Cheer up, you’re worse off than you think.

Steve Brown:
Hey, cheer up. You’re worse off than you think. Let’s talk about it, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
This is Key Life. We’re here to let you know that because of what Jesus has done, God will never be angry at you again. Steve invited our friend Matt Heard to do the teaching this week. Matt is a speaker, teacher, writer, pastor, coach, and the founder of a ministry called Thrive.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hey, Matt.

Matt Heard:
Well, hey, Steve.

Steve Brown:
All the way from Colorado you came to do these broadcasts and that is a tremendous gift of servanthood.

Matt Heard:
Oh, and it’s across nails and desert. It’s just, anything I could do. It’s all uphill.

Steve Brown:
And, Matt is one of my favorite people in the world. And you’re going to find out why, if you haven’t heard him teach. We’re going to sit here this week and we’re going to do something that’s kind of at the very core of what Key Life is about. Key Life was designed and designed very carefully to get you and those you love home with radical freedom, infectious joy, and surprising faithfulness. And at bottom line, this ministry, and you know this, is about amazing grace. And so this week, Matt and I are going to talk about amazed by grace, and we’re going to look at the 126th Psalm. Now, we’re going to go to other passages of Scripture as we go through this week, but that’s going to be the base passage. So, if you have a Bible and you’re where you can open it, open it to that Psalm. Psalm 126, if you’re driving, you keep your eyes on the road, you scare me to death. So, we’re going to talk about, as I said, amazed by grace. And here’s the Psalm.

When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dreamed. Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy; then it was said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.” the Lord has done great things for us; and we are filled with joy. Restore our fortunes, Lord, like streams in the Negeb! Those who sow with tears and reap with songs of joy! Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them.

You know, I almost just want to quit after reading that Psalm. That’s enough.

Matt Heard:
It is. It is.

Steve Brown:
You picked the right Psalm. And Matt, what direction are we going to go in with that Psalm?

Matt Heard:
You know, as we were talking earlier and just looking at, this is a Psalm about amazing grace, even though the word grace or amazing doesn’t appear in it, but that’s true with the entire Bible.

Steve Brown:
It really is.

Matt Heard:
And, it’s a grace book, but this Psalm, it’s a Psalm that’s, it’s hard to peg exactly for scholars to peg when it was in terms of which exile, but probably after the Babylonian exile, but bottom line, it basically covers the whole topic of what’s it look like to be amazed by grace. So often, we say the word grace, we’re not amazed. We’ll talk a little bit about that. And we actually, you and I were talking about Amazing Grace, the hymn and how so many people sing it and they sing it in an unamazed way. But before we get there, here’s the overall, let me just kind of, I know you’re good at math. So, let me do an equation and it’s just going to be, we’re going to go through this Psalm throughout the week, kind of verse by verse, but let’s try this equation. My desperation plus God’s intervention equals my amazement and my anticipation. So, that’s what we’ll talk about all week.

Steve Brown:
Those four subjects.

Matt Heard:
Those four subjects. So, for me to really engage with grace, I’ve got to own up to my desperation, but I’ve also, and we’ll talk about that today. And then tomorrow, I’ve also got to own up to God’s intervention. You’ve got to do them both or else you run into some real problems. If we own our desperation without God’s intervention, it’s just downright depressing, at best. Or we look for a bridge, at worst. if we engage with God’s intervention without framing it under desperation, it becomes some nice, irrelevant theological terms. But then, when I get both of those, I start getting amazed. And then that amazement leads me into a real sense of anticipation that God’s going to be just as gracious tomorrow as he was today. So, that’s the math. It’s the math of grace. I just thought that term

Steve Brown:
I like it.

Matt Heard:
out right there. Do you like that?

Steve Brown:
I do. So, let’s talk about desperation. Let me give you the part of the Psalm that speaks.

When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dreamed.

Matt Heard:
I, that, it’s a phrase where they’re saying, it was so bad. It was only a dream that things could be rectified, the thing could be made right, that we would get out of this, that we would, that our predicament, that we’d be rescued from it. So, it shows how a real honesty, I think, about them embracing their desperation. They said, it was so bad, we were just, we were like people who dreamed. Our only hope for this was dreaming our way out of it. And then God showed up and all of a sudden, what we’d been dreaming for came to fruition.

