Grace & Truth – Review of Messy Grace

 

Is your speech characterized by both grace & truth? Do you share, unashamedly the truth of God’s Word? Is your sharing so filled with the grace you have received that the hearer recognizes a difference in you?

Messy Grace: How a Pastor with Gay Parents Learned to Love Others Without Sacrificing Conviction is an insightful book that is both a personal story & an explanation of deep truth. Written by a pastor who was raised in the LGBT community, it is a radical story about how to properly love people even when we disagree with them.

The truths Caleb presents go far beyond one issue to address a lifestyle of dealing with people the way we have been dealt with by Christ. He shows how hurtful words & actions can be & gives an alternative – love.

Caleb’s journey to Christianity began when he decided he wanted to know more about Christians so he could dismantle their arguments. His only real interactions with “Christians” had been rude, loud, & abrasive. He even had “Christians” shoot water guns filled with urine on the people he marched with in a gay pride parade as a child.

To think of those experiences brings tears to my eyes. We need to change. I need to change. Whether you would ever consider doing something like that or not, you undoubtedly have some areas of your life that lack the beauty of both grace & truth. I know I do.

Throughout this book the reader is prompted to question our own motives and intentions, how our actions will be perceived, & what we can do better in the future. We are left with the profound understanding that all of us, at our core, are sinners in need of a Savior. We are humans – image bearers of God – & ought to be treated as such regardless of our particular sin issues.

I left with many questions in my own heart & a passion to embrace the awkwardness of not knowing how to handle every situation but deciding to move forward in grace & truth – what the author would call “messiness”.

Please consider reading this excellent book. I guarantee it will challenge you in some way if you genuinely look at your own heart.

 

Have any of you read this book? Other books like it?

Let me know in the comments below.

 

If you are looking for book suggestions, please also consider these other options

Hospitality in Conversion: A Review of The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert by Rosaria Butterfield

&

Helping the Hurting: A Review of Being There by Dave Furman