You Are a Masterpiece

Let me start with kind of a quiz this morning. Are you ready for this? What do all these people have in common? Just a clue in advance for you. It goes beyond their singers. Ready for this? Elvis, Aretha, Johnny Cash, Andrea Bocelli, Diana Ross, Whitney Houston, Ray Charles, Sarah McLaughlin, Willie Nelson, Rod Stewart, the Lemonheads, LeAnn Rimes, Al Green, Destiny's Child, Judy Collins, Dolly Parton, U2, Elizabeth Summers, and Trent Smith. What do they all have in common? Shout it out! I have not heard the answer quite yet. This is kind of one of these read my mind questions. They have all sung amazing renditions of Amazing Grace, which is, by the way, probably won't surprise you, the most popular song ever written by a human being. Like in all history, right now, if you go into Apple Music, it is on at least 11,000 different albums. That is pretty good for a song that was first written 251 years ago, right?

Now you probably know some of its story, but I want to tell you the whole story behind the song today with some new details that may surprise you. This is a song that was written by probably the unlikeliest person to ever write a song to be sung in church: this character, John Newton. Now, a few people know he was a sailor in the mid-1700s. But here is what you may not know: his songwriting career actually began when on board his first ship, he wrote a series of obscene songs about his captain, which the crew loved to loudly sing. Naturally, that didn't endear him to the captain. He got into trouble several times, thrown into the brig. The captain said Newton was the single most profane sailor that he had ever met. And if you know sailors, that's saying something. In fact, the captain quoted that Newton exceeded the limits of verbal debauchery.

Newton called himself an angry young man. In fact, he was a radical atheist, proudly so, in an era when that wasn't that common. He said he made it his goal to deconvert every single Christian he ever met. But his anger also made him a jerk, and he eventually so annoyed even his own crew that they actually kicked him off the ship in Sierra Leone, Africa. At the age of 20, Newton became a slave in Africa. He was trafficked; we now know as a sex slave, in fact. And you'd think that that might make him more empathetic, right, to people who were victims of slavery and human trafficking, but instead, it just made him hate everybody. In fact, when he finally escaped, he became the captain of several slave ships and said he literally didn't feel any empathy for anybody. He just saw people as opportunities to make money and buy and sell. He said, "Had my influence been equal to my wishes, I would have carried all the human race with me." In other words, he wished he could have enslaved everybody so he could have made more money.

So let me ask you a question. How did a song as beautiful as Amazing Grace come from this character? Well, in some ways, it could have only come from this character, right? In 1748, something happens that changes his life. He gets caught in a killer storm, and with both hands fastened on the wheel, thinking he's going to die, he prays the first prayer he's probably ever prayed in his life, and it was one sentence long. He screams out in desperation, "Lord, have mercy on me." And remember, he's an atheist at this point, so this is a last-ditch effort. After 11 hours, originally headed for Liverpool, they limp into Donegal, Ireland—so way off course—and he lands and he's safe, God apparently answering his prayer. Newton says he was very confused. Now, this didn't prove to him that God existed; in fact, maybe the opposite, because Newton's logic went, if there actually is a God who is just and holy, then he would have let me die because I was like the worst person on the planet. Why did God show me mercy when I had a prayer that was this superficial, just in desperation to save my own skin? How could God do that? That doesn't make sense.

And so he starts reading the Bible, and it took six years, but he very slowly converts to Christianity. Why? I'll show you in a minute. Eventually, he even becomes a pastor of a tiny little church in Olney, England, and in 1772, he wrote this songbook full of songs that he wrote just for his own church. You know, just like Trent and Elizabeth and many other worship leaders, they're just writing songs for their own church. He didn't write any of these songs to become famous or anything like that. The song he wrote for the church to sing on New Year's Day 1773 is the song that we now know as Amazing Grace.

So now that you know part of his story—and there's more to come—you can probably feel the emotion behind these words: Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now I'm found; I once was blind, but now I see. The rest of my time together, I want to look at the inspiration for those words in the Bible, one of the all-time classic passages of Scripture—the verses Newton read that changed his life and that answered his question: if God really exists, why didn't he just let me die? Grab your message notes. Your true self is our series in the first part of the book of Ephesians in the Bible. In fact, if you have your Bible, please open it up to Ephesians chapter 2.

