Fusion: Plan A

In the past few weeks, we have covered two truths we find early in Romans. First, everyone has sinned, has fallen short, has burned a bridge. Second, through faith in Jesus, not works, we can be forgiven. This is the beginning of Grace.

However, before we go on, we must answer two questions.

The first is one that would have been very common for the first century Jewish believers. After all, these are people who had been told their entire lives that following the law was how to live in peace with God. So, the question becomes, if grace and salvation are offered through faith, has God changed?

This is an important question to ask, and one that Paul quickly answers.

¹ What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, discovered in this matter? ² If, in fact, Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about—but not before God. ³ What does Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”

-Romans 4:1-3 (NIV)

Paul points to the father of the Jewish people, the one whom God first chose, and makes the point that even he was redeemed by faith.

If we look at the lineage of Christ, which can be found in Matthew 1, we see two women mentioned among so many men; Rahab and Ruth. Jesus is the human descendant of a prostitute and widow, neither of which were Israelites by birth. Rather, these women were redeemed by faith. (Please read Joshua 6, and Ruth for more insight into this)

God has not changed. Faith has always been the way. It has always been His plan. It was not plan b, but PLAN A.

This leads us to the second question. One that is, perhaps, more difficult for us to confront.

My faith is imperfect, flawed, full of doubt, and full of failure. So often, what I believe and how I act do not match up.

The question the becomes, if salvation and grace come through faith, is my faith enough?

Let's look back at Abraham to answer this question. Abraham believed God. What did Abraham's belief look like? He doubted. He failed. He went to the bed of his wife's servant when he did not think God was acting fast enough. He struggled.

And what did God say about this faith? This faith that was so messy, so flawed, so filled with sin and doubt?

"... and it was credited to him as righteousness."

So, is your faith enough? If it is faith in the resurrected Jesus, yes it is.

What Abraham discovered, what so many in our community our discovering, and what we pray that you discover, is that God loves taking our flawed, messy, tiny, doubt-filled faith and turning into something beautiful.

He hasn't changed.

He says that your faith is enough to begin the work in you.

He is making a beautiful thing out of you.

Fusion: Guilty, but now...

Fusion 2/3/11

It was brought to my attention this week, that we have not done a very good job of clearly defining grace. I want to make a point that grace is a HUGE concept, but can be easily defined as that which Christ has done for us and continues to do in us. Most people's misunderstanding of grace comes from only thinking about half of that equation. So, as we continue through this series, I will explain what we have covered about grace so far.

Over the last few weeks, we have talked about what grace is not. It is not being better than someone else. It is not following a list of rules better than another person. It is not being born into the correct religious, cultural, racial, ethnic, or national environment.

However, this week, we will begin looking at what grace is.

Grace is a radical idea. It may be the most radical idea. It is an idea so radical, that the first people to hear of it were either radically changed or radically threatened by it.

When Paul writes to the believers in Rome, he is perfectly aware of the fact that there are many in that early community who are still threatened by grace. Paul's message is intended to move these people from radically threatened to radically changed.

Paul spends most of the first three chapters of Romans explaining how every human is guilty of sin. Every single one of us has fallen short of the standard we hold for ourselves, and far short of God's standard. Nobody is perfect, and nobody will ever be righteous before God based on their behavior.

Paul is saying that the law, the rules and regulations, that many of these people have trusted in for their righteousness, has never made them right with God. In fact, if we trust in the law, then we are merely acknowledging our own guilt.

We are guilty...

Yet, the story of God's grace shines brightly into our guilt and provides a hope that we never could imagine.

If we are guilty, and there is no way out of our guilt, then someone else needs to pay the debt of our guilt before we can be made right with God.

Enter Jesus.

^"23 For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. ²⁴ Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. ²⁵ For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past, ²⁶ for he was looking ahead and including them in what he would do in this present time. God did this to demonstrate his righteousness, for he himself is fair and just, and he declares sinners to be right in his sight when they believe in Jesus."

