Month: March 2022

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Grace Stories, and Your Website

Your ministry website is at its best when it features stories of grace. 

Stories have a way of connecting with us, beyond the mere dispensing of information. As writers often say, good stories “show, rather than tell.”

Grace is “fleshed out” ultimately in the coming of Jesus, when we could not rescue ourselves.    

Because we become the arms and legs of Jesus, stories of grace help to unveil propositional truth claims in real people – which is how the story of redemption unfolds.

It’s why the Gospels of Matthew and Luke include a genealogy of Jesus; the point is that grace revealed through helpless and flawed people. We see their struggles and joys, hopes and fears, and we know we’re not alone. Grace can meet us, even in the most challenging of circumstances. 

With that in mind, one great opportunity to highlight a “grace story,” create discussion, and celebrate Women’s History Month all at the same time is to watch Corrie ten Boom: A Faith Undefeated, available now for free on Amazon Prime. 

Perfect for your family, church, and neighbors who may be exploring the faith – especially teens who may be unfamiliar with Corrie’s amazing story – A Faith Undefeated is a documentary unlike most.  

An Old Story, Revisited

You may have read the book, or even seen the old ‘Hiding Place’ movie from the mid 1970’s. Corrie’s family was part of the Nazi resistance in the Netherlands during World War II, helping to hide nearly 800 Jewish men, women, and children in her home and save them from the death camps. 

This gripping account is timely – especially in light of current events. It feels poignant as well because of the many first-hand remembrances of Corrie’s gracious assistant, Pam Rosewell Moore.

Ms. Moore lived with and served Corrie as her personal assistant for over seven years, while the latter traveled the globe and told her story. Her moving testimony helps us to peek “behind the curtain” at a remarkable woman who lived through the unimaginable horrors of Ravensbruck, yet was preserved by an amazing providence.

“The blacker the night around us grew, the brighter and truer and more beautiful burned the Word of God,” Corrie later wrote. “Life in Ravensbruck, took place on two separate levels, mutually impossible. One, the observable, external life, grew every day more horrible. The other, the life we lived with God, grew daily better, truth upon truth, glory upon glory.”

One particular providence among many was when the barracks that Corrie and her sister Betsie were assigned to in the camp became infested with fleas. Over 800 women were crammed into a structure designed for 200. While the conditions were deplorable, they thanked God for the fleas because the soldiers left the women alone and so abused them less. 

Eventually, Corrie was released (through a “clerical error” – God is in the details) and after the war, traveled the world with a radical message of forgiveness for her captors. This would be put to the ultimate test one day through a face-to-face confrontation with one of her captors – a Nazi soldier – who approached her after one of her talks. (I won’t reveal the outcome here – you’ll just have to watch it for yourself). 

Truepath Helps you Tell Grace Stories!

Truepath’s website builder is perfect for highlighting such stories of grace on your site. You can choose from a variety of included templates, from blogs to photo galleries, events calendars, social media, and Youtube. 

Featuring a simple drag and drop app, you can build your website quickly and easily – without needing to know code or have previous programming experience. Visitors to your site will be impressed by the professional-looking site you’ve built and will want to learn more about your ministry’s story. 

A final word about grace stories. You might be tempted to believe they must only showcase the so-called “super saints” – those about whom books are written and movies are made. 

Nothing could be further from the truth. Grace stories are about you and I as well – and as Corrie would hasten to add – ultimately about the heart of Jesus as he works in and through his children. 

Says Ms. Moore, “If you and I can learn to tell our stories – not necessarily in writing but in talking about them, in daily living and in worship – we will affect our world in ways that only eternity will tell.”

Why not get started today?  

 

Truepath’s vision is to empower Christian organizations and businesses to take full advantage of their online presence by providing affordable and best-in-class applications and dedicated, live customer support. You can reach us at: (760) 480-8791.