Just kind of a quick recap, right? Because we've been doing the series for four weeks. We had a wonderful interlude last week in a Mother's Day. Sandy Richter did a phenomenal job, and now we're going to dive back into the book of Ephesians. So remember, what's in the Bible? The book of Ephesians is actually a letter that's written almost 2,000 years ago now by one of the leaders of the early church, the Apostle Paul, to his friends in Ephesus. Why? He's in prison in Rome under Caesar Nero, and Nero was brutal, as you probably know, and he persecuted Christians. So at this point, this is the early 60s AD. The Christians are starting to be ostracized and marginalized and made fun of. We know now that that's going to end with Christians being burned at the stake and fed to the lions—really bad stuff. So it's really heading in a bad direction, and Paul's writing his friends in Ephesus to say, "I know what they're saying about you, but this is who you really are. This is your true identity in Christ, and never forget it." The whole first chapter, which we've taken four weeks to look at, Paul has been giving them this list, and I want us to all read this out loud together. This is what we've already studied in this series. Here we go: My true self in Christ. Here we go. I am chosen. I am blessed. I am forgiven. I am a child of God. I am beloved. I have a destiny. I am rich in every way that matters. And Paul's gone, "This is so awesome! That is the picture of who you are." And now in Ephesians chapter 2, he says, "And it's even cooler than you think." Because he said, "This is what God did for you, but remember what you were before. Before you found God, do you remember what life was like?"

He said, "In order to really understand your identity in Christ, in order to really appreciate the after picture, you have to understand the before picture." And then Paul launches into this. This is one of the most famous passages in all of human literature. This is what inspired Amazing Grace. And if you just get it, it's full of imagery. You could read these ten verses that we're going to look at today for a year and never get to the depths of them—all these amazing poetic images. And I only have a half an hour, so just let them wash over you, because if you even just get this much of what Paul is saying, it's going to revitalize your spiritual life. And if you wander and go, "What is this Christianity stuff all about anyway?" this is going to explain it as clearly as anybody.

Paul says four things. He says, number one, I am saved from death. I'm saved from death. This is the before picture. Ephesians chapter 2, verse 1: He says, "As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and the ruler of the kingdom of the air—the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient." Okay, there's a lot there. Paul dropped some tantalizing hints about a spiritual world and spiritual warfare, and he's going to get into that in more depth in the final chapter of the book of Ephesians. And we are going to do a whole series on that. So for now, let's just focus on his main point, which is this: you were what? You were dead. You can see why John Newton read this and it's like, "Yes, yes, yes!" You know, the people I think understand this the best—because some people read this, "Well, that's offensive," you know? So the people I think understand this the best, or at least maybe the clearest—and I've said this many times before—are people who are in recovery, the 12-step programs. Because here's step one of the 12 steps: We admitted we were what? Powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable. This is so good because it frees you from the despair that comes from just trying super hard to change and that it never works. And he realized, "What I need to do is surrender to God."

Let me tell you something: my own personal Achilles' heel is alcohol, but I have my stuff, and this has helped me so much with my own personal deal. You have agency, and you're capable of doing a lot of things, but there are always places in your life where you can't do it without God, and you need God to rescue you. It's like you could stand on shore and yell at a drowning person. I saw somebody just a few months ago off of Seabright Beach who was drowning, and the lifeguard went out there, and the Harbor Patrol went out there, and they rescued this person. I could have stood on shore and yelled at that person, "Swim harder! You're drowning, you moron! Try to float!" and that wouldn't have happened. They didn't need instruction; they needed rescue. And Paul's like, "That's what happened to us. We didn't need instruction; we needed rescue because we were as good as dead. Like a dead man can't lift a finger to help himself. We were dead in our sins."

And Paul goes on in verse 3 and says, "All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath." The key phrase there is "all of us." Say that again: "all of us." Do stuff we know we shouldn't do, hurt people we love, have times that we say or do things that are the exact opposite of the things that we say we actually value. All of us. Paul's talking about the shared experience of our humanity. Paul saying, "Yep, me too. I get it. No one is better than anyone else, and no one is worse than anyone else. So don't look down on anyone else because we're all alike. We're all sinners. We're all in need of God." The Bible says I am saved from death in love. Here's where that after picture kicks in. That was the before picture. Verse 4: "But because of his great love for us." Now, I want to pause right there because just look at this phrase. I'm going to have you do this a lot. I just decided, let's just say this out loud together: "But because of his great love for us." This phrase right here, this is the phrase that basically motivates God in every single thing he does in the Bible. Everything else that God does in the Bible, everything else God has done in history, everything else God does in your life is preceded by this phrase: "But because of his great love for us."

