{"id":1825,"date":"2022-07-25T10:05:56","date_gmt":"2022-07-25T14:05:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=1825"},"modified":"2022-07-25T10:07:06","modified_gmt":"2022-07-25T14:07:06","slug":"gods-grace-challenged-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2022\/07\/25\/gods-grace-challenged-children\/","title":{"rendered":"God’s Grace-Challenged Children"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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When author and pastor Rob Bell was a teenager, he and his family attended a church service in a town they were visiting.
 
At the end of the service, they experienced a drama that is played out in a number of conservative congregations.  The pastor invited those present to make a first-time commitment to Christ.
 
He announced that if people repeated the prayer he was about to pray, they could be assured that heaven would be their eternal destination.  They wouldn\u2019t end up in hell.  The pastor instructed everyone present to close their eyes.  He alone would look around the room.  He invited people to silently echo the salvation prayer that he offered.  Then he asked those who had just become Christians to raise their hands.
 
The pastor said, \u201cI see that hand over there.  Thank you.  I see a hand in the back.  I see some young women in the front\u2026\u201d
 
Rob Bell\u2019s eyes, however, were open the whole time.  He looked around the room.  Not one hand was in the air. 
 
Years later, Rob\u2019s dad acknowledged that his eyes were open, too.  But he wasn\u2019t watching the pastor, and he wasn\u2019t watching for raised hands.  He was watching Rob.  Knowing the deception that was taking place in the name of Jesus, all he could think was, I\u2019ve lost Rob, I\u2019ve lost Rob.  He\u2019s going to walk away from God because of moments like this.<\/em>
 
Author and pastor Eugene Peterson remembers some Sunday morning happenings that also made him sigh deeply.
 
He was genuinely surprised to discover that some people just can\u2019t stay awake past the first hymn.  An angry teenage boy, sitting apart from his parents, used to sit on the back pew every week and read comic books.  One of the men in the choir routinely passed stock tips and exchanged whispers with another choir member. 
 
\u201cOne woman gave me hope,\u201d Peterson recalls in his book Christ Plays in 10,000 Places<\/em>.  \u201cShe brought a stenographic notebook with her every Sunday and wrote down in shorthand everything I said.  At least one person was paying attention.  Then I learned that she was getting ready to leave her husband and was using the hour of worship to practice her shorthand so she could get a self-supporting job.\u201d 
 
The amazing thing is that Peterson never gave up on the church.  And Bell never walked away from God. 
 
There will always be reasons to do both. 
 
It\u2019s disturbingly easy to find spiritual leaders who aren\u2019t on the level.  And we don\u2019t have to look very far to find worship attenders whose lives seem unaffected by the God they claim to serve.   
 
At some point every spiritual searcher has to make a crucial decision \u2013 whether or not they will judge their Heavenly Father by some of his grace-challenged, integrity-defying, Spiritual Attention Deficit Disorder children.  If we are always in the company of people who fall so miserably short, how can we ever get to know God?
 
The only way to get to know God is to get to know God<\/em>.  Personally.  Prayerfully.  Patiently. 
 
Jesus promises that if we ask, seek, and knock, we will ultimately receive, find, and watch as the door of understanding swings open. 
 
And along the way we\u2019ll discover that each of us, alarmingly, has always been numbered among those who fall miserably short.
 
And that God loves us anyway. <\/em>

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When author and pastor Rob Bell was a teenager, he and his family attended a church service in a town they were visiting. At the end of the service, they experienced a drama that is played out in a number of conservative congregations.  The pastor invited those present to make a first-time commitment to Christ. He announced that if people repeated the… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1826,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[39,101],"class_list":["post-1825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-failure","tag-grace"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1825"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1828,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1825\/revisions\/1828"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}