-Romans 3:23-26 (NLT)

The penalty of our guilt has been paid by Christ. Now, we are declared righteous, not because of our behavior, but because of Christ's.

This is an incredibly radical idea.

Our righteousness, through faith, not work.

This is the beginning of grace... Faith in Christ.

It is not changed behavior, following the letter of the law, or penance.

Grace begins with faith, not work.

Yet, how many of us have been enslaved to trying harder, working harder, as if somehow you might earn your salvation?

That is not grace, and it is not what Jesus has done for us.

Jesus came into our guilt. He did not wait outside for us to work our way out. He came in. He came down. He made a way.

When I try to work to meet Him outside of my guilt, I disregard what He has done and there is no faith.

When I accept that He has come into my guilt, to save me from the penalty of it, I believe in what He has done, and by grace through faith the work of salvation has begun.

This is not where grace ends. This is only where it begins.

Fusion: Inside Out 1/27/11

Fusion: Inside Out

Last week we looked at two very important lessons that Paul had for the Jewish-Christians who were dominant in the early Roman church. God does not grade on a curve. Judgment is not a place where grace lives.

These are two concepts that I think are pretty easy to wrap our heads around, and yet they are concepts that are very difficult for us to live out.

In reality, many of us have spent our lives feeling like we can't measure up to the people around us, much less to what God wants from us, and so we learn very early on to fake it. We fake it, or we give up hope all together.

The reason we do this is because we are convinced that God is really concerned with what things look like. We pretend to have everything all together. We give the Sunday school answers. We pretend like we are struggling with sin. We try to say the right things. We try to do the right things. We try to do all of it around the right people. All the while, we are dying on the inside because we are convinced that God can't love us until we clean up all this stuff. So we try and fail, or we fake it.

I think if we peel back the layers of where this thinking comes from we will quickly discover that it is a message we understood from a religious system. An organized system of right and wrong, good and bad held up a measuring tape to us, pointed out all that ways we didn't measure up, and left us more certain than ever that we were too far off, too far away.

This is a place where we need to understand something very basic, but so very important.

Jesus is not a religion. He is not a system of right and wrong, good and bad. Jesus is not the founder of a new spiritual organization.

He is the Son of God. Jesus is where our hope and our victory comes from, and some of us have spent far too long claiming Jesus and then putting our hope in another system.

This is really the crucial issue that the Jewish Christians in Rome were dealing with. They had believed in Christ and what He had done, but they were still trying to cling on to their religious system, and all of the poison that came with it.

We have all been burned or scarred in some way by a religious system, or by well-meaning people who communicated Jesus through a language of earthly organizational kingdoms.

So, I want us, instead, to hear the language of Jesus.

In John 4, Jesus encounters a women at a well near Samaria. This woman is part of a hated group of people to the Jews. Jesus, speaks to this woman and asks her for water. In verse 9, we see her response...

"The woman was shocked, for the Jews refuse to have anything to do with the Samaritans."

As the conversation goes from there, we quickly see Jesus expose all the things in her life that she is trying so desperately to hide; multiple marriages, sexual impurity with the boyfriend at home. Then it get's to the heart of that matter. This woman, a woman who, based on the religious system, Jesus should have hated and refused to speak to, has spent her life confused by the right and wrong of the religious systems. Where should I worship? What should I do? Jesus answers her questions with a profound statement in verse 23...

"But the time is coming—indeed it’s here now—when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for those who will worship him that way."

Jesus' point to this woman who had been left out by the religious systems was that God is looking for people who worship in spirit and in truth.

God isn't looking for people who went to the right church service, who cleaned their lives up so they looked better than the people outside. God is not concerned with appearances.

In Matthew 9, we see Jesus encounter a tax collector. In the first century, a tax collector was the lowest of the low, the worst of the worst, sinners and gentiles were though more highly of than these. Here is how this encounter unfolds in verse 9...

"As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at his tax collector’s booth. 'Follow me and be my disciple,' Jesus said to him."

