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Today's Favorite Book Friday is One Way Love by Tullian Tchividjian.  It is one of the first books that helped me to see how amazing grace is and how it is not based on what I do or don't do.  For those of you who attend Hesston MB Church, I have free copies of the book available to you.  If you comment below and tell your friends on social media (Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram) about my blog, then I will get you a copy.

In preparation for preaching this Sunday as well as facilitating a Sunday School Class on One Way Love , I was listening to several songs from Les Miserables.  I had to find back tears for several of them because of the power of the songs and the truth of the message of grace and law.  I decided to share a video of one which illustrates where a focus on the Law can lead.  If you have not watched the movie or read the book, it might help you better understand this clip.

We are finishing up our series on Jesus Is ______ by Judah Smith this weekend.  I have enjoyed our discussions on who Jesus is which better equips us to worship Him.  Our next series is based on the book One Way Love by Tullian Tchividjian.  We will be focusing on how understanding God's One Way Love frees us up to serve God and others.  If you have not read the book, it is excellent for many reasons but especially the explanation of grace and law.  Pick it up at your local Christian bookstore.  As you know, I recommend Faith and Life Bookstore in Newton.

Elyse Fitzpatrick was one of my favorite speakers at Liberate 2014.  And when I went to post my notes following her talk, my iPad crashed.  Anyway, I had to listen to her message again so I could get all of the great wisdom and truth she shared. She is author of Found In Him . I highly recommend this book to you.  I will be writing a review of the book in a few weeks on the blog. Here are my notes from her message entitled, "The Fruit of One Way Love": Are you thirsty for good news? This One Way Love is free to us, but it was not free for Jesus.  What did it cost Jesus?  He had to leave heaven, he had to be born, he had to learn, he was weak, he suffered like us. He paid for it on the cross. Why?  We need a perfect representative.  We need someone like us. We need someone to fulfill the Law in our place.  Jesus came to fulfill all of the Law in our place so that as God's perfect sacrifice, the lamb of God who takes a...

Several of the videos are now available from speakers at Liberate 2014.  Today, I wanted to share some of my favorite quotes from each speaker.  You can read all my notes on blog posts from February 20-23.  The King has banged the gavel and pardoned our past, present, and future sins.  If you don't get justification, you will run from God not run to Him. (Matt Chandler) Grace isn't just a doctrine. It's 24/7. It's a pool where elephants can swim and children can play. (Steve Brown) Home is not a place to settle, but a place to set out from. (Sally Lloyd-Jones) Two preliminary points in making connection with others: you have to get to the end of law (sanctions don't work with kids, spouses, or others) & the name of the game is healing. (Paul Zahl) Three things the gospel does that religion cannot do    1. Gospel reveals to us God is more glorious than our idols (2 Corin. 3:18)    2. Gospel overwhelms us with grace (1 John 4:19) ...

Paul Tripp was last speaker for 2014 Liberate Conference. His topic was "Who Am I? One Way Love and Personal Identity" There is a plague that has infected the church of Jesus Christ. It has left us broken, discouraged, afraid.  It robs you of spiritual vitality, joy, & rest. It reduces you to timidity & doubt. We don't know we have it. It is identity amnesia. You are in a constant conversation with yourself.  You are always assigning to yourself some kind of identity and potential. Who do you think you are? Where will you look today for identity? In ministry, in relationships, in possessions, in achievements,  What does that do for how you live your everyday lives? Psalm 27-where our identity can be found. A psalm of trouble written by David during two possible times: hiding from Saul in cave or David fleeing his son, Absalom. This psalm does not begin with trouble, but with theology.  True rest is rooted in sound, scriptural ...

David Zahl was first speaker on Saturday morning. His topic was "All We Need is (One Way) Love" Website is mbird.com 3 things came across his screen as he was preparing for his message: The Onion-love is unconditional, Depressed man tries to feed himself to tiger but was rejected, & effect of loneliness on 3000 older people-twice as likely to die Why are we so lonely? The church is not immune from loneliness. It has everything to do with the Law. We are focused on self-actualization. The price we pay for ambition is loneliness. We are lonely because there is a shortage of love. There is a whole lot of law & not enough gospel. Sin isolates. It inspires hiding. We block intimacy. Hiding makes us even more lonely. How do we deal with loneliness? We distract ourselves from it and keep ourselves busy. Everyone needs to stop.  The gospel allows us to do that. Another way we deal with loneliness is to buy people's love. We make it tr...

Saturday night, Tullian Tchividjian shared about One Way Love. One of the greatest draws of Liberate is Ft. Lauderdale in February. His topic was "Inexhaustible grace for an exhausted people" What is main problem in evangelicalism? Most would answer related to cultural wars.   20 years from now his hope is people will respond "forgiveness of sins." We should be good news specialists. When it comes to the gospel, there is no "and then." Luke 4:16-21-May God use the mission statement of Jesus to blow our minds. We live our lives under a banner that reads, "it is finished." The church should be one place in all of society where people can find rest, but instead they get a to do lists. Life places many demands on us. Life is long on law and short on grace. Where does our exhaustion come from?    Often we think it comes from outside of us.  But it is not. It is from inside of us.     Robert Capon quote (further, better, more aggressive)    It is...

I am so excited to be leaving for the Liberate Conference tomorrow.  The line-up of speakers is amazing!  I look forward to soaking in the Word of God and grace over the next 3 days.  An added bonus is the conference is in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.  So, I will be taking advantage of the ocean, beaches, and warmer weather too. Check back over the next few days for notes from all of the speakers.

