The Grace Exchange

By Larry Huntsperger

Do you ever feel like you don't measure up? Do your expectations exceed your performance? You're not alone. Many people encounter disappointment in their everyday Christian lives. In "The Grace Exchange" you will discover secrets to freedom from doubts, insecurities, and confusing thoughts like these: Godly people don't have ungodly desires. I will be accepted by God when I... If I just try harder, I will succeed. "The Grace Exchange" will help you experience the spiritual fulfillment that is found only in the center of God's love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Aug 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312444515

Book preview

The Grace Exchange

The Grace Exchange

Larry Huntsperger

Except where otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible   1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

THE GRACE EXCHANGE

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Huntsperger, Larry, 1947-

The grace exchange : God's offer of freedom from a life of works/Larry Huntsperger.

p.cm.

ISBN 1-56507-286-3

1. Christian life. 2. Spiritual warfare.I. Title.BV4501.2.H8541995

248.4_dc2095-8146

CIP

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the Publisher.

Printed in the United States of America.

For my beloved wife, Sandee, my partner in the great adventure of discovering these principles; she has integrated them into her life in a way that will forever be my greatest personal illustration of their validity.

The Best-Kept Secret

Is something wrong with this thing we call Christianity? We are flooded with a tremendous wealth of resources promising to equip us for living the Christian life. Twenty-four-hour Christian radio is available at the turn of a dial. Christian bookstores are bulging with thousands of books and tapes on every conceivable topic from every conceivable doctrinal perspective. We have more churches, more Christian schools, more Christian counselors, more Christian teaching and preaching and discussing than ever before in our nation's history, and yet it is difficult to find a Christian whose life really seems to work.

So many nationally known Christian leaders have fallen because of financial irresponsibility or moral indiscretion that it no longer surprises us when some new name hits the news media. Our churches are filled with deeply sincere people whose lives are coming apart at the seams. Their marriages don't work. Their lives seem to lack a sense of purpose or direction. They struggle with repeated bouts of depression, frustration, confusion, and bondage to old sin patterns that have tormented them since long before they came to Christ. They know their lives should be different. They know that if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things [are] passed away; behold, new things have come (2 Corinthians 5:17). They have read Paul's confident proclamation, It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me (Galatians 2:20). But somewhere along the way they seem to have missed the sermon in which the preacher explained how to make those truths a reality in their own lives. It is not only those outside of Christ who live lives of quiet desperation. In reality, no desperation is so intense as the desperation of a person who has come to what he knows is the truth and then is suddenly faced with the fear that the truth may not be enough.

But perhaps it is not just the quality of the Christian lives around you that you find disturbing. It is not just the failures of those in the limelight or the obvious confusion of the fellow sitting next to you in church that troubles you. It could be that the best-kept secret in your world is your own deep disappointment with yourself as God's child. You have tried to understand. You have tried to make your walk with Christ productive. At one time you may have actively poured yourself into the life of your local church, giving of yourself and your resources, doing everything you were encouraged to do. Or perhaps you tried to find the answers in some form of deeper experience with the Lord. Fervently you sought a depth of spiritual intimacy with your God that you hoped would enable you to put it all together, to make it work, to bring a true sense of fulfillment and success into your Christian life. You may even have attended a Bible school or seminary, believing the answers you needed could be found in diligent study under qualified teachers.

But it didn't work, and you no longer know where to turn. For some reason, your Christian life simply does not look the way you expected it to. You have run out of answers and deep inside you feel frustrated, empty, and discouraged, and you have no solution. It's not that you want to give up. It's just that you have done everything you know how to do and tried everything you know how to try.

Tragically, when we reach the point where we suspect that the answers we need don't really exist, we often just stop listening. We may continue to carry on the motions and the form of our faith for years or for the rest of our lives. But, if our spirit is broken, even if the answers were to appear, they would have no effect on us because we have ceased to believe they exist.

The concepts in this book can be of tremendous value to Christians at every stage of spiritual growth. But they are of exceptional value for those who have almost given up. There is hope. When correctly understood, the life system God offers through His Word truly does provide us with the answers we long for and so desperately need.

The following pages were written for those who hunger for a Christian walk that really works. Christ told a story once that illustrated two distinctly different approaches to life. In Matthew 7:24-27 our Lord says,

Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine, and acts upon them, may be compared to a wise man, who built his house upon the rock. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and burst against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded upon the rock. And everyone who hears these words of Mine, and does not act upon them, will be like a foolish man, who built his house upon the sand. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and burst against that house; and it fell, and great was its fall.

Clearly, Christ is telling us that it is His intention to provide us with the knowledge necessary to build a rock-solid foundation for our lives, a foundation with the strength to successfully weather any storm this world can throw at us. Our Lord certainly does not intend for us to live our lives in frustration, confusion, and defeat, with only a tiny elite discovering the principles that truly free us to be the people God designed us to be. It is Christ's promise and His intention that all of His people shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free (John 8:32).

1: Deadly Misconceptions

What does it mean to become a Christian? Does raising your hand at an evangelistic service make you a Christian? Does walking down an aisle in response to the preacher's invitation seal your eternal destiny and guarantee entrance into heaven? In true salvation, what are we saying to God? What is God saying to us? A real, eternal, and irreversible change takes place in our lives when we enter God's family through Christ. However, it is only as we understand correctly what is happening and why that we have any hope for an effective life with our Lord. In 1 Corinthians 3:11 Paul tells us, For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. An accurate understanding of the true nature of Christianity centers squarely on just one issue: our relationship with the Person of Jesus Christ.