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Grace – It’s Still Amazing

It’s amazing what you’ll find at the local Goodwill store…

I had just popped in for a quick look the other day, and found myself (as usual) at the wall of used books. One title immediately jumped out at me: “What’s so Amazing About Grace?” by Philip Yancey.

Since I’d always appreciated quotes from his works and never read this one (even though the book first came out in ‘97), I happily plopped down a buck and took it home.

Allow me to say that the book is outstanding — and I’m hard to please when it comes to such things. So many are poorly written or dry-as-dust, and end up detracting from the one grand story of history.

Full of great stories (Yancey chooses to “show” rather than tell — as good writers will), the book makes for captivating reading. I’ll even go out on a limb and suggest that it should be mandatory reading for ministries and churches — especially those who struggle with being “grace-less” in their preoccupation with culture wars.

You don’t have to look far for those, as this recent tweet suggested: “Getting Christians to set aside such weaponized language (words like “Woke,” “Cultural Marxism,” etc.) is almost as difficult as getting nations to give up nuclear weapons.”

I mention this too because the book led me to another tasty vignette by Yancey — which not only seemed timely for the current crisis in Ukraine but also reminds us just how radical the grace of God really is :

“When the world sees grace in action, it falls silent.”

“Nelson Mandela taught the world a lesson in grace when, after emerging from prison after twenty-seven years and being elected president of South Africa, he asked his jailer to join him on the inauguration platform. He then appointed Archbishop Desmond Tutu to head an official government panel with a daunting name, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Mandela sought to defuse the natural pattern of revenge that he had seen in so many countries where one oppressed race or tribe took control from another…
At one TRC hearing, a policeman named van de Broek recounted an incident when he and other officers shot an eighteen-year-old boy and burned the body. Eight years later van de Broek returned to the same house and seized the boy’s father. The wife was forced to watch as policemen bound her husband on a woodpile, poured gasoline over his body, and ignited it.
The courtroom grew hushed as the elderly woman who had lost her first son and then her husband was given a chance to respond. “What do you want from Mr. van de Broek?” the judge asked. She said she wanted van de Brock to go to the place where they burned her husband’s body and gather up the dust so she could give him a decent burial. His head down, the policeman nodded agreement.
Then she added a further request, “Mr. van de Broek took all my family away from me, and I still have a lot of love to give. Twice a month, I would like for him to come to the ghetto and spend a day with me so I can be a mother to him. And I would like Mr. van de Broek to know that he is forgiven by God and that I forgive him too. I would like to embrace him so he can know my forgiveness is real.”
Spontaneously, some in the courtroom began singing “Amazing Grace” as the elderly woman made her way to the witness stand, but van de Broek did not hear the hymn. He had fainted, overwhelmed.
Justice was not done in South Africa that day, nor in the entire country during months of agonizing procedures by the TRC. Something beyond justice took place. “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good,” said Paul.
Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu understood that when evil is done, one response alone can overcome the evil. Revenge perpetuates the evil. Justice punishes it. Evil is overcome by good only if the injured party absorbs it, refusing to allow it to go any further. And that is the pattern of otherworldly grace that Jesus showed in his life and death.” – Philip Yancey
Amen!
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A Sure Foundation for Freedom, Creativity, and Excellence

You express it through your blogs and other writing pursuits; it’s in your music or painting, the way you decorate your house, and the meals you cook for others.

There are many ways to be creative, but creativity isn’t always easy.

So how do you keep going when you feel like things aren’t clicking, and the pursuit of creation feels pointless?

It helps to pause and remember why we create at all.

Why We Create

The Dutch apologist Abraham Kuyper famously said, “There is not one square inch in the whole realm of human existence over which Christ does not cry, ‘That is mine!’”

For some, Kuyper’s quote may strike them as extremely off-putting: “You mean that God owns my relationships, work, and even my creative pursuits? What about my freedom and independence?”  

A great question! It’s true – while we do gravitate to autonomy, pause and think for a moment what complete autonomy really means.

