Bloodied Knees Bring Greater Blessings?

In the towns I visited in Ecuador, I often saw people crawling across rough stone pavement, up stone steps, and across the splintery wooden floor to kneel at the church’s altar.  Their knees were often bloodied by the exercise. Somehow they felt that their suffering was pleasing to God, that it would bring them divine favor. What a tragic misunderstanding of the nature of our Heavenly Father. While you won’t find many Americans crawling to a church’s altar, they feel much the same about God, that He must be appeased, that His favor must be earned.

Do you feel that your prayers find a more ready answer when you can look back over a stretch of time in which there are no ‘major’ sins in memory?
In times of crisis, are you prone to play ‘let’s make a deal’ with God, offering Him more time, more service, or more money in return for a blessing?

The basis of our hope in God for daily care and eternal salvation rests on Christ and His work on our behalf. The Bible calls it an ‘imputed’ grace! It runs counter to the normal human experience in which greater effort produces greater reward. It can difficult to abandon our efforts to trust Him fully. Yet, that is what the Word teaches us to do. "Since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need." (Hebrews 4:14-16, NIV)

Confidence in Christ is not to be confused with arrogance before our Father. The grace of God is no excuse for lack of reverence. There is a cheap pseudo-grace to which some cling who have misunderstood the Gospel as much as those with bloodied knees. The Word describes them "godless men, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord." (Jude 4, NIV)  Real faith only deepens awe. Awe takes away self-confidence and love grows which teaches us rely on God, to walk with Him, and to bring our lives into alignment with His purpose.

My earliest experience of Christianity was something like that of those who crawl to God. I thought that He was distant, angry, and bent on my destruction, restrained only by Jesus. In great brokenness, the Spirit caused me to re-examine the Scripture and what I saw in the Gospel of Christ was amazing, graceful, and liberating. For a while, I slipped into an extreme kind of liberty. I was a teenager who begins to realize that his Dad is just human and tries out treating him like a buddy. With time, the Lord brought maturity, restored proper awe without terror and let me discover the joy of holy living. This time, however, the holiness was not self-generated nor was it shaped around earning a blessing! It was an expression worshipful devotion to the One who loved me even when I was unlovely.

Disciple, do you somehow think that bloody knees bring greater blessing? Hear the challenge of the Word and trust the grace of God.

"Oh, foolish Galatians! Who has cast an evil spell on you? For the meaning of Jesus Christ’s death was made as clear to you as if you had seen a picture of his death on the cross. Let me ask you this one question: Did you receive the Holy Spirit by obeying the law of Moses? Of course not!

You received the Spirit because you believed the message you heard about Christ. How foolish can you be? After starting your Christian lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort? Have you experienced so much for nothing? Surely it was not in vain, was it?

I ask you again, does God give you the Holy Spirit and work miracles among you because you obey the law? Of course not! It is because you believe the message you heard about Christ. In the same way, “Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith.”
 (Galatians 3:1-6, NLT)