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Grace is the key to all my relationships of love. Welcome to Living Influence. Well, Bill, we're continuing this conversation on grace. It's like a much longer series than we imagined. And it's like we got a question from someone, could you define the word grace? Yeah, right. And I was like, well, yeah, let's take a couple of months to do that. Exactly.

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Just to review, we started by talking about how expansive grace was. We asked the question, do I think of grace in a way that's limiting? Or do I think of grace with the expansiveness that it's described in Scripture? You know, and so we started with grace began with the Trinity. It began before creation. It wasn't something God invented because of man's sin.

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It's actually how God treats himself. Grace is the realm where God treats himself with his best. Grace is the means for my salvation. Bill and I shared our stories about how we came to faith. For Bill, it was a day. For me, it was a journey. I don't know when the day was. We found Jesus through a person who,

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Who had already found Jesus. And that person was different. And something about that person sparked something in me, sparked something in you to cause, I want to know more about why that person's that way. It's really interesting how that is so true. Grace is an experience. It's not something, we're doing a podcast, you know, and we're talking about grace. So we're talking about knowledge. Yeah.

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But we're really wanting you to consider, am I having this experience of grace in my life? And if I'm not, how can I do that? Amen. Right? Because it's not about knowing. It's about the experience. And so we moved on from grace as the means to my salvation, and we started talking about grace as the basis for my maturing as a saint. Yeah. And you made some bold statements there. Mm-hmm.

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It's by grace that God's made us righteous. Amen. That's maybe one of the hardest things for us to believe might be true. You hear people talk about, because it's in Scripture, you've been made righteous. And people will say, well...

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It's because God looks at you through Jesus. So he holds up this colored acetate that's Jesus, and he says, Oh, yeah, I see you as righteous now, but we know you're a sinner, but I'm looking at you through Jesus, so you're not. And now we're actually saying there's actually something Jesus did in the cross, in the resurrection, in our salvation that changed us at a fundamental level. I think that's been my experience. It's like there's – can I actually –

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begin to imagine that might be true. Can I actually begin to trust what God says is true about me? I describe it as jumping off a cliff. Because it's like, you mean I can't use the law to make myself better? I can't use my effort to make myself better? I just, I have to do this like white knuckle it with no guardrails. But there is a risk that you take. Sure there is. With this message.

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And so today, we're going to talk about grace as the key to all my relationships of love. We've talked about love a lot already, but maybe we should start with the Scripture in John 13. Let me just read it. Yeah, please do. And then I'm going to let you jump in. A new commandment I give to you today, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.

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By this, all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. Amen. You know, as I keep reviewing that scripture in my mind, we're to love one another as he loved us. I want to pause right there. At the very beginning of our talking about grace, we talked about the fact that God is love. Yeah. Now, it's an interesting truism—

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I will never experience the love of God until I trust the God of love. Yeah. I will never experience the love of God until I trust. Now, that's a truism. By the way, it's the truism here. Love is interesting in this way.

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Years ago, we wrote this, that the degree to which I trust you is the degree to which I can experience your love, no matter how much love you have for me. I really had a hard time when you first said that. I first heard that statement. Talking about a mask helped me understand this concept better. A mask is an effort. A mask is...

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A pretending or maybe a trying or I'm trying to be something that I think I should be, but I'm not. Right. In my relationship with anybody. So let's say in my relationship with you, I find myself performing.

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I want you to like me, and so I want to say the right thing. I want to be the right kind of person. I want to laugh at the right moment. I want to take the conversation to an impressive place. Right. You know, all of this, I'm doing all this work. You compliment me. And I think, yeah, but if you really knew me. Well said. If this wasn't in between us, if you really knew me, you wouldn't say that.

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And that began my understanding of if I don't trust you, I cannot receive love from you no matter how much love you have for me. Amen. Well said. And let's stay there for a little bit. The God who loves me is full of grace. And he lives for my best. He functions for my best. I'll never experience his best until I trust him. Mm-hmm.

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Now, Jesus, you just read it again in John. He said, I want you and Scott to love each other just like I love you guys. I said, well, wait a minute. What does that mean? Oh, the God of love intentionally does something. He directs his love to my needs. He directs his love to my needs. So years ago, we coined this phrase, love is the process of meeting needs. Mm-hmm.