God created the world, but because of his great love for us, God created humans because he wanted to have a relationship with us. But because of his great love for us, God gave us boundaries to teach us how to live an abundant life. But because of his great love for us, God sent a Savior. But because of his great love for us, God will turn even your failures and even your griefs into gold. It's all because of—say that with me again—"but because of his great love for us, God." That is the sentence that comes before every single thing that happens in the Bible. And if you don't get that, you just don't understand the Bible. But it gets better. Paul's going on one of his preacher kind of like a black preacher riff here. He's just layering one good thing upon the next. Just watch this: "Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy." You know, I used to think of God as kind of a mercy miser, like he dispenses out mercy if I please him, if he feels like it one day, and I'm never really sure that I pray enough, that I do enough. No, he's so—he'll never run out of mercy. He loves to ravish it upon us. And it gets better: "Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive in Christ." He didn't just see us dead and, like I said, stand on the shore and say, "You got to swim harder." He didn't just say, "You stupid dead people, shape up," which is exactly how we religious people can come across, right? "Shape up, you disgusting dead people! Here are some rules for you." Dead people don't need regulations; dead people need resurrections. So God makes us alive even when we were dead in transgressions.

Now again, here is what amazed John Newton. Because before his prayer, after a lifetime of horrible things—abusing people, enslaving human beings, mocking people, trying to deconvert people and things I can't even share in a mixed audience—he's afraid he's going to die. And so in desperation, "Lord, have mercy!" He hadn't stopped; he hadn't changed one iota. He hadn't ceased doing any of his bad stuff. All he did was ask for mercy in desperation, and he got it. And this is what just blew his mind. And this is what Paul's talking about here: when we were dead, we didn't have to prove anything to God. He just made us alive. You know what this means? For one thing, it means you don't have to clean up your act first when you come to God. And I really want you to hear it because this is counterintuitive to people. I hear people tell me all the time, "I'll start coming to church, but I got to quit smoking. I got to quit drinking. I got to blah, blah, blah, blah." And maybe you—somebody invited you to church, and you think, "But I don't understand the Bible. I've done things I'm ashamed of. I don't have a church background. I feel like I don't fit in. I'm not like the others." And Paul here is like, "Yeah, no one deserves it. And no one gets in because they're a good person. And you do fit in perfectly because we are all the same. We're all saved from death in love." And then third, by grace. And here is where it really starts soaring. The rest of verse 5: "It is by grace you have been saved." Paul thinks this is such an important sentence, he's going to repeat it in two verses. So let's say it together: "It is by grace you have been saved." What does that mean? First, the word saved. Christians talk about getting saved, being saved, "Are you saved?" What does that mean? It's a biblical word. Well, it means all the stuff that Paul's been writing about: I'm forgiven, and I'm chosen, and I'm blessed, and I'm adopted into God's family, and I promised heaven, and God says everything that happens to me is going to work out for good, and I've got the seal of the Holy Spirit. It's all—that's all salvation. But here is the part that gets misunderstood. How am I saved? Say it again with me out loud: "It is by grace you have been saved." Okay, so what's grace? Grace, in the original Greek language of the New Testament, charis, beautiful word from which we heard words like charity and charisma. It originally meant favor, as in a gift with no strings attached. Grace is unearned, unmerited, undeserved. Somebody said in the Bible, grace is the free and benevolent favor of God. So how are you saved? How do you get forgiven and chosen and blessed? And as Paul said in Ephesians 1, a guaranteed, sealed spot in the new heaven and the new earth. How do you get all that? Well, it's a favor given to you by God as a gift with no strings attached. It is unmerited, unearned, undeserved. It is absolutely free as a gift from an absolutely benevolent God.