Steve Brown:
You know, talk about dreaming. You went through a really tough one, we’d been friends forever, and you were going through a really tough time, and you said, you know how when you have a nightmare and you wake up and you’re so glad that it was a dream, a nightmare. And you said what I’m going through right now is when I wake up It’s the nightmare. And so, you and I both have been there when there really wasn’t a lot of hope, when you dream and you say I can’t dream, that’s wishful thinking, that’s not going to happen. I am down. I’m depressed. I’m lonely. I’m hurt. I’m afraid. And I’m sinful.

Matt Heard:
And when we start owning that, and owning it in a way where we’re looking for a solution. Instead of it being a dead end, it’s actually a doorway. You know, it’s how, it’s how the, I haven’t bought a diamond in a long time. Hopefully my wife’s not going to listen to this recording, but you know how the jewelers, they’ll display diamonds. What do they do? They put that diamond on a black, dark background. And it’s because of the contrast there. And if I’m honest about my desperation, it’s a doorway to actually head down that path of dancing to the music of grace because I’m owning up to the fact that I really do need grace.

Steve Brown:
You know, Paul was there. He said when he was going through a difficult time with what he called “a thorn in the flesh”. He said that God said.

My power is made perfect in weakness.

We don’t buy that, do we?

Matt Heard:
No, no. I mean, we will say it, but we don’t want to own up to our weakness. And you know, in James.

Humble yourselves and he’ll lift you up.

Jesus

Blessed are those who weep now, for they shall laugh.

We’ve got to weep first and own up to the fact that we’re in a mess and we’ve got, it’s a matter of honestly engaging with our fallenness, with our brokenness, with our heartache, with our sin and not doing it in a polite way, but doing it in an authentic, honest way, that sets the stage to taste some grace.

Steve Brown:
You know, we live in a self righteous culture, and it’s killing us. Everywhere you turn, people are talking about how they are evil, how they are the enemies. And so, the idea of humility and really desperation about one’s own place, is something you don’t hear much today. You don’t even hear in churches much.

Matt Heard:
Yeah, well church, it sets us up. The whole religiosity thing, it almost numbs us to what we really need. Do you remember a guy named Richard Sisson, Dick Sisson? I don’t, I’ve got, I found this quote. I don’t know what the book was, but at least I’m giving them the right credit. He wrote this, he said.

Religion caters to man’s pride. Egos swell up through its liturgy and people satisfy their consciences that everything is all right in their lives, when they conform to the external standards of the church. And people even become haughty as they observe religious shortcomings and others. But grace, it does the exact opposite. Grace strips us naked of all comfortable pretexts about our commendable activities and achievements.

And then he says this, he says.

We discovered that we have nothing to brag about. We see that we’re spiritual beggars, members of a doomed race. And then we see Christ crucified and we catch a glimpse of God’s love for us in spite of our sin. And our hearts then melt in appreciation of that kind of God.

Steve Brown:
Oh man. You know, that, what we’re talking about explains sometimes the problem of suffering, the problem of besetting sin, the problem of not getting our act together, the problem of failure, all of that is so bad, but at the same time, a gift from a God who loves us very much.

Matt Heard:
You know, it’s the confession, when we confess our sins, the Greek word confess homologeo. It means to speak the same. So, when I confess, I’m not informing God and surprising him. I’m saying, God, I want to agree with you about my desperation.

Steve Brown:
Oh. Hey, so. You’re going through a bad time, and you’re hurt. That’s bad. No, that’s good. Get out of the way and watch for God. You think about that. Amen.

Matthew Porter:
Amazed by grace. What a wonderful title. What a wonderful subject, that was Steve Brown and our friend Matt Heard. And again, great news. They’ll be teaching us all this week. And I know you’ll want to be here for that. You know, we like to pretend that hidden agendas are just for self important bosses or self involved politicians, but come on, we all have them, right? These secret plans for getting from where we are to where we want to be. Not only that, we wear masks to obscure the truth even more, but there’s good news. God invites us to drop our masks and discover how his love and grace propel us into the real relationships we thought we’d never have. Steve talks about this in a special booklet called Hidden Agendas based on his book by the same name. Get your free copy of that booklet by calling us at 1-800-KEY-LIFE that’s 1-800-539-5433. You can also e-mail [email protected] to ask for that booklet, to mail your request, go to keylife.org/contact to find our mailing addresses. Again, just ask for your free copy of the booklet called Hidden Agendas. And last thing, if you value the work of Key Life, would you join us in that work through your financial support? You can charge a gift on your credit card, or include a gift in your envelope. Or give safely and securely by text. Just text Key Life to 28950. And listen, if you can’t give, we understand. But do pray for us, would you? It really does help. Key Life is a member of ECFA in the States and CCCC in Canada. And we are a listener supported production of Key Life Network.