and acts of kindness are crucial expressions of real faith, but they must flow from a true reliance on God's redemption and His righteousness.  After all, our own good works can never be a means of earning God's favor; that's why in Scripture the focus of faith is always on what God has done for us and never on what we do for Him (Rom 10:2-4).  Observe any form of religion where good works are ranked as more important than authentic faith or sound doctrine, and you'll discover a system that denigrates Christ while unduly magnifying self.  

from Twelve Extraordinary Women by John MacArthur.

Does he thank the servant because he did the things that were commanded?  ​Even so you also, when you shall have done all the things that are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants; we have done that which it was our duty to do.   (Luke 17:9-10).

Dene Ward

In the fall we took a vacation, our first in three years.  We rented a cabin in the mountains of North Carolina and proceeded to have one adventure after another—none of which we had planned on, and none of which anyone would have planned on.
            We got lost four times, despite following written down directions as carefully as possible.  We locked ourselves out of the cabin—a very remote cabin, nowhere near the rental office.  We had to have our ailing twenty-two year old truck towed twenty miles to a mechanic in the middle of Tourist Town, then take a taxi drive that same twenty miles to pick it up two days later.  Then a tropical storm blew over us the morning before we were to leave.  Floridians, mind you, hit by the remnants of a hurricane in North Carolina!  We never did do any of the things we had actually planned on doing.  But, oh, it could have been so much worse.
            I guess I was an adult before I realized that prayers did not have to wait for some formal occasion.  Just like an earthly father, our Heavenly Father is willing to listen whenever we call.  Believe me, we called that week again and again.  Another thing I have learned is that God will bless people who are not necessarily His children simply because of their connection to His children, Potiphar, for example (Gen 39:5).  And so that week I found myself again and again thanking God for the good people He sent our way and asking Him to send them blessings.
            Good folks like these:
            The two or three people who took the time to send complete strangers on their way in the right direction.
            The kind woman on the phone at the rental office who helped us find the hidden lock box with the extra key to the cabin in it, gave us the code to that box, and would not hang up until she was sure we had gotten back in.
            The fellow tourist at the neighboring cabin who offered to look at our truck and when he couldn't fix it, looked up a mechanic with the highest ratings and called him for us, giving him details he needed because Keith,, being deaf, cannot function on a cell phone.
            A tow truck driver, a mechanic, and a taxi driver who were not only friendly, but refused to price-gouge a couple of desperate tourists, who were honest and fair in their business dealings instead.
            Again and again we asked our Father to shower these people with blessings as He had done for us by sending them our way.  The greatest blessing for us was seeing, in the middle of a tumultuous year, when it's so easy to believe our nation is going down the tubes in a headlong plunge, that there are still good people out there, people who will help strangers, who will do the right thing when the wrong thing would have been so easy and much more profitable.
            Look around as you go about your daily life.  Find the good people.  Thank God and ask Him to bless them as well.  Don't be selfish with the grace He gives, but as a child mimicking his father, spread it around as He does every day, giving the sun and the rain to all.  And who knows?  Maybe you will have somehow, some day, made it possible to share with them the greatest gift of Grace there is.
 
I exhort therefore, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings, be made for all men…That your way may be known upon earth, your salvation among all nations. Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you.  (1Tim 2:1; Ps 67:1-3).
 
Dene Ward

My two grandsons love to go to the park.  They love to swing and slide.  I’m not sure they have discovered the joys of my own childhood favorite—the seesaw.  Back then I was always looking for someone else to sit on the other end, and seldom found the perfect playmate.  She was always either too heavy or too light to balance it out, and one of us always hit the ground with a bang.  As for the boys, I usually put both of them on one side while I sit on the other, carefully balancing things with my own legs so they don't bounce off the top and I don't hit the ground with a bone-jarring thud.
            Over the years I have come to see that God requires His own kind of balance.  Nearly every major fault of His people has come with that old pendulum swing—from one extreme to the other.  From undisciplined emotionalism to empty ritualism, from faith only to works salvation—we struggle all the time to get the balance just right.  “Obedience from the heart,” Paul calls it in Rom 6:17.  And it has been so for thousands of years.
            In our Psalms class, we came upon another passage recently that emphasized yet again the problem of balance.  Over and over and over you read things like this:
            …you have tested me and you will find nothing; I have purposed that my mouth will not transgress, 17:4
I have kept the ways of the Lord and have not wickedly departed from God, 18:21.
            Vindicate me, O LORD, for I have walked in my integrity, and I have trusted in the LORD without wavering, 26:1.
            It always bothered me a little when I saw passages like this, especially the ones written by David, as these three are.  Isn’t he being a little arrogant?  Especially him?
            But, as with all the Bible, you have to put things together to find the balance point.  Psalm 130, one of the Psalms of Ascents, certainly shows the opposite feeling:  If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? v 3.  After that, another quickly came to mind:  Enter not for judgment with your servant; for in your sight no man living is righteous, 143:2.
            The psalmists all seemed to understand the balance.  No one deserves salvation, but yes, we can be righteous in God’s eyes when we do our best to serve Him, when obedience is offered willingly, when adoration, reverence, and gratitude are the motivations behind every thought and action, when we don’t just do some right things, we become righteous.  The author of Psalms 130 goes on to say, “But there is forgiveness with you…” and “with Jehovah there is lovingkindness and…plenteous redemption.”          
            These men saw that salvation was a matter of a relationship with God, not ritualistic obedience nor self-serving obsequiousness, both of which are more about “me” than the God I claim to worship.  They proclaimed the balance that would fall before the Lord in reverence and service and yet stand before a Father singing praise and thanksgiving. 
            And I love that they did not feel required to offer qualifications to what they said.  “I am righteous,” they said, not bothering to add, “but I know I have sinned in the past, and may sin in the future.”  They never let the false beliefs of others compel them to soften a strong statement of faith in their Lord to do what He says He will—be merciful.  Why are we always dampening the assurance of our hope by pandering to the false teaching of others?  Let’s strive for perfect balance with this long ago anonymous brother:  With Jehovah there is plenteous redemption, and he shall redeem us!
 
Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom Jehovah does not impute iniquity, And in whose spirit there is no guile, Ps 32:1-2.
These things have I written…that you may know you have eternal life, 1 John 5:13
 
Dene Ward