One of my favorite passages in the Bible is Ephesians 2:8-10.

I love it because it clearly identifies the relationship between grace and good works.

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, lest anyone should boast. 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

Verses 8 and 9 emphatically tell us that we have been delivered from sin—its penalty and power—by the grace of God by faith, or trust in the Lord Jesus. We have especially not been saved through our own works, so that we can never boast.

Verse 10 explains that when we believed in Jesus, we became God’s masterpiece—His absolutely unique creation in Christ Jesus for the purpose of accomplishing the good works He prepared in eternity past.

The last phrase is where our part comes in—that we should walk in these good works.

What a wonderful picture of the church age. Believers from every corner of the world, with tremendously different backgrounds, coming together to contribute their individual palette of good works to this magnum opus of God’s great and mighty work of grace—the bride of Christ.

Like snowflakes blanketing a mountain meadow, no two Christian’s assignment of the great and glorious landscape of the works of the church in the name of the Savior are the same.

I don’t have to compare or compete with you and your good works; you don’t have to compete with mine.

And none of these works earn or even keep our salvation by grace through faith. But all of them are in response to the grace and mercy of the One who washed us from our sins in His own blood.

Yet there’s one good work we all have in common. A good work Christ specifically assigns to every believer and commands His church to facilitate.

Baptism.

Won’t it be something, when we’re in heaven, to tell our stories of how God used us? The works He empowered us to do, the opportunities He graced us to embrace? Every story will be different, but all will intersect at the same good work: Baptism.

My memory banks are full of scenes of either baptizing or watching the baptisms of hundreds of dear friends over the years.

I’ve baptized people in a cold mountain river in the Cascades of Oregon, in a hot tub in Dallas, and in the pool and baptismal here at Church of the Open Door. I’ve watched fathers baptize daughter and mothers baptize sons. I’ve rejoiced as whole families entered the baptism waters together.

One of my favorites occurred just last Sunday at Church of the Open Door. A tattooed former addict named Lester baptized a young man he had led to Christ in northern California. And they did it all in sunglasses!

I can hear Lester telling his story in heaven someday. “Yeah, it was cool. He kept his sunglasses on as I dipped him under and back up again!”

Someone will wonder, “You baptized people with their sunglasses on?!”

Lester will laugh, “Yeah, but I’m from California.”

And everyone will nod their glorified heads.

It’s one of the most powerful motivations to be baptized in His name. It’s the one good work that every Christian is called to, a good work prepared for every Christian. Baptism is universally one of the first steps toward walking in the forever exciting and fulfilling good works our Father prepared for us.

Is it part of your story? Have you responded to the grace of God by trusting Him enough to embrace the good work of baptism? Not to receive grace, but in response to His grace. Is baptism part of your story you will be telling in heaven?

If not, maybe you should talk with the Lord about His deep desire that you would identify with Him and His people through baptism.

I promise you it will be one of the most moving parts of your following Jesus story.

A lot of good teaching about Christian marriage concentrates on the happiness of marriage. I’ve read a lot of these and recommend many in premarital and marital counseling.

The Apostle Peter, who I’m sure would agree that the biblical teachings on marriage would build a happier more fulfilling one-flesh union, gives Christians another reason to listen to what God says about it in 1 Peter 3:1-7.

This section of Peter’s letter tells devoted disciples of Christ how to relate to this alien and hurtful world. He’s primarily concerned with the spiritual impact of our lives rather than our personal happiness. “Likewise,” or “In the same way…” introduces the commands to both wives (v 1) and husbands (v 7) by referring back to Christ’s deference to authority even when it was unfair because He entrusted Himself to the Father’s will and purposes (2:21-25).

His call to selfless, Christlike behaviors challenges wife and husband to respect and honor one another for the sake of Christ’s work in one another, their family, their communities, and their world.

Wives who trust God enough to respect their husbands in Sarah-like ways, regardless of his spirituality or maturity, maximize the spiritual impact of the marriage.

Husbands who trust God enough to honor their wives as coheirs of the grace of life by relating to them in understanding and sensitive ways, maximize their prayer life.

The principle is clear: Instead of thinking about yourself, think about the spiritual impact of your marriage.

Here are a few practical ways every husband and wife reading these words can deepen the spiritual impact of his or her marriage through mutual respect and honor.