If you read this blog regularly, you have encountered many quotes from One Way Love by Tullian Tchividjian.  Here is one final quote and how he ends the book.  Tchividjian is quoting Robert Capon: What role have I left for religion? None. And I have left none because the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ leaves none. Christianity is not a religion; it is the announcement of the end of religion. Religion consists of all the things (believing, behaving, worshipping, sacrificing) the human race has ever thought it had to do to get right with God. . . Everything religion tried (and failed) to do has been perfectly done, once and for all, by Jesus in his death and resurrection. For Christians, therefore, the entire religion shop has been closed, boarded up, and forgotten. The church is not in the religion business. It never has been and it never will be, in spite of all the ecclesiastical turkeys through two thousand years who have acted as if religion was t...

Below is another quote from Tullian Tchividjian from One Way Love: Unfortunately, this (story about looking for keys that are in our pockets) is the way so many of us Christians live: searching high and low for something we already have, trying to earn something we've already been given, forgetting that everything we need, we already possess in Christ. Or perhaps it's not that we forget, perhaps it's that we prefer having the "elf on the shelf" keeping track of our every move. It makes us feel safer. We would rather work under duress than live under freedom. Yet this is precisely why we need to hear, each and every week, the basic good news that because Jesus' finished work, we already have all of the justification, approval, significance, security, freedom, validation, love, righteousness, and rescue for which we desperately long--and look for in a thousand things that are infinitely smaller than Jesus.

The quote below has helped me understand Scriptures related to sin and God's love.  Tchividjian in One Way Love writes, "The reason we fight sin, then, is not because our sin blocks God's love for us, but because our sin blocks our love for God and others."

We have come to believe that the law is what makes us obey.  According to Tchividjian in One Way Love , that is not how it worked for Zacchaeus or his life and even yours.  So the Law serves us by showing us how to love God and others. But we fail to this every day. And when we fail, it is the Gospel that brings comfort by reminding us that God's infinite approval of us doesn't depend on our keeping of the Law but on Christ's keeping of the Law for us. And guess what? This makes me want to obey him more, not less!

One of the illustrations that Tchividjian uses in his book, One Way Love comes from the novel, Les Miserables .  Below is a quote from that part of the book. If the Law is the first word, Grace is the last. Listen closely: The Law exposes Valjean (and us), while Grace exonerates him. The Law diagnoses, but Grace delivers. The Law accuses, Grace acquits. The Law condemns the best of us, while Grace saves the worst of us. The Law says "cursed", Grace says "blessed." The Law says "slave, Grace says "son." The Law says "guilty", Grace says "forgiven." The Law can break a hard heart, but only Grace can heal one.

Below you find another quote from One Way Love by Tchividjian.  The purpose of the Law is to point us to Jesus.  Once we realize we cannot measure up to the Law and it has crushed us, we can rest in grace of God. "But then, once we are recrushed by the Law, we need to be reminded . . .We need to be old over and over that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, that nothing can separate us from God's love, and that Christians live their lives under a banner that reads, "It is finished." "The Gospel declares that Jesus came not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it. Jesus met all of God's holy conditions so that our relationship with God could be wholly unconditional. The demand maker became a demand keeper and died for me--a demand breaker.

"The law offends us because it tells us what to do--and most of the time, we hate anyone telling us what to do. But ironically, grace offends us even more, because it tells us that there is nothing we can do, that everything has already been done. And if there is something we hate more than being told what to do, it's being told that we can't do anything, that we can't earn anything--that we are helpless, weak, and needy. However much we hate the law, we are more afraid of grace."

In One Way Love, Tchividjian quotes Paul Zahl for a definition of grace.  As you read the definition, be reminded of the grace given for you by Jesus. "Grace is love that seeks you out when you have nothing to give in return. Grace is love coming at you that has nothing to do with you. Grace is being loved when you are unlovable. . . The cliche definition of grace is "unconditional love." It is a true cliche, for it is a good description of the thing. . . Let's go a little further, though. Grace is a love that has nothing to do with you, the beloved. It has everything and only to do with the lover. Grace is irrational in the sense that it has nothing to do with weights and measures. It has nothing to do with my intrinsic qualities or so-called "gifts" (whatever they may be). It reflects a decision on the part of the giver, the one who loves, in relation to the receiver, the one who is loved, that negates any qualifications the receiver may personally ho...

I finished reading One Way Love by Tullian Tchividjian a week ago.  I have looked forward to this book and it did not disappoint.  I will be attending the Liberate Conference in February to hear from various speakers on this topic of God's One Way Love for us. Because of the many great thoughts throughout this book, I have decided to post some longer passages for reflection over the next several weeks.  Now, to the review. If you read this blog, you know that Tchividjian is quoted often.  I have been stretched and blessed by his writing and videos.  One Way Love focuses on God's one way love towards us.  Tchividjian speaks about law and grace.  He concludes, and I agree, that the church understands that grace gets us saved, but then we believe it is up to us (our willpower, strength) to keep us saved.  Throughout the book, Tchividjian explains the purpose of law and grace.  He has a great explanation of what each one accomplishes....

I began reading the introduction of One Way Love  by Tullian Tchividjian on October 10th.  There are some amazing quotes in just the few pages of the book.  Here are a few: Performancism is the mindset that equates our identity and value directly to our performance and accomplishments. . .Sadly, the Christian church has not proven to be immune to  performancism. The unintended consequence of this push (a robust, radical, and sacrificial expression of Christian faith), however, is that if we're not careful, we can give people the impression that Christianity is first and foremost about the sacrifice we make for Jesus rather than the sacrifice Jesus made for us; our performance for him rather than his performance for us; our obedience for him rather than his obedience to us. The hub of Christianity is not "do something for Jesus." The hub of Christianity is "Jesus has done everything for you." And my fear is that too many people, both inside and outside the ch...