To use an analogy from nature, a branch can only live and perform as a branch (sprout leaves and bear fruit, etc.) if it stays joined to the tree. It’s not “free to be what it was meant to be” (grow, flower, and multiply) if it’s cut off. The tree is good for the branch. 

We Are Not Our Own

The same is true of us and our good Creator; we were made to be nourished in him: “In Him we live, and move, and have our being,” (Acts 17:28)

It’s a bold assertion, but true: there’s a true and good King who owns us – and all things – because he made us.

Not only that, he came and reconnected us when we cut ourselves off – and he did it at the cost of his life. So we see that not only has he made us, he’s also redeemed us.

Like the branch, there is wonderful freedom now to be found in embracing what we were meant to be! (In fact, the present work of Jesus is very much about graciously drawing us away from the lies of independence and autonomy – which ultimately lead to death – in order to give us new life). 

St. Augustine put it this way: “You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.”

Why We Can Be Creative

That may be a news flash to those who think God is just “standing by,” or asleep. But the God who sent Jesus and who “upholds everything by his powerful word” (Heb. 1:3) is far from sleeping.

Learning how God “operates” in our individual spheres (such as relationships, work, and creative pursuits) is our key to understanding our own activity in them. (Note this derivative quality to which we must continually return: “love one another as I have loved you;” and “forgive as you have been forgiven.” It all flows from his grace.) 

In relationships, for example, we are helped to first see that our God is eternally relational, living and moving in the perfect harmony and dance of the trinity. We, too, are designed to be relational, loving and seeking harmony.

In work, we see that God creates and rests, ultimately providing a true sabbath rest in Jesus (Heb. 4:8-10, 14-16). And God is still at work, as we noted, sustaining us and the universe every moment. As image-bearers, this invests our work with great meaning. Work is not an evil (though we do now labor under the curse, with thorns and thistles – see Gen. 3:17), and even the smallest task can be transformed if done to His glory. Let us thank him!

But how is God creative? And how does that apply to Me?

God shows his creativity in making us relational; he shows it in the kinds of work we can do.

Yet we can also see — just by looking around — how God is a Master Artist; he continues to bring forth new works of art on a daily basis: spectacular sunrises, new human beings in the womb, myriads of animals and plants on the earth and in the seas – even the stories he writes in your life and mine. 

None are boring, but all reflect a Master Artist with an eye for detail. Artistry and creativity are part of being in God’s image.

And yet, as we well know, the creative process is rarely, if ever, easy. That truth itself can be liberating; it helps to know that works of art “don’t just happen.” 

On this point, writer Trevin Wax provides us with 3 important reminders about creativity and pursuing excellence: 

1. We must keep improving our craft. Don’t settle too early.

Wax quotes Ira Glass, host of This American Life, who speaks candidly on creativity and “the gap”:

“All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years, you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you.

A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. . . . It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. . . . It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take a while. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

2. Don’t wait for inspiration; work for inspiration.

We see a great illustration, Wax says, in the recent Get Back, Peter Jackson’s excellent documentary on the Beatles’ creative sessions that produced a rooftop concert and album of the same name:

“…when the band seems to be in a rut or not sure what to work on next, we see them return to songs they’ve sung and played before. They play some of their old tunes, or they return to the earlier days of rock and roll and play some of their favorites. While looking for inspiration, they return to the well, to draw from artists and melodies that inspired them in the past.” 

Good writers will similarly know that it’s not until they sit down and try to write, or are inspired by reading others’ works, that the juices start to flow. We need sources of inspiration to kick-start us into creating new works of art.

3. Alternate Between Isolation and Community

Finally, we need others. Wax points us again to Get Back as a great example of collaboration. Lennon helped McCartney (and vice versa), and all the members contributed. Billy Preston also arrived from outside the band with “talent and exuberance” to pick up the original band members and inspire them.

And yet, the work that was done individually by each member – in isolation – was also important, so that each could have something to bring to the group for feedback.

Continue to Create!

May these encouragements help you to continue to produce creative works to the glory of God, as you return again and again to the well of grace!