Respect is for every Christian, but especially for wives in the marriage relationship, and involves four things, according to 1 Peter 3:1-6:

• An attitude of entrusting yourself to God (2:23-25)

• Requiring respectful behavior (3:1-2)

• Involving the development of godly character (3:3-5)

• Including doing what is right (3:6)

Honor is for every Christian, but especially for husbands in the marriage relationship, and involves four things, according to 1 Peter 3:7:

• Active listening

• Thorough study of temperament, personality, and thought patterns

• Understanding of the other person rather than demanding to be understood

• Knowledge of God’s will concerning the treatment of the other person

But for every Christian, honor and submission have much more to do with trusting God than they have to do with personal gain, insights, or discipline.

For me and my Judy—my spirited, green-eyed beauty—growing in these categories of mutual respect and honor has made every difference. Not only in the happiness of our marriage, but in its impact on our children, our communities, and our world.

However, our growth has had much more to do with trusting God than memorizing verses or trying to be better. In the heat of the inevitable clashes of two egos, especially mine; we have to remind ourselves, “Respect and honor, respect and honor—these are words from my Father who delights in us. These are words He stands behind in all of His grace and mercy.

Six pots of pampered tomato plants line the east side of our patio. The joy of harvesting the rich red fruit of the vine increases exponentially this month in Southern California. But the joy follows months of careful nurturing.

I’m the nurturer and vinedresser of these six vines. Those of you who know me well can imagine what my intensity brings to the process.

I’m a mess.

The websites don’t help by offering vague advice coupled with doomsday warnings.

“Don’t overwater or your tomatoes won’t ripen. But whatever you do, don’t let them go too long without water during the hot days of August and September!”

“Fertilize your plants or they will soon stop producing fruit. But whatever you do, don’t use too much fertilizer or you’ll burn the vines!”

“Prune your tomatoes to induce fruit production. But whatever you do, don’t over-prune or you’ll traumatize the plants!”

Like I said, “I’m a mess!”

Every time I obsess and worry over my care of my vines I think about the One who cares for me.

His name is Jesus, the Son of God.

He told me plainly that His Father is the Vinedresser of my life—never under or over pruning. He assures me that His Father knows exactly how to produce maximum fruit in my life, even when the pruning may hurt a little.

His word tells me plainly that He is full of grace and truth. I think of grace as the water that satiates my thirsty soul with love and mercy. I think of truth as the fertilizer that stimulates growth through His Word and His community.

Sometimes I try to take that responsibility from the Vinedresser and His Son. You know, the responsibility of caring for me, of stimulating growth in my life, of soothing my thirsty soul.

When I do that, I’m really a mess. Because then I’m not just trying to grow some fruit to make my sandwiches better, I’m trying to grow the fruit that everyone I love desperately needs.

Are you a mess today? Could it be that your failure to trust in the Vinedresser and His Son to care for you is the reason?

Do you have a place in your home that you just don’t want to think about because it’s so full of junk that even opening the door makes you tired? Maybe it’s that garage, closet or spare room you’ve been promising yourself you’d clean up someday, but you just keep throwing the stuff you don’t know what to do with in there.

When you throw something else in there, you pause for a minute, feel a little guilt and a lot of shame, but turn off the lights and close the door.

“I’ll take care of that later,” you promise yourself.

Most of us would have to admit that there are places in our lives that are the equivalent of those dark rooms full of junk. Junk we don’t know what to do with, so we just turn out the lights and close the door.

“I’ll take care of that later!”

You may hate that room, but there is a being in the universe that absolutely loves that room.

The devil.

It’s his favorite place in your life because it’s the place he can hang out as he screams his lies into your heart:

“You’re just a piece of garbage, no wonder God doesn’t let you do something important for Him.”

“See, I told you you’d never measure up. Do you imagine Jesus really loves you anymore? If I were you, I’d just give up. Come on in here with me, we can party and it’s going to feel really good.”

“Whatever you do, don’t turn on the lights! If your Christian friends ever knew what you were really doing in here, they’d abandon you like a stray dog in a war zone.”

For a lot of men and the wives and children who love them, the dark place in their lives is sexual addiction—more specifically, pornography.

Recently God moved powerfully in our church through my friend, Kevin Butcher, at our men’s retreat. His messages exposed the source of shame and documented how grace in community can turn on the lights of mercy and hope. Some of our men, their hearts encouraged enough to trust Jesus and us with their “dark room,” disclosed their secret life.