Jesus, here encounters another person who the religious systems had given up on, people that were to far off, too far gone, too messy, too dirty. His invitation to people like this? Follow Me.

Jesus doesn't say to Matthew, "quit your job, clean your life up, start going to temple like you should, and follow the right and wrongs of the law."

Jesus has a simple invitation... Follow me.

Next thing we know, Jesus is hanging out at Matthew's house, having dinner with other tax collectors and sinners. So, not only is Jesus offering an invitation to the sinners, to the messy, to those of us who are so far off, but He wants to come into our house, into our lives, into our relationships. He invites us to let Him in. That is Jesus.

The religious system will always respond in the opposite way, as we see in verse 11...

"But when the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with such scum?"

Character of Jesus= Follow Me, I don't care what things look like on the outside. Let me come in to your home, life, relationships, etc.

Character of religious systems= Why are you hanging around with such scum? Those people are bad, and we want only the people that are good.

Paul had spent the entire first half of his life wrapped up in a religious system, convinced he was doing the right thing. He was doing all of the thing that a religious person should do. Then he met Jesus.

This is what Paul learned from meeting Jesus and leaving behind broken and dead religious systems...

²⁸ For you are not a true Jew (truly religious) just because you were born of Jewish parents or because you have gone through the ceremony of circumcision. ²⁹ No, a true Jew (true follower) is one whose heart is right with God. And true circumcision is not merely obeying the letter of the law; rather, it is a change of heart (transformation) produced by God’s Spirit. And a person with a changed heart seeks praise from God, not from people.

-Romans 2:28-29 (NLT)

Jesus isn't concerned with what things look like. Pretending like we have it all together isn't fooling Him. Jesus wants to transform us from the inside out, as we respond to His invitation to follow. When that is our understanding of grace, we won't fake it for the sake of looking good to others. When that is our understanding of grace, we will go to those who are far off and offer an invitation, not condemnation.

*If you are wanting to dig deeper into this subject, I recommend Francis Chan's book, Crazy Love, and North Point Community Church's audio series Basic:Follow/Believe/Obey.

Fusion: No Curve

Fusion 1/20/11: No Curve (Romans 1:18-2:5)

One of the funniest things someone can say is "I don't care what other people think of me." It is funny because the sheer fact that someone has to verbalize that statement is in and of itself a negation of it's truth. The truth is that everyone cares what others think of them. Everyone cares about where they stack up compared to others. In our flesh, we are people who are overwhelmingly concerned about where we are compared to others.

Last week, we talked about how we can misunderstand grace by believing that God came so that we can just be better than other people. This is really what is at the heart of the most common belief about God, Salvation, and Heaven.

Think about it.

How many times have you had a conversation with someone where they said, "I am a good person." Most often, they were saying this while you were involved in a conversation about life, death, God, heaven, hell, judgment, or salvation.

I believe that many people who are professing Christians struggle with this as well. They convince themselves that faith and grace is just about being better than the average person. It is just about being good.

The Jewish believers who made up most of the early Roman community of faith struggled with this thinking as well. They believed in Christ, but they were still placing hope on how good they were compared to the Gentile believers who had just left behind a pagan worship system.

This way of thinking is a lot like viewing God's judgment as a curve system.

We have all had the professor who teaches a class that everybody finds difficult, and so this professor grades the class on a curve. Nobody actually has to get in A or know all the material, you just have to do better than the average person. Remember, that feeling of elation when you walked out of a test that you got a C on, at best, and then found out that almost everyone you knew in class bombed the test? It is a great feeling.

Why? What are we celebrating?

In curve grading, we root for other people to fail. We hope for the standard to be lower. We feel good about ourselves for getting what should have been a D because the rest of the class failed completely.

We do this in our spiritual lives as well. We excuse sin because it isn't as bad as someone else. We rejoice in judging others because it makes us feel more righteous.

These are the feelings the Jewish believers in Rome had towards the Gentile believers.

Their hope was placed in morality, that they were better. Morality has nothing to do with God, though. Morality is no savior. Placing their hope in their own morality, these believers were headed for an eternal disappointment.

