Welcome to the Daily Disciple Podcast, where we seek daily to be with and to become like Jesus, our teacher. Welcome to the Daily Disciple Podcast, good morning, good morning, this Travis. We're going to look at John chapter 1 this morning, just a couple verses in John chapter 1. We're going to do what we do every day as daily disciples.
We're seeking to be with Jesus, to be more like Jesus, because the more we become like Jesus by the power of the Spirit, the more life, the more rest, the more freedom we experience. Jesus truly believed that his disciples would become like him. And Jesus still believes that. And that's the journey.
And it's exciting to focus in on that every single day. And today we're going to focus in on how unbelievable God's grace is, how unfathomable God's grace is, how unquenchable God's grace is. It's just grace upon grace. And that leads us into the few verses that we're going to look at this morning.
But first I just want to say that the title of this podcast is going to be a waterfall of grace, just a waterfall of God's grace and God's mercy. And that's my heart and my desire for us as daily disciples today, that we would just rest under the waterfall of God's grace. And you might think, oh, Christianity talks so much about grace, this is an easy thing to do, just rest under the waterfall of God's grace. But it's the most difficult thing to do.
There's no question, it's the most difficult thing to do because we carry so much and we try so hard and we strive and we want to clean ourselves up and it's just so many things that we're carrying. And maybe that's not a bad question just to get us into the space of this podcast. What are you carrying that God has never asked you to carry? What are you trying to achieve that God's never asked you to achieve?
What are you shouldering that God has never asked you to shoulder? And again, the title of the podcast is a waterfall of grace. And so John chapter 1 verse 16, this is so good, out of his fullness, we have all received grace on top of grace already given. And I just want to pause just to get a minute on that for a moment.
Out of his fullness, out of God's fullness, we have all received grace on top of grace already given grace on top of grace, grace, you know, grace and grace and more grace. And then the verse says, for the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth has now come through Christ Jesus, grace upon grace, just a waterfall of grace. Now, the thing is, grace is an over familiar word in Christianity, right? Most of us don't reject grace like, oh, I don't know about grace.
It's just we quietly replace grace with trying to do something. It's like we believe in Jesus, but then we fall back to trying to prove ourselves to God. And of course, we don't talk about that. We don't even maybe see it that way, but we do.
We are always trying to clean ourselves up or make ourselves better. And that's not a bad endeavor, but if we're replacing grace with proving or trying, then we're missing this fundamental rest as a result of just this waterfall of grace in the Christian journey. It's like sometimes it seems like we think that God is just watching us with some sort of a clipboard, you know, judging and never thinking that we really measure up. And of course that would tag our family of origin.
Maybe some of us grew up in a family where there wasn't a lot of grace. Maybe a lot of observation, a lot of pressure, but not a lot of grace. And so we tend to project that on to God. And part of the Christian life is to work out our view of who God actually is.
And he's a God that has brought a waterfall of grace. John says it this way. We just read this, but John says out of his fullness, he has brought grace upon grace. And that means that God's grace is not running out.
There's no measure to it. And it's inexhaustible. It's unquenchable. There's grace upon grace.
And it's not about perform and then receive some grace. It's not about fix yourself and then God's pleased. It's not about strive and then God will accept you. It's just receive.
And sometimes honestly that's the hardest thing to do because our world is so wired to achieve and then receive. And the gospel is such un-gally on. It's such good news because it's received and then be changed. It's like the law really does say try harder.
I mean, that's part of what the law is, try harder. And Jesus arrives. Remember, the law came through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Jesus says, just come on closer and get under the waterfall of God's grace.
It's so inexhaustible. And this water is like the perfect temperature. And it's just being poured out. And it's almost too good to be true.
I mean, I don't think that we really understand the gospel unless we would say that's just too good to be true. Once we say, well, that's just too good to be true. That's probably a sign that we're actually beginning to understand this idea of a waterfall of grace. And what that means when we really get this idea out of the fullness of God, He has poured grace out upon us, grace upon grace, grace came through Jesus Christ.
