When you sing “Amazing Grace,” are you really amazed?

Steve Brown:
When you sing “Amazing Grace,” are you really amazed? 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. Matt Heard is a speaker, teacher, writer, pastor, coach, and the founder and principal of a ministry called Thrive. He’s been teaching us all this week.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. And hey, Matt. Matt Heard is here with me in the studio. We’ve been talking about Amazed by Grace. I love that hymn. Every time, and if you say I said this, I’ll say you lied because we both know real men don’t cry. But when I sing that hymn, it sometimes goes so deep that I just think, Oh my, that’s something else. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today. Let me read the verse and you can recap where we’ve been. By the way, tell us your website again.

Matt Heard:
Well, Hi Steve. See, I didn’t say that part.

Steve Brown:
Listen, I’m in charge of this. Do what I say and tell them their website.

Matt Heard:
It’s ThriveFullyAlive.com

Steve Brown:
ThriveFullyAlive.com check that out, you’ll be glad you did. And we’ve been looking at the 126th Psalm.

The Lord has

and we’re at the third verse

The Lord has done great things for us; and we are filled with joy.

Why don’t you recap the way we’ve gone and then let’s jump into this subject.

Matt Heard:
So, the grace math that we’ve been looking at, or the math of grace.

Steve Brown:
That’s a great statement, by the way. Grace math.

Matt Heard:
Ingredient number one, is my desperation added to God’s intervention. So, I own my desperation, but I also embrace God’s intervention. Then that leads to amazement. So, it’s intervention, it’s desperation plus intervention equals amazement. But I’ve got to do both. If I’m honest about my desperation without looking at God’s intervention, it’s just awful. I mean, that’s why very few people get honest about their desperation and their difficulty or their sin or the immensity because they don’t know where to go with it, but

Steve Brown:
They say to themselves, I’m not going there. No, listen, I want to be able to sleep at night.

Matt Heard:
But, you know, a lot of us church folks, we’ll talk about intervention in a vacuum, not in the context of our desperation, not being authentic about how much we need it. Anselm one of the early church fathers wrote that book Cur Deus Homo, What is Man? And in it, he said.

We have yet to see how terrible a thing our sin is.

And it’s not, that’s not one of these beat us over the brow statements. He’s simply wanting us to own up to the reality of who we are without God. It’s that confess that we’ve already looked at this week. The word just means Homologeo, it means to speak the same. So, when I confess my sin, God’s not saying, you’re kidding, you did that? He already knows. So, why confess our sins? It’s an exercise that God in his grace gives us to be honest about our desperation, to agree, speak the same, agree with him. And then the table can be set for the intervention of the gospel. And when I put both of those together, that’s when

Steve Brown:
Amazement

Matt Heard:
And the song really starts. Not out of politeness, but out of authenticity. Not just nice, but necessary.

Steve Brown:
You know, I’ve been doing this a long time. I’m an old guy. And you would think this would get boring, but it doesn’t. I am constantly amazed that Jesus likes me as much as He does. I am constantly amazed that I’ve been acceptable to Him the way I am. I’m constantly amazed that every sin I’ve ever committed or ever will commit has been covered by the cross. I’m constantly amazed with Heaven. And that’s because God in His grace made me own the reality of the darkness.

Matt Heard:
I love that, Steve. That’s a great, great statement. And we could close the program right now, but then there would be a lot of silence. But no, that is, I mean, that is beautiful and it’s true. So, it’s kind of the litany of what the Psalmist is saying, you know, in verse one, they’re owning up to their desperation saying, we were like men who dreamed, men and women who dreamed, it was that desperate. It was only a dream that we could get out of it. Then God shows up and intervenes in verse two. So, this verse for today, they’re saying.

The Lord has done great things for us and we’re filled with joy.

They’re not just saying that religiously. They’re saying that authentically and saying, God, he has shown up in the midst of this. I mean, too many of us know the doctrine of grace, but we don’t know the dance.

Steve Brown:
Oh, that’s so true. Or we know the words, we don’t know the melody. That’s what Mark Twain said to his wife when she started cussing and he started laughing. She was angry at him and she said, what are you laughing about? And he said, honey, You know the words, but you don’t know the melody. And that’s what we are. You know, it sounds like you and I hate the church. We don’t. We love the church deeply and profoundly. The church ought to be the most refreshing, free, authentic place to dance and sing that there is on the face of the earth. Because of the amazement of grace.

Matt Heard:
Mm-Hmm. Which is the power of that word pretend, you know, not just pretending, I think we talked about early in the week, not just pretending we appreciate grace, really going there. I don’t think I’ve grown enough to never pretend, but I do know what the cause is. If I’m only pretending to appreciate God’s grace in a given moment, it’s because I’m only pretending to believe I’m a sinner.

