The Scary Liberation of God’s Awesome Waves Grace

Years ago I was introduced to a song that has become a reluctant “favorite” of our home churches. The song is entitled, “Waves of Grace,” and the essential message is that we are praying for, and thanking God for, the gracious way he dismantles our inner fortresses of self-protection in order to liberate us into the freedoms of the Spirit-filled life.[1]

On one side, the song is a prayer of repentance, confessing that we have built castle walls around our hearts that have hardened us and blinded us to the freedom of living under the lordship of Jesus Christ. On the other side, it is a prayer of hope that God would destroy the self-protection we have created and lead us into the liberation of his reign over every part of our lives, inner being included.[2]

On both sides is the understanding that God’s grace washes over us like waves at the seashore, both eroding and smashing down the destructive walls we have created around our hearts, and cleansing, and soothing, and comforting, and healing us from within.

Now, while most church-going folks I have met have resisted any idea that they have hidden things behind walls of self-protection, their reaction to any work of God that aims to dismantle these walls has proven they are there. As someone who insists nothing is wrong and yet flinches every time they are touched in a certain place (applies to both physical and emotional wounds), so the person who adamantly defends against any suggestion that they have managed their way through life inside a castle of self-protection invariably leads to the inner fortresses they will either defend to the death (usually of the person who is seeking to reach them), or will humbly join in seeking to surrender to the waves of grace that are working for their liberation.

Why is this an issue for me? Is there something biblical about this that will justify admitting to the obvious? Does addressing such things require some mention of castles and fortresses of self-protection in the Scriptures, or Bible verses that directly speak to God’s grace flowing over us like relentless waves of love doing good things in our lives we couldn’t even think to ask for?

Or how about if there just seems to be this regular work of whatever Scripture we are reading that exposes to us that there are different things going on deep inside us than we admit to ourselves or others on the outside? What if we read Scriptures in the most prayerful way we know how, and sincerely ask God to help us know him in his word, and then he seems to strip away a titanium veil that has been hiding wounds and brokenness that we have spent a lifetime trying to avoid?

And what if we realize that the biblical method of talking about this is seen in the way Jesus’ teaching on the Beatitudes reveals that God blesses his beloved children by exposing their poverty of spirit, and leading them to mourn the true condition of their inner beings, and humbles them into the meekness where they confess they cannot fix the mess they have tried desperately to hide within, and so brings them to the place where they are free to hunger and thirst for the righteousness they do not have deep inside?[3]

And what if it is God’s work to apply the Beatitudinal blessings to our lives every time we meditate upon his word, and hear his word preached to our souls by faithful pastors, or hear Scriptural truth sung into our hearts in the corporate worship of God’s people singing out their praises to God?

What if God’s interest in us being like Jesus requires such a Beatitudinal work of transforming us from the inside out that no one will escape the gracious work of God to demolish the walls of self-protection we have built to protect our inner beings from additional hurt? What if the way Jesus spoke to the woman at the well is his normal way of ministering to broken people, gently wafting gracious waves of grace against our souls so that we see him according to truth as we have never seen before, while also seeing the true condition of our hearts more clearly than anyone has ever exposed?[4]

For the last while I have been meditating on how the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ requires a response of denying ourselves, taking up our cross daily, and following Jesus wherever he leads.[5] It has become clear that denying ourselves does not endorse the self-protective strategy of denying, or suppressing, the true condition of our inner beings. God speaks so positively of wanting intimate fellowship with us in our brokenheartedness, and speaks of us mourning the poverty of our spirits as a blessing and not a condemnation, that we must not be deceived into thinking that denying ourselves justifies our self-centered strategies of self-protection.

In fact, it is quite the opposite. It is the sarky (or fleshly) self that is the enemy to God’s liberating work of our souls, always trying to do things our own way instead of his. A broken and contrite heart has never hindered the gospel in the least. Just look at the “sinful” woman who worshipped Jesus by weeping over him in tears of love, washing his feet with her tears, wiping them with her hair, and not caring what any of the religious elite thought of her.[6] She showed great love because of how she had admitted to great sin, and experienced how “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more”.[7]

On the other hand, the religious elite who would not admit to anything being wrong with them sat in judgment of Jesus because they had such a tiny view of their own need for forgiveness. They could not love him because they could not admit to the true condition of their souls.

Viewing the sarky-self (fleshly-self) as the enemy of God’s transforming work is what the apostles address so clearly in speaking of the “flesh” or “sark” that is the self that must be denied.[8] It is not the broken condition of our souls that must be denied (since Scripture constantly calls us to admit to the true condition of our souls), but our self-dependent strategies for handling the broken condition of our souls in our own strength and self-reliance.

The practical lesson for me is quite simple: since God is constantly at work to transform his children into the same image as Jesus Christ “from one degree of glory to another”,[9] and it is his blessing upon us when we admit to our poverty of spirit, and mourn the condition of our souls, and meekly confess that we cannot fix what is wrong with us, so that we allow our hearts to hunger and thirst for the righteousness we do not have, the very righteousness we hear offered to us in the gospel of God’s grace, the more I humble myself under the mighty hand of God, the more joyful my experience of him exalting me in due time.[10]

And, guess what this includes: “casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.” Clearly he is at work to get me to stop handling all my anxieties myself, in my own strength, and to cast them upon him instead because of how he cares for me.