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Every human being on earth is created by God who is love with needs so they can experience love. This little table that's between us here, it was designed by somebody. But you know what? That table was not designed to be loved. I can say I love that table. And you would say he's weirder than I thought he was. But the table wasn't designed. It can't experience love.

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The designer did not make it capable of being loved. But my designer made me capable of being loved because he is love. And he wanted me to experience him through love. So he created these needs in me, and they're amazing. Every day...

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Every one of us gets up with this profound need for security. Everybody does. I grew up, don't mind admitting it, it was hard to live through it, but very insecure. Back to that lie I believed, I didn't matter, made me very insecure. So falling in love with grace and having somebody love me. But back to God for a minute.

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And you said falling in love with grace. My wife. Your wife. Thank you. Sorry, I did fall in love with God's grace too, but that was a great get. Thank you, Scott. That was good. So this is my reality. Do I trust the God of love by letting him meet my needs? He says to us, I will never leave you or forsake you. That's his commitment.

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Do you know how we meet each other's need for security? Through commitment. Yeah. Do you know why marriages are such a mess? You know why people are divorced all the time? Do you know why children are living without parents? Because somebody violated a commitment. Because somebody no longer could be trusted to give me security. But that's not my God. My God is able to do that.

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You know what God says? Here's something about God. He says, I love you, and you are lovable, and I accept you, and you can't earn what I just said. You can't earn it. I am loved because I am loved because I am loved.

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Yeah. We spend so much time knowing the Scripture tells us as Christians we're to love one another. So we use the language of I love you. But we never engage with each other in the process of meeting needs. Yeah. Well, our culture kind of...

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Goes against it, doesn't it? Oh, like horrifically. My stepdad loved the James Bond movies. I mean, and what's a James Bond movie? It's a character who actually is good at everything. Right. There's nothing he's not good at. He just happens to be handsome. And he happens to be good looking, and he happens to know how to do everything, you know, like fly a plane, run a race car, do a submarine. He knows it all.

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And it's him against the world, which leads me to we want God to fix us. You know, I think there's a—I don't know if this is a good spot, but when Jesus washed the apostles' feet, Peter, the first thing Peter said is, not my feet, Lord, I'm going to wash yours.

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So, no, you don't love me. I love you. You're the Christ. And Jesus says, if you don't let me, you'll have no share with me. And so the next interesting thing is then Peter says, well, then, not just my feet, but my whole body, right?

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I mean, make me all the way clean. Make me perfect. Make me like James Bond. And Jesus says, no, all that's necessary is your feet. And he leaves us in this place where he made us righteous, but he didn't make us without needs. Amen. Amen. Thank you. That's a great get. And we don't want to forget that.

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It's because we have needs that we can practice love. Right. Which is the evidence of our being righteous. And we have to receive love. You have to receive it. If we're going to have love to give. You have to. Because God, we love God because he first loved us. I heard that preach my whole life. Right. Very few people understand the reality of what it takes to let somebody intentionally move in to your needs being met. Yeah.

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There's a church in Revelation chapter 3. It's called the Church of Laodicea. I just want to read. It fits what we're talking about. I just want to read this verse. It says, for you say, he's talking about the Church of Laodicea. This is their words. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I have need of nothing.

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Like James Bond. Exactly. Exactly. And he says, you missed it just a little bit. Let me describe you differently. You don't actually realize this is true about you. You are wretched, pitiful, poor, blinded naked. Well, thank you, Jesus. Well, that's a precious note. He's saying to them, listen, listen.

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When you live with the declaration, you need no one. Tragically, you are making the statement that I choose to not be loved. Yeah. When I live in the mindset that I don't have to trust anyone. Yeah. I'm living in the mindset that I'm choosing to not be loved. And then in that church of Laodicea, Jesus does something. I just described your reality. I stand at the door and knock.

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I stand at the door and knock. I'd love to have a meal with you. I just love the wisdom of Jesus. What he's doing, he's saying, listen, I know your reality, but you know what? I can't touch your reality until you give me permission. Yeah. I can't touch your reality until you give me permission. God never imposes his love on us.

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Never. He says, I stand at the door and knock. Now, sometimes what we do, tragically, in the church, is when we see the needs of the people in the church, what we want to do is we want to move to fixing them.

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Yeah. And Jesus wants to move to a different direction. He wants to move to loving them. And he's always loving the person. Always loving the person. And in loving the person, he's doing something. He's meeting the need. When I don't have a commitment of love, I live very insecurely. Yeah.