Steve Brown:
That’s true.

Matt Heard:
And I really need him.

Steve Brown:
Oh man, that’s hard stuff for some people. Why is it so hard? I’ve found, I was talking about doing this a long time. I’ve found that confession is not a difficult thing for me anymore, that repentance, agreeing with God, is not as hard as I thought it would be, that running to Him when I’m broken and have to limp to get there is not as long a journey as I thought it would be. In fact, I live in that place because I’ve been so amazed by God’s grace.

Matt Heard:
Yeah. Yeah. Yesterday, right at the end of our program, I brought up, General Lowenhelm, you know, from Babette’s Feast. We did a program, a week’s program on that, long ago. So, I looked it up, here’s the context. It fits right in to what, where this discussion is going. You know, he’s the one, there’s about a dozen of these austere religious people around that have had this banquet that’s a demonstration of God’s grace, but they didn’t get it. They agreed beforehand, we’re not going to enjoy this, but this general, this center in quotes, and that’s who gravitated to Jesus. He’s the one who got it. So, I looked up his speech. Here it is, he says.

Man, my friends is frail and foolish. We have all of us been told that grace is to be found in the universe, but in our human foolishness and short sightedness, we imagine divine grace to be finite, and for this reason we tremble. But the moment comes when our eyes are open and we see and realize that grace is infinite. Grace, my friends, demands nothing from us but that we shall await it with confidence and acknowledge it in gratitude. Grace, brothers and sisters, makes no conditions. And singles out none of us in particular. Grace takes us all to its bosom and proclaims general amnesty.

Steve Brown:
Oh man, that is so profound that I can’t stand it.

Matt Heard:
And he’s the irreligious guy. And he got it. And those are the people that flock to Jesus.

Steve Brown:
They did.

Matt Heard:
Because they didn’t have a problem owning up to how much they needed grace.

Steve Brown:
And that’s what Jesus was accused of being, and they were saying you can’t be a prophet, you can’t be of God, because you’re a friend of sinners and drunks. And Jesus said, of course, in Aramaic, but he said, duh.

Matt Heard:
Remember, years ago, long ago, that couple in Boston, they were going to have a wedding reception at the Hyatt Regency. And that was something, back then is I think $15,000 something like that. And they had to put half down. Well, then he walked out a week before, two weeks before he called the wedding, he chickened out and it was nonrefundable. And so, the bride decided, you know what, okay, I can’t get the money back. So, she spent all of her savings to pay the other half and she put on a dinner for the homeless in that area.

Steve Brown:
Oh really?

Matt Heard:
And she changed the menu a little.

Steve Brown:
That’s a Babette thing.

Matt Heard:
Yeah. Yeah. She changed the menu a little. She went with boneless chicken. I remember that’s what the article said. But instead of a bunch of people coming to a reception and yeah, enjoying it, but okay, this is just one of 14 weddings I’ve got this year, whatever. There were these men and women that hadn’t had a good meal in such a long time, had not danced to live music maybe ever. And they ate and drank and danced the night away. And it’s that, it was that feast of people who really appreciated it. You talk about people who partied. They did. And that should be us in church.

Steve Brown:
So true. You know, I have a friend who says that the people in the church look out the window and it’s smudged, wishing we could join them when it should be the other way around. That the world ought to have a smudge on the outside of the church for looking in and wishing they could be there and dance too. It’s called the amazing grace that is at the center of who we are. You think about that. Amen.

Matthew Porter:
Thank you Steve and Matt, that was Steve Brown and Matt Heard continuing to teach us about being amazed by grace. Still one more day to go in this fantastic series, so please do join us again tomorrow. And Hey, if this week of teaching has you curious about Matt Heard. Why not swing by our website keylife.org on the left hand menu, click Authors. That’ll take you to a page where you can learn all about our Key Life voices like Matt Heard, Pete Alwinson, Jerry Parries, and Justin Holcomb, and our contributing writers including Kendra Fletcher, Chad West, and even yours truly. Seriously, they let anybody in. And not only bio information, you’ll also be instantly linked to an array of articles from each of these creators. It’s just one more super cool, super easy way to find what you’re looking for at keylife.org and of course, all of our website content is still free thanks to the generous support of listeners just like you. If you’d like to donate, just call 1-800-KEY-LIFE that’s 1-800-539-5433. If you’d like to send your donation by mail, go to keylife.org/contact to find our mailing addresses for the U.S. and Canada. Or e-mail [email protected] You can charge a gift on your credit card. You can include a gift in your envelope. And of course, now you can gift safely and securely just by texting Key Life to 28950 that’s Key Life, one word, two words. It doesn’t matter. Just text that to 28950 then follow the instructions. 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.