Archives by: Gary Hoag

“The world can do almost anything as well as or better than the church,” says Gordon MacDonald. “You need not be a Christian to build houses, feed the hungry, or heal the sick. There is only one thing the world cannot do. It cannot offer grace.” MacDonald has put his finger on the church’s single most important contribution…

Grace comes free of charge to people who do not deserve it and I am one of those people. I think back to who I was—resentful, wound tight with anger, a single hardened link in a long chain of ungrace learned from family and church. Now I am trying in my own small way to pipe the tune of grace.

I do so because I know, more surely than I know anything, that any pang of healing or forgiveness or goodness I have ever felt comes solely from the grace of God. I yearn for the church to become a nourishing culture of that grace.”

Gordon MacDonald as cited by Philip Yancey in What’s So Amazing About Grace (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997) 15, 42.

I spent this weekend teaching and preaching at Trinity EFC in Skowhegan, Maine, where the Skowhegan Miracle Homeless Shelter was founded by Pastor Richard Berry by faith and a fervency to live out the gospel and extend God’s love to the homeless and hurting.

Few churches dispense grace like this church of 60 members (that is not a typo) where they are on pace to see 300 people come to faith in 2013 alone in this “Shelter by Jesus” (that is not a typo either). I feel like I have been living in the world of Acts with them this weekend.

“The measure of a life, after all, is not its duration but its donation.”

Corrie Ten Boom as cited by Warren Wiersbe in Be Satisfied (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 1990) 156.

Today, join me in honoring David A. Hoag, Ph.D., also known as my older brother. He’s “50” today! I celebrate his generous life which is a huge “donation”, a priceless gift, to me and so many others and which brings glory to Jesus. Happy birthday, David! I love you.

“God has given us two hands—one to receive with and the other to give with. We are not cisterns made for hoarding; we are channels made for sharing.”

Billy Graham as recounted in 365 Daily answers to What would Jesus Do? ed. Nick Harrison (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), June 5 reading.

“The greatest issue facing the world today, with all its heartbreaking needs, is whether those who, by profession or culture, are identified as “Christians” will become disciples—students, apprentices, practitioners—of Jesus Christ, steadily learning from him how to live the life of the Kingdom of the Heavens into every corner of human existence. Will they break out of the churches to be his Church—to be, without human force or violence, his mighty force for good on earth, drawing the churches after them toward the eternal purposes of God? And, on its own scale, there is no greater issue facing the individual human being, Christian or not.”

Dallas Willard (1935-2013) in The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus’ Enssential Teachings on Discipleship (New York: HarperCollins, 2006) xv.

“Because we lack a divine Center our need for security has led us to an insane attachment to things. We really must understand that the lust for affluence in contemporary society is psychotic. It is psychotic because it has completely lost touch with reality. We crave things we neither need nor enjoy…

Where planned obsolescence leaves off, psychological obsolescence takes over. We are made to feel ashamed to wear clothes or drive cars until they are worn out. The mass media have convinced us that to be out of step with fashion is to be out of step with reality. It is time to awaken to the fact that conformity to a sick society is to be sick.

Until we see how unbalanced our culture has become at this point, we will not be able to deal with the mammon spirit without ourselves nor will we desire Christian simplicity…The modern hero is the poor boy who purposefully becomes rich rather than the rich boy who voluntarily becomes poor. (We still find it hard to imagine that a girl could do either!) Covetousness we call ambition. Hoarding we call prudence. Greed we call industry…

Courageously, we need to articulate new, more human ways to live. We should take exception to the modern psychosis that defines people by how much they can produce or what they can earn. We should experiment with bold new alternatives to the present death-giving system. The spiritual discipline of simplicity is not a lost dream, but a recurrent vision throughout history. It can be recaptured today. It must be.”

Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline (New York: HarperCollins, 1988) 80-81.