Now let me ask you this: is that what most people think that we talk about in here? No more on that later because that ticks me off. It's by grace we have been saved. I love that. And Paul's on a roll here. It gets even better. He says, "And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus." We were drowning. God goes out there, doesn't shout instructions. He grabs us, and he doesn't rescue us and then say, "Well, you're in the boat, so good luck," and throw us back into the water. He pulls us all the way to shore, makes sure we're okay, raised us. You know, with all due respect to Bette Midler, do you remember that song? "God is watching us from a distance." You remember that song? God's not watching us from a distance. God is plunging in and saving us from drowning like a great lifeguard. And watch this: God did this—verse 7 is going to blow your mind—in order that in the coming ages, he might show the incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. When we've been there 10,000 years, the angels are going to be looking at us, at you and me and John Newton, and thinking, "Our God is a God full of kindness and grace and love and mercy because look what he did for these people! They were dead, and he made them alive." And then Paul launches into the most important verses in the whole Bible: verses 8 and 9 of Ephesians 2: "For it is by grace that you have been saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is the gift of God—not by works, so no one can boast." And sometimes I get so emotional about this, partly because this is so beautiful and this changed my life, but also because it makes me so sad and angry, honestly, that so many pastors and in so many churches, this is actually not taught; it is diluted. Paul is saying you're a hundred percent saved by grace so no one can boast. No one can say, "Yeah, you know, I was good enough. You know, Jesus died for you, but I was good enough," or "I was like 99% good enough; just needed that little 1% of grace." No, nobody can ever say, "I was good enough." Nobody can ever say, "I missed church never one day, so God saved me." Nobody can say, "I chanted enough times." Nobody can say, "I was baptized so many times that I was deemed worthy." Like I tell our baptism class, you can be baptized at our beach baptisms every year until you know every single fish in the Monterey Bay by name, but that is not what saves you. It's a gift of God. We don't do a thing. We couldn't because we were dead, and God zapped us and gave us life. Aren't you glad? Who's glad that God saves us by grace and not by works?

I was thinking if God didn't say—if this last phrase was in there, "nobody can boast," think of, oh my gosh, you ever been at a boring party where people just drone on and on and on about stuff that they do well? You know, "I'm really special because..." Can you imagine heaven if this wasn't true? "Well, you know, I'm here because I started a nonprofit for fish." "Well, I'm here because I rescued stray goats." Oh, stop talking about yourself! Thank God nobody's going to be talking about themselves in heaven. They'll be talking about God. Amen?

Now, most Christians don't understand this. And if you think I'm exaggerating, I just saw a survey that was done in 2020. It's called the American Worldview Inventory, and they asked this question of tens of thousands of Americans: "Do you believe that a person qualifies for heaven by doing good?" Of the people who identify as Christians, 52% agreed with that statement. Now, that's a problem. You know why? If you believe that—if you believe heaven is a meritocracy, people who go to heaven earn it somehow, that's going to take you in one of two directions: arrogance, because you believe that somehow you do earn it and you do deserve it, and so that's going to lead you to looking down on other people—those people, I can't stand those people—or despair, because you think you don't deserve it and can never be sure you do deserve it.

Just this past Wednesday night, I was in a nursing home with an elderly woman on her deathbed, and she was very worried. She'd been raised in a church, but she was so worried she was shaking; she was crying. And she's on hospice, so she knows she only has days left, but was clear-minded at the time. And I said, "What are you worried about?" And she said, "I'm so—" I established that she's a believer, but she said, "I'm so worried because I hope I've been good enough. I'm so worried I won't go to heaven because I've been far from perfect." She's weeping and shaking, and I read her several verses from the Bible, including these very verses. And I said, "When you get worried, I want you to think of Jesus holding your hand just like I'm holding your hand right now." And he's speaking these words of assurance to you: "It's by grace you've been saved through faith and not from yourself. It's a gift of God, not by works." And I held her hand until she fell peacefully asleep. And the next day, her son told me that her whole demeanor was changed, relaxed and joyful.

