GodReflection: Power Words

I am a top off the tank sort of guy.

The way I figure it the extra four or five squirts of gasoline I can dribble into the tank will allow me to drive four or five squirts longer prior to the need to return to the pump.

A full tank is my goal anytime I leave the gas station. I like a complete tank.

I will revisit my full gas tank analogy in a moment.

I learned it all wrong. Why do I make it so hard to understand Jesus?

For many years in my life—oblivious to my blindness—I misunderstood grace and truth.

As a good student of my church tradition, I learned to mine truth with a front-end loader and grace with a teaspoon. I thought I dealt with two different holy minerals. Yet, mostly it was all about truth. Well, it is but it isn’t.

It’s not all about my checklist of truth. It is about Jesus as the personification of God who is truth.

The apostle John writes, The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth— For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

It is far too easy to spend life in search of truth while I portray a life of ungrace. On the other end of the spectrum, I can fall into a life of cheap grace as described by Dietrich Bonhoeffer—always ready to play the grace card as my get out of jail free pass.

Perhaps my mission in life is neither to mine grace nor truth?

It just could be my mission in life is to grow into the fullness of Jesus.

Back to my gasoline purchase.

I just googled the composition of gasoline.

To my surprise, it takes two pages to list the organic compounds and additives we call gasoline. Gasoline is gasoline. Its parts make the whole. When my tank is full of gasoline there isn’t room for anything else.

It is topped off. It is complete.

Jesus is complete.

He is full. He is full of both grace and truth. To Jesus I can’t add more grace. To Jesus I can’t add more truth. Jesus is complete. He is grace AND truth.

In Jesus complete becomes a word of power to guide my walk.

Complete allows me to rid myself of a self-created tension between grace and truth. There is no longer a need to fear I have sacrificed truth on the altar of grace.

My power comes from a Jesus who is all grace and all truth. He is complete.

Stay tuned.

Dr. Gary J. Sorrells – A GodReflection on Complete as a Power Word.

Gary@GodReflection.org