We can stop performing for God. We can stop thinking, well, if I have a good day spiritually, then God's pleased with me or God's happy with me or God's near me, right? We can stop performing for God. We don't have to earn His pleasure.
We can just live having it. We can just live in it. Right? And the other thing that's really powerful about this waterfall of grace as well is we can bring our actual self to God, not a clean up version, not an edited version, not kind of a put together version, but the real us in our frustration, our anger, our brokenness, our lust, our greed, whatever it might be.
It's like, well, this is just who I am. And God's like, yes, I know that. I know who you are even more than you know who you are. So just rest under the waterfall of my grace.
A great mystic saint, St. Teresa of Avila said that Jesus just wants us to sit in our weeds with Him and weeds represent brokenness and sin. And Mother Teresa, not Mother Teresa, saint Teresa of Avila said, just sit in your weeds with your Lord. And that's the last thing we want to do.
We want to hide our sin, hide our brokenness, polish ourselves and present ourselves to God. And that's just not Christianity. That's self-defeating. Grace upon grace upon grace sitting under the waterfall of God's grace just allows us to bring our actual self to God.
What a mentor told me one time, Travis, don't go to prayer, to be good. Go to prayer to be real. Not a place you go to to be good unless you want a really boring prayer life. Go to prayer to be real.
Grace upon grace upon grace allows us to bring our real self to God. And then we can lay down this constant pressure, write this low-grade anxiety that says, I don't think I'm doing enough. I'm not measuring up. I'm not enough.
I should be spiritually more mature by now, you know, because that's not God's voice. God wants us to come to Him, all who are weary and burdened, so that He can give us rest. His yoke is easy. His burden is light.
And we can't know that unless we just place ourselves under the waterfall of God's grace. Grace upon grace, grace upon grace is this inexhaustible experience of God's grace. I know. And maybe you're thinking right now, this is too good to be true.
That's the gospel. The gospel is too good to be true, although it is true, but it's too good to be true. It's you and Gellion, it's good news. And what this ultimately does is it not only allows us to rest in God's grace upon grace upon grace, it allows us to enjoy our lives.
Right? When the source of our life is God's grace or when the waterfall of God's grace is constantly just pouring into our lives, remember it's the perfect temperature, then people and things don't have to carry so much weight. Because people and things are actually how we prove ourselves to God or how we try harder. But when we experience the waterfall of God's grace, then people and things don't carry the weight of giving us the identity that we need to look good or to prove or to perform or to pose or anything like that.
And we're actually then able to enjoy people and we're able to enjoy things. And we don't abuse things. We don't abuse people because we're just enjoying them. And that is all the result of experiencing a waterfall of God's grace.
We're free to enjoy them because we don't depend upon them or use them to try to present what we feel like we need to present in order for God to be pleased. God is so pleased. And so we may want to just ask the question, where are we striving? What are we striving for instead of just receding grace upon grace?
And where are we still trying to prove something, do something, strive for something that's already been given as a gift in the unfathomable, unbelievable, unquenchable gospel of the grace of Jesus? And so God is so pleased. And I think I want to close this podcast with the line that we get in the baptism of Jesus. When Jesus is baptized, the Father's voice says, this is my child whom I love with him.
I am well pleased. And that's a waterfall of God's grace. So what I want us to hear this morning is daily disciples is exactly what Jesus heard in his baptism. You are a son or a daughter of God.
And he is so pleased with you. And every time he thinks about you, chills of joy rush up and down his spine. And he's always thinking about you. And he's always pleased with you.
We are his beloved sons, his beloved daughters, in whom he is very, very well pleased. So this morning, let's just rest and experience the waterfall of God's grace, grace upon grace, upon grace. And we will talk soon. Thanks for listening to the Daily Disciple podcast.
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