Let me tell you, if you believe heaven is a meritocracy, you may live your whole life in kind of a low-key arrogance: "I'm pretty good." But if that's what you believe, you will end your life in despair unless you understand that this is actually what the Bible teaches. And not only if only for that moment in your life, the end of your life, which is something every one of us here are going to experience, if only for that time in your life, it is so worth it to own this and believe it, but it also changes every day of your life until then qualitatively. One time I was speaking at a conference, and I met Dr. Robert Emmons, who's a researcher at UC Davis on happiness. And he says the biggest difference between unhappy people and happy people is this: unhappy people feel entitled. "I believe everything I have, I deserved. I worked hard for it. In fact, I should have more." Happy people are just grateful because they see the world as everything I have as a gift, right? It's a gift. Well, that's what the Bible teaches is the way to live. This is the gospel. You've heard about the gospel. Well, maybe you've never heard it put this way before, but there it is from the Bible. And there couldn't be a clearer way to put it. So how do I receive this? Notice the phrase in that verse: "through faith." You just receive it. And this doesn't mean you have to gin up spiritual feelings. "Oh, I think I feel God." It doesn't mean you have to get signs. It doesn't mean that you have to understand every nuance. This just means you trust God that he loves you so much that he sent his son, Jesus Christ, to accomplish all this for you through his death and resurrection on the cross. Just like any gift somebody gives you, a present for your birthday, you don't go, "I don't deserve it. I'm not going to open it." No, it's a gift. You just open it, then you enjoy it.

Now, it can be super hard to receive a free gift. Once my friend Kelly and I went to Disneyland, and we had a pass allowing for people to get in, and it was just us two, so we had two extra tickets to get into Disneyland for free. All they had to do was walk through the turnstiles with us because that was the terms of the pass that we had. So we said, "Hey, let's make somebody's day." And right in front of these gates, we walked up to a couple and said, "Wait! Before you buy your tickets, we have some free tickets for you." And guess what they said? "No, thanks." In fact, they were quite rude. "What kind of fools do you take us for?" And off they went to pay ten thousand dollars or whatever it costs now to get into Disneyland. So we walk up to a woman, a little less confident this time. "Oh, would you care for a free ticket to Disneyland or two?" You know what she said? I quote, "I don't have time to listen to some timeshare pitch," and walked away. We went up to at least half a dozen different people, and all of their responses were some version of "No, thanks, you weirdos." And we started wondering, "Is it our breath? Do we have BO? What is it?" Finally, we walk up to a young family that didn't, based on outward appearances, seem to be very well off, and they go, "Okay." Not a hundred percent sure, clearly. So the parents pay for the two little ones, and the two parents walked through the gate with us. And it wasn't until we're on the other side of the turnstile that the mom started crying, just bawling. And she turns to us with tears in her eyes and says, "Thank you so much for the gift." In fact, we saw them about six hours later, and she runs up to me and thanks me again and apologizes. "I'm so sorry, but at first I thought you were a con man." And I turned to Kelly and said, "I expect to hear that from a few people in heaven." Wow! I thought you were a con man, but here we are. It's just so hard to think that something that cool could be free. But the Bible says, "Here's the truth: I am saved from death in love, by grace, and finally for purpose."

Verse 10: "For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works." We're not saved by good works, but we're saved for good works, which God prepared in advance for you to do. How cool is that? He's prepared these things. So listen, it's no accident when your elderly neighbor needs a ride to the doctor and she asks you, and it's no accident when you kind of get that urge to bake some cookies for those new neighbors down the street, and it's no accident when the church says they have a mission trip that just happens to need someone of your skills. It's a setup. I believe in divine appointments. So you—it's so cool! We get to keep our eyes open every single day because God's like, "Oh, I got something just—it's a divine appointment just prepared for you to do." Not because good deeds earn us heaven. Somebody said grace is not ours to earn, but it is ours to give. Does it make sense?

Now watch this. I'm going to land the plane here with this: the Greek word for handiwork is poema. We get our word poem from that. But it's not just used for poems; it's also used in Greek for paintings and gourmet meals and beautiful buildings. It just means a work of art. Now watch this: this word is used only two times in the whole entire Bible—here and the first time it's used is in Romans 1:20. Watch this: "For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made." And the phrase that's translated there, "what has been made," is the word poema, work of art. What's this? It's saying is in the beginning, God wrote a poem, and you've enjoyed his poem. And it says it through his poem. God's qualities can be learned, like mountains show us his majesty, and the fish under the sea show his creativity, and the stars show us his power. You have marveled at this poem. But here's the thing: all those things can show us power and majesty and creativity and glory, but there's one thing that creation can't show—that's an essential character of God: grace. And for that, there's you. Not what you do, but what God does to you. Paul is saying God is the artist, and we are his artistic triumph. He takes us, he takes all of our mess, and he turns it into a masterpiece. It happened in the life of John Newton. You might know that he wrote a famous pamphlet arguing for the abolition of slavery, telling about the horrors of slavery in the ways only he could tell it—firsthand experience. Then he joins forces with William Wilberforce to abolish slavery in the United Kingdom. And on his deathbed, he gets the news that in England, the slave trade has finally been made illegal. He went from a slaver to an abolitionist because he wanted to show the grace he had received. He became God's masterpiece from death to life. Somebody said, "Where people put a period, God puts a comma." Amen?

