Printed in the United States of America

Transcription

1 Visit Tyndale s exciting Web site at Copyright 2004 by Julie Ann Barnhill. All rights reserved. Published in association with the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard Street, Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO Edited by Ramona Cramer Tucker Designed by Jenny Swanson The excerpt appearing on pages is taken from What s So Amazing About Grace? hardcover (pp ) by Philip D. Yancey. Copyright 1997 by Philip D. Yancey. Used by permission of Zondervan. Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from THE MESSAGE. Copyright 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible, 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Barnhill, Julie Ann, date. Scandalous grace / Julie Ann Barnhill. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN (pbk.) 1. Christian women Religious life. 2. Grace (Theology) I. Title. BV4527.B dc Printed in the United States of America

2 CONTENTS Acknowledgments xi 1. You Go, Gurrlfriend! 1 2