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And when I live very insecurely, there are attributes about that. The main one is I live in fear. Yeah. Well, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. A couple of weeks ago, we were talking about this with our audience. And I said that that love is the great healer. Humanity has a lot of psychological and emotional dysfunction because humanity's been beat up a lot by itself, but help something happens.

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When life is hard, I learn to not trust, and I get sick. Because I'm not loved. Because I'm not loved. So what if Jesus, in his wisdom, was saying to us, you just read it in John, love each other just as I have loved you. And you know what? It's going to help you get well. It's going to help you get well.

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I have watched it, Scott. I have watched it. I've watched it in individuals. I've watched it in the community of the church that God graced us to be a part of. A story comes to my mind of this young woman who came to see me.

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Because her friend said she should. Yeah. And in coming to see me because her friend said she should, she just happened to tell me she was 29. And she made this bold statement, I don't trust men and I don't trust you. And she literally took her chair and moved it as far from me in my office as she could move it. Yeah. And I believed her. And I said that to her. I said, I believe you. She said, what? I said, I believe you don't trust me.

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And I said, would you like to come over to our house next Wednesday night and have dinner with my wife and children and me? She said, what did you say? I said, would you like to come over to our house? Well, why would you do that? Because you didn't trust me. I believe you. There's a big principle in there, Scott. We want to learn as Christians. We've got to learn.

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To earn people's trust so they can experience our love. Just to boldly stand up and say, hey, my name is Bill Thrall. You can trust me. That's a joke. Yeah. Now, that young lady needed somebody she could trust. And to her credit and courage, she showed up for dinner. Yeah. She showed up for dinner more than once. Over time...

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Her ability to let my wife and my sweatshirt, little Lynn, and my kids and me love her. Over time, she regained the ability to trust. And this is a girl at 29 who told me, in that process, I hate men. I am never going to get married. And she was wrong. She learned to let a man love her.

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She got married. Two wonderful children. Love heals. See, grace is the basis.

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It's actually something. It gives me the experience of love. Right. And I desperately need to be loved. I've already said it. I've experienced a lot of insecurity. I struggle so much to be acceptable, Scott. I loved your mask illustration. Just that reality of what do I need to do to be my best for you? Because you know what we've learned?

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It's easier for us to work hard at becoming someone than it is to trust someone. It's just harder and easier. So as we think about this subject, God is love. Can I trust the God who is love so he can meet my needs? In the process of being loved,

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Yeah. I become a lover. Right. And the motivation, this is interesting. In one of our recent podcasts, you made that statement that how do I get to become others focused? I'm always about me. How does that transfer? Let me just say this. No one will ever think about someone else until they experience the love of someone.

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Yeah. We will always put me first. You know what love does? Love always puts someone better. Changes our focus. Changes our focus. Yes. It puts my focus on you. This idea, and I'm going to repeat you now for a minute here. Over the course of our time together, we're going to spend a lot of time talking about what I call sin management, that theology that brings effort and robs people of grace. Yeah.

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And one of the reasons, one of the ways sin management does that is that it tells people, sin less and you'll become more godly. Instead of teaching people, believe that you are godly so you'll sin less. Yeah. And just as you said either last week or the week before, sinning less will never lead me to loving more. Yeah.

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But loving will always lead me to sinning less. That's called grace, Scott. That's called grace. Yeah. Grace is the basis for all my relationships of love. Exactly. It's that way because until I receive love, I don't have any love to give. Exactly. Amen a thousand times. It's an amazing journey. It changes everything. Love heals.

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Everything. Love transforms. It's interesting. We got to this message, and we were getting ready to prepare for what we're going to say. And we're like, we've already said all this stuff. What are we going to say this time? But, you know, here we are, and it's the end of our podcast. And I think we could continue. Yeah. It's a lot to learn. Grace is the basis in which we receive love. We let God love us first. Amen. Amen.

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We'd love for you to learn how to stop running on your hamster wheel and lay your mask down. Amen. And receive love because it truly is transformational. Thank you. Amen. Thanks for joining us today. We're going to continue on these conversations of grace. We're almost done. We've got a few more to do. We'll see you next week.

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Thank you for listening to the podcast. We're really glad that you're here. We'd love to know that you're here. And so if you could leave a comment, we would appreciate that. But more importantly, if you know someone that should listen to this or hear it, we would love for you to share it with them. Thanks again.