And I know some of you don't believe it. I'm going to close with a story. A week ago, I interviewed Tana McGinnis. You might know about our baby bottle fundraiser for the pregnancy resource center. They help under-resourced women who want to raise their babies. Now, you'd expect the executive director of a nonprofit like that to be some perfect church lady with a pristine past, right? Well, meet my friend Tana. I feel like my life is an example of Genesis 50:20, where Joseph says that what the enemy meant for evil, God turned to good. My family on my mother's side—they were immigrants, and they became very wealthy millionaires, so I grew up with money. But inside the family, there was a lot of tumult. When I was 13, in the summer before 7th and 8th grade, I was molested by my stepfather, which really catapulted and changed my world. I started trying prescription drugs I would find in different medicine cabinets of friends' houses, running away, drinking, and having sexual activity. I was staying in abandoned homes. I became so hungry one time, I tried dog biscuits. We stole the car, and I got actually convicted of that—grand theft auto. I got sent to juvenile hall. At one point, I got sent to a group shelter and then got sent to a boarding school, which ended up being a cult. They actually did shut down three months to the day I went in. The person who headed it up got arrested by police and had kidnapped one of the kids from the school. Somehow they decided a mental institution—a private mental institution in Readley, California, which is near Fresno—was the solution. I did get released after a year in the mental institution, so I spent from the ages of 15 to 16 there. I had a friend that I had met in class, and I didn't know she was a believer. And we would do things together—smoking and drinking and stuff. And I called her one day from the payphone, and I just said, "I'm really depressed, and I want to commit suicide." And she said, "Don't smoke, don't drink, and come on over to my house." And she told me the gospel, and I actually opened up my heart and my life to Jesus Christ as my Savior.

So I had met my boyfriend at the time. Two years after dating, when I was 19, we found out I was pregnant. I did find what is called a crisis pregnancy center. They didn't offer judgment, but what she told me was, "There's Medi-Cal that will cover your pregnancy." So that was just the difference. That was like a beacon of light. And we had our daughter three months later and have been together ever since. When we found out that I was pregnant the second time, it was like, "Okay, this is getting serious." We got married when I was three months pregnant, so I decided to stop drinking, to stop smoking cigarettes, to stop smoking pot, and get cleaned up. And I started going to church, and that's really where my life started changing. So I, of course, had a real thread in there for pregnancy centers because of what I had experienced with my first pregnancy. And I started as a volunteer counselor once a week, and I loved it so much, I went to two times a week. I would never have the heart and the ministry that we are doing at the center without having been through all those horrible things and been looked at as a loser. We see these women in a moment in their life when they're low, maybe really low, and there might not be anyone else there that would think well of her. Who does God see her as? God sees them for what potential could be. So we really want to love them unconditionally because if they even know one person cares and loves them, then isn't that going to lead to the next step, which is believing that God can love them for who they are right in the middle of whatever it is, wherever they're at? From my unplanned pregnancy, we now have four children and eleven grandchildren—all because of what God did with that. Isn't that a beautiful, beautiful story?

But did you hear her last line? All because of what God did? God saw a homeless, sexually abused, drug-using, juvenile delinquent, car thief who'd been at a cult and a mental institution and said, "Perfect canvas for my masterpiece." And God says that of you too—all by grace. You know, in his later years, John Newton started to struggle with his memory, and he said on many days, "I can only remember two things: that I am a great sinner and that Christ is a great Savior." And in the end, that is all you need to know. Let's pray together. Would you bow your head in a word of prayer? And what I would love to do just in a word of prayer and silence right now is to just take some time between you and God. Maybe you grew up with all this in church, but the wonder of grace gets lost in all the noise, and I relate. Take this time to just in prayer say thank you. Thank you. And maybe you're new to all this. I would encourage you right now to also say thank you to God, to reach out in faith, and just relax into God's loving embrace. Just receive the gift. So let's stop for a minute and just in silence, as grace plays, just thank God for his grace to you. God, you are so good to us. Help us to reflect that grace to the world around us. In Jesus' name, Amen.