It almost sounds the same as telling me to, “not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”[11]

Notice again that God does not merely tell us to stop being anxious, but to cast all our anxieties upon him in every kind of prayerful expression so that we can experience his peace guarding our hearts and minds (inner places) where our sarks/flesh have utterly failed to do so.

Now, I encourage you to join me in this, for I am quite hopeful that it will happen for you as it regularly occurs for me, that you and I will not only recognize the waves of grace God sends to erode and demolish our castle-walls of self-protection, but that we will welcome his liberating work no matter how much self-centeredness and self-reliance must be exposed on the downside of the Beatitudinal Valley.[12]

And, if any of us feel a struggle to know how to address such things, God has given us prayers and expressions in his word we can use to pour our hearts out to him about whatever painful, confusing, and scary things we discover inside us and see what happens when he answers our prayers. While the Psalms are full of such expressions, I will conclude with these prayerful words of hope from brother Paul’s prayer list (with special attention to what God desires for our inner beings and our hearts):

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. 

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.[13]

© 2017 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.)

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[1] Waves of Grace, by David Noble

The walls are high, the walls are strong

I’ve been locked in this castle

That I’ve built for far too long

You have surrounded me, a sea on every side

The cracks are forming and I’ve got nowhere to hide

(Chorus) Now I see

The walls I’ve built are falling

And Your waves of grace are washing over me

(Repeat x2)

My heart’s been hard, I have been blind

I have often worked so hard to keep You from my mind

I have ruled my life, in a palace built on sand

I want You to reign, Lord, take me by the hand (Chorus)

Lord please reign in every part

I give my life to You, I open up my heart

I want to be like You, I want to seek Your face

O Lord please wash me in Your awesome waves of grace (Chorus)

© 1994, 1995 LITA Music/David Noble

[2] Addressing our inner being, including references to our hearts, and souls, and minds, is a favorite theme of Scripture, and something Paul dealt with explicitly in both his ministry and his prayers. Ephesians 3:16-17 expresses Paul’s prayer that God’s work would strengthen us with the Holy Spirit’s power in our inner being so we would experience Jesus Christ abiding in our hearts through faith. Typing “heart” into the www.biblegateway.com search engine produced 862 references, indicating that this is God’s interest in us. We may fool each other with the roles we play on the outside, but Psalm 44:21 says that, “he knows the secrets of the heart.” For those choosing a determined life of sin and self-protection, this is not a good thing that God knows our inner secrets. However, for those who come before God with the admission of “a broken spirit” will find that, “a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Psalm 51:17). In fact, God is very clear in his testimony of himself that, “The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:18), and, “For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: ‘I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite’” (Isaiah 57:15). All these simply show God’s interest in our inner being, or the deepest realities of our hearts. As we admit to our brokenness within, we come to know God in the inner places and discover we were made for this, painful as it might seem to get there.

[3] This is seen in the Sermon on the Mount as Jesus introduces the life of the Kingdom with the Beatitudes that reveal a far different view of God’s work of blessing his people than what was understood of Israel as a kingdom, and of Israel under the law (Matthew 5:1-12).

[4] If you look at Jesus’ ministry to the Samaritan woman in John 4:1-42 you will see how he led her to both a higher view of him than she could have ever discovered on her own, and a deeper view of herself and what was going on in her life than she was used to addressing. To know Jesus in the glories of who he really is we must also welcome (or at least accept) the discovery of so many self-centered things that are in the way and must be dismantled, denied, crucified, destroyed, in order for the old to go and the new to come.

[5] Luke 9:23, with Luke 9:23-27 as immediate context, and Luke 9:18-27 as the larger context.

[6] Luke 7:36-50

[7] Romans 5:20, with Romans 5:18-21 as immediate context, and Romans 5:1-21 as larger context, leading, of course, into Romans 6:1-23 as the following context.

[8] Paul deals so extensively with the contrast between the flesh/sark and the Spirit in Romans 7 and 8 that it makes very clear that denying ourselves as taught by Jesus is parallel to dying to the flesh as taught by Paul. It is not our true personhood that must die, but our sarky, fleshly, self-centered reign over our inner beings that must be put to death so that we can live in the Spirit instead, our true selves fully alive in Jesus Christ.

[9] II Corinthians 3:18

[10] I Peter 5:6-7

[11] Philippians 4:6-7, with the broader context of Philippians 4:4-9, of course.

[12] Please note that we cannot get to the upside of the Beatitudinal Valley without first surrendering to the blessings of the downside. The downside of facing our poverty of spirit, mourning the condition of our souls, meekly confessing that we cannot fix what is wrong with us, and so hungering and thirsting after the righteousness in Christ we do not have brings us to the “rock bottom” (or, the Rock at the bottom!) where Jesus satisfies our inner beings with the righteousness that is by faith so that we then begin our journey up the upside of the valley where we are transformed into the merciful children of God whose hearts are made increasingly pure so we can live as the peacemakers who are free to rejoice even in the blessings of persecution as our hearts come to delight in the reign of Jesus Christ over our inner beings (Matthew 5:1-12).

[13] Ephesians 3:14-21