“Lord, when I feel that what I’m doing is insignificant and unimportant, help me to remember that everything I do is significant and important in your eyes, because you love me and you put me here, and no one else can do what I am doing in exactly the way I do it.”

Brennan Manning, Souvenirs of Solitude: Finding Rest in Abba’s Embrace (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2009) 73.

“Time, a gift from God, is under no one’s control. It is the medium in which lives unfold and in which salvation works itself out.

This constant miracle that God maintains the existence of the world, which is to say the miracle of time, is the opportunity for work and love, the medium in which lives ebb and flow, nurtured by food that is planted, ripened, and harvested on farms; sustained by goods made painstakingly in workshops through techniques passed down and improved through generations; warmed and ennobled by familial love; and sanctified by hours of silent contemplation.

Within that unfolding of time, money can play a role as a means of exchange, facilitating transfer of goods across complex systems. But equating time and money requires a level of abstraction…not only fallacious but also malignant.

Time cannot be transferred, stored, amassed, or controlled. Time is sheer gift, given to each and all. It flows without regard to property rights, and money cannot exchange for it. The lives that stretch out within time are made of earth and bodies, food and work and prayer. None of these is the same as money.”

Kelly S. Johnson, The Fear of Beggars: Stewardship and Poverty in Christian Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007) 188.

“Your love, insofar as it is from God, is permanent. You can claim the permanence of your love as a gift from God. And you can give that permanent love to others. When others stop loving you, you do not have to stop loving them. On a human level, changes might be necessary, but on the level of the divine, you can remain faithful to your love.

One day you will be free to give gratuitous love, a love that does not ask for anything in return. One day also you will be free to receive gratuitous love. Often love is offered to you, but you do not recognize it. You discard it because you are fixed on receiving it from the same person to whom you gave it.

The great paradox of love is that precisely when you have claimed yourself as God’s beloved child, have set boundaries to your love, and thus contained your needs, you begin to grow into the freedom to give gratuitously.”

Henri J. M. Nouwen (1932-1996) in The Inner Voice of Love (New York: Doubleday, 1996) 11.

“Christ walked with men on earth that He might show them what God is like and make known the true nature of God to a race that had wrong ideas about Him. This was only one of the things He did while here in the flesh, but this He did with beautiful perfection. From Him we learn how God acts toward people. The hypocritical, the basically insincere, will find Him cold and aloof, as they once found Jesus; but the penitent will find Him merciful; the self-condemned will find Him generous and kind. To the frightened He is friendly, to the poor in spirit He is forgiving, to the ignorant, considerate; to the weak, gentle; to the stranger, hospitable.

By our own attitudes we may determine our reception by Him. Though the kindness of God is an infinite, overflowing fountain of cordiality, God will not force His attention upon us. If we would be welcomed as the Prodigal was, we must come as the Prodigal came; and when we so come, even though the Pharisees and the legalists sulk without, there will be a feast of welcome within, and music and dancing as the Father takes His child again to His heart. The greatness of God rouses fear within us, but His goodness encourages us not to be afraid of Him. To fear and not be afraid – that is the paradox of faith.”

A.W. Tozer (1897-1963) excerpt from chapter 16 on “The Goodness of God” from his classic work, The Knowledge of the Holy.

For further study on goodness or “generosity” as the fruit of God’s work in us, see: Galatians 5:22; Ephesians 5:9; Romans 15:14; 2 Thessalonians 1:11; and in the Early Fathers, Epistle of Barnabas 2:9.

“None know how to prize the Saviour, but such as are zealous in pious works for others.”

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. Titus 2:11-14

Selina Hastings, a.k.a. Countess of Huntingdon (1707-1791) in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers ed. Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert (New York: Ketcham, 1895) 399.

“She devoted herself, her means, her time, her thoughts to the cause of Christ. She did not spend her money on herself; she did not allow the homage paid to her rank to remain with herself.” John Henry Newman on Lady Huntingdon

For more on this generous woman who was a key player in the Great Awakening, check out this video about her produced by Generous Giving.