I remember well the day my daughter, Joni, first entered our world. My wife and I had read numerous books on child-rearing. We had equipped the baby's room with all of the essentials and many of the nonessentials. We had mentally tried to prepare ourselves for the adjustments that Joni's birth would require of us. And yet, no amount of preparation could have adequately equipped us for the real thing.

Our little girl appeared on the scene with the assumption that this world existed exclusively to meet her needs. Mom and Dad were simply there to see to it that everything was fulfilled according to her wishes. She ate when she wanted to eat. She slept when she wanted to sleep. She didn't sleep when she didn't want to sleep. She insisted on being held, or fed, or cuddled, or entertained almost constantly. During the first few months after her birth I cannot recall a meal in which my wife, Sandee, and I actually sat down at the same time and ate without interruption. We had a special name for Joni during that first year. We called her Queen Itty Bitty.

Every one of us enters this world with that same heart belief: that we have the indisputable right to position ourselves in the center of the universe. This attitude of independence from our Creator is sin. I know we typically think of sin as a list of naughty actions God has said are not allowed, things like murder, adultery, lying, stealing, and swearing. And our independent attitude certainly displays itself in our willful involvement in behaviors, attitudes, and actions that are contrary to the moral law of God. But these are only external expressions of the real underlying problem.

In The Beginning

The third chapter of the book of Genesis records for us Satan's first successful effort to tempt the human race into sin. Appearing in the form of a serpent, Satan encouraged Eve to eat the fruit God had forbidden her to eat. In the course of their conversation, the serpent said to Eve, You surely shall not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil (Genesis 3:4-5).

This is typical of Satan's tactics in his dealings with us. His deceptions often rest upon feeding us half-truths. When he told Eve she would be like God, he was giving her a distorted version of what would actually happen. In her rebellion, she did become god to herself. She rejected God's rightful position as Leader and Director of her life, and replaced Him with herself. She became the center of her own little universe, the ruler of her own little kingdom.

But there was a catch. Satan neglected to tell Eve that she was never designed or equipped for that role. Eve, like all human beings, was designed by God to live in an eternal, nurturing love union with her Creator. Without Him to tell her who she was, or why she had value, or how her life was designed to operate, life became confusing, complex, and unfulfilling. Only through her union with God could she understand what her purpose in life was, and how she could fulfill it. Once Eve sinned and then Adam after her, they became their own gods-a role neither could fulfill.

Every one of us has followed the pattern set by our first two parents. We have replaced God with ourselves and discovered too late that we do not possess what it takes to direct our lives. We are like a five-year-old child who has been appointed to the Supreme Court. We may be able to sit in the chair, but we are in no way qualified to hold the position.

This Awful Emptiness

Why, from the first day we enter this world, do we have our little ears tuned to every word other people say about us? Why do we watch every expression, longing for approval, fearing rejection? Why? Because once we turned a deaf ear to our Creator, we could no longer hear Him tell us the reasons for which we were created. We were forced to turn to one another for some proof of our value, our significance, our reason for being.

We use one or more of three techniques to find some proof of our value apart from God. The first technique is to focus on the pleasures of the physical world. Our Lord has carefully designed our physical bodies so that they provide us with a wide variety of pleasures intended to enhance our lives. He could have created our bodies in such a fashion that, like the plant world, we only needed a little water each day to sustain life. But He chose to create us with taste buds and a sense of smell, and then He flooded our world with all types of flavors and spices and textures and smells that enable us to derive great pleasure from the daily necessity of eating. In the same way, He could have created us so that the process of reproduction involved no emotional or physical sensations whatsoever. But He chose, rather, to design us with a physical, emotional, and psychological system that allows us to experience intense pleasure in the sexual union. In fact, the human body has a tremendous potential for pleasurable experiences.

But once we were separated from God and from the ability to understand our significance through Him, we turned to the pleasures of the body to provide us with a purpose in life, a reason for getting out of bed in the morning: the exhilarating adrenaline high that comes from a conquering sexual relationship; the physical thrill that occurs in any form of intense competition; the more subtle pleasures of fine dining; the seductive, destructive blast of addicting drugs. These and an endless variety of other physical pleasures all have the potential to appeal to the same need: our longing to find a purpose for our existence apart from our Creator.

The second technique we use to affirm our worth is to compare the quantity and quality of our possessions with that of others. If what we have is more or better or newer than that of the person next to us, then we feel we have greater value.

In the United States, we have refined this technique to a high science. The media convinces our children that they can feel good about themselves if they wear the right athletic shoes or the right jeans. We can drive through any neighborhood in the nation and quickly determine who wins and who loses simply on the basis of the house a person lives in and the car that person drives. In this country it is almost impossible not to evaluate our own value and the value of others on the basis of accumulated possessions and net worth.

A third technique we use to affirm our worth is to control others or to manipulate them so that they bestow on us their affirmation and praise. We seek positions of power and recognition so that we can look at ourselves and say, See, I have value! I matter! It is good that I was born! Some of us try to affirm our value by gaining control over our marriage partner or children. We may rule them with an iron hand, or we may use more subtle techniques of manipulation, making certain no one in our little kingdom acts without our approval. Deep inside, our fear of insignificance drives us to grasp at anything that may help to affirm that we are really in control, or that we are really respected and honored. We hang plaques on our walls. We take pictures of ourselves with famous people. We collect trophies and certificates. See, world! I matter! I'm important! I have value!

In 1 John 2:16-17 John warns us of the futility of all three of these techniques for seeking identity. He says, For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. And the world is passing away, and also its lusts. None of our little games can ever fill the emptiness that the absence of our Creator has left within each one of us.

At times, when the pain becomes too intense, we may look for