One of our pastors, Colin McDougall, accurately captured what God has done with their courage in a recent letter, begging people to pray for us and them:

Dear prayer partners, America’s critics are in the hundreds of millions, but those who are willing to pay the price in prayer are numbered by handfuls.  Thank you for your commitment to pray with me for the revival of our nation.  And please continue to pray that some portion of this revival would begin here with us.

This month I need to be more specific and beg you to join me in prayer for our men, many of whom have been caught in the undertow of the pornographic addiction sweeping our nation.  Lust has always been a favorite trap employed by the devil, but our generation’s inventions for digitizing and transmitting images have turned an unfair fight into a rout in homes across our country.  While we keep Satan’s secret for him, we are vulnerable and exposed, in the dark and on his terms; but when we walk in the light, Jesus promises to restore our fellowship with God and with one another, to forgive our sins and to cleanse us by His blood from all unrighteousness.  The message of First John reminds us that we can’t successfully compartmentalize: there is no way to serve Christ in public while we compromise with a hidden life in private.  Hypocrisy in us does not somehow save face for Him.

At our retreat in May several courageous men from this congregation came into the light with various hidden sins, and we got to experience firsthand that Jesus keeps His promise.  We discovered that pornography, especially pornography on the internet was part of the darkness restraining our fellowship with one another and with Him.  Though the sins were secret, the effect was a cascade of destruction.  But now this band of brothers is experiencing fellowship and serving Christ like never before (even if this has cost some of our men the lost respect of a handful of people who would rather glory in appearances than in the new life).  Their testimony of grace has encouraged others to join them in the light.

Well, now you know: pornography is a problem among the men in our church.  I hope that doesn’t cause you to lose respect for us.  I hope that instead you will pray that the first steps of confession and restoration of fellowship will spread across the congregation and will blossom into that authentic holiness without which no one will see the Lord.  You can be even more specific, because we have asked a friend of our church, Dr. Mark Laaser, to meet with us on August 14 while he is on the west coast.  Dr. Laaser wrote “Healing the Wounds of Sexual Addiction” the book that we have found most beneficial for men who are serious about getting free from this sin, and his wife Debra wrote the book we are using to encourage their wives.  Pray for freedom and deliverance but also that we will be a community that doesn’t just talk about God’s grace; we want to regularly bathe in it!

Eight years ago when I first asked you to pray with me for revival that would start here, this was not what I had in mind.  But today I am praying that this deep conviction of sin would take root in our corner of LA County and spread wide.  Would you please join me?

If you’re a devoted follower of Christ, you can’t avoid it: Conflict with this pagan world we live in.

The New Testament teaches us that we’re privileged pilgrims. We don’t fit into this evil world system. We’re citizens of another Kingdom and we serve another King.

And until He comes for us or returns with us, we live as aliens and sojourners in a world set against us and our coming King.

Still, He commands us to engage with this evil world and the people He so dearly loves.

So how do we walk that tightrope, engaging in a world that hates us without embracing its godless values?

Two verses in 1 Peter answer that question:

Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.

The word translated “abstain” literally means to “hold yourself away from.” It’s not really speaking of an all or nothing dynamic, but a distancing. We’re surrounded by the values, priorities, indulgences, and wickedness of this pagan world. Our responsibility is to keep it all at arms’ distance. When you and I begin to embrace this stuff that the world says will make us happy or fulfill us, we’re holding it too close.

Rather than aggressive behaviors condemning and battling this evil world system, we need to overwhelm our enemies with good works—kindness, justice, and love—that force them to admit that God may have shown up in their lives. It’s not just the words of our mouth about Jesus that will win them over, but also our actions as His hands and feet in this hurtful world.

This gives me two clear truths to carry in my heart that will serve me well in any and every circumstance as I try to relate to this evil world in ways that honor my Savior:

Keep this world’s values and comforts of this alien world at arms length. This doesn’t mean that I live like a monk in a cave. Neither does it mean that I abstain from a dirty dozen or terrible ten list that the so-called Christian culture has decided Christians must avoid. What it means is that when I begin to pull anything this world offers close to my heart, it’s too close.

Become the hands and feet of Jesus in this hurtful world. This doesn’t mean that I don’t tell people about Jesus. Neither does it mean that I have to sell everything and move to Madagascar. What it means is that when I when I see a need I meet it or an injustice I stand against it…in the name of Jesus.

“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21).