So in Romans 2:1-5, Paul reminds them of two very important truths.
1.God doesn't grade on a curve.
God is completely holy and perfectly righteous, and that is what he demands. Jesus came because perfection was required. When we put our hope and trust in being better than someone else, we are confident in our morality. Yet, scripture tells us that our very best is but filthy rags to a Holy God. In the presence of a Holy God, we need something better to offer than that. Jesus is our hope and our perfection. He is the one who has the perfect score. This is important for us to remember, but God doesn't grade us on a curve.

2.Judgment is not a place where grace lives.
If we stop looking at everyone else and trying to figure out where we measure up, we can truly open our eyes to see ourselves. We can remember that we too are guilty; no less and no more than anyone else. If we believe that God is able to forgive us, that He extends grace to us, then we will realize that He is extending grace to all. If we judge others, if we place confidence on our righteousness, then we better be perfect. If not, the same law, the same list of rights and wrongs, we used to judge someone else will be used to measure us. There is no grace for us there.

Understanding Grace: Introduction 1/13/11

Understanding Grace: An Introduction

In our first week of a brand new series, we spent some talking about the different ways that we can misunderstand grace and how those misunderstandings can affect our confidence in what Christ has done. Here are the three common misconceptions we looked at last night.

Grace is...

1.God Soap- A common misconception about what God has done for us is that He has become our soap. Our day to day lives get us dirty, smelly, and nasty, so we go to God who showers us off and cleans us up again, but only temporarily. This viewpoint of Grace robs us of confidence in our standing with God, because it is dependent upon how recently we have gone to the shower. If you believe in Christ and what He has done, but yet you constantly wonder if each sin has taken that away, it is probably because of this view of Grace. We will talk more about this in Romans 4-7.

2.Potpourri- Another misconception about what God does for us is that He wants to separate us from the world and our purpose therein. Often we see pine cones and acorns used in potpourri. They are collected from the ground and covered with nice smelling scents and then put in a bowl or vase where they sit until they are discarded. While Martha Stewart may appreciate this, it inherently prevents the seeds (what pine cones and acorns are) from living out their purpose... to bring life to something new. If you believe in Christ and what He has done, but find yourself separated from non-believers, you may be struggling with this view of Grace. Death to sin is incomplete if we have not been made alive to a new purpose. We will talk more about this in Romans 7-10.

3.Digital Camera vs. Polaroid Picture- Another heartbreaking misconception about what God does for us is that He instantly changes our lives into His own. Digital Cameras work like this. The picture is taken and you can instantly see it. However, what we find in Christ is the reality that work is still happening. We are not just saved, but continually being saved. It is more like a Polaroid Picture. The instant of salvation, the work has begun, but the film takes a long time to show us the picture we are waiting on. If you believe in Christ and what He has done, but continually find yourself discouraged by the process of continual salvation, you may be wrestling with this view of Grace. When we expect instant change and instant results, we rob ourselves of the blessings of learning to trust in God and His work in us. We will talk more about this in Romans 12-15.


We started off this series talking about our own misconceptions about Grace because it is important that we know what we believe, right or wrong. As we jump into the book of Romans, we will discover a letter written to a group of people who believed in Christ, but had very little understanding of what He actually had done for them or what He was continuing to do in them. Paul, knowing that these people were called to be light in the darkness, spends 15 chapters of the book of Romans explaining, in detail, exactly what Christ's death and resurrection have done for us and how the Holy Spirit is daily continuing that work inside of us.

This is Grace.

My prayer for us this year is that we would walk away from this series with overwhelming confidence that God has done and continues to do for us exactly what His Word says.

Passion2011

January 1st - 4th, 2011
Fusion had a group of roughly 30 students attend a life-changing conference in Atlanta, GA. Passion2011 was an event that is beyond words because it is a movement about The God who is indescribable.
Hopefully this video will share at least a little of what took place.
Plan on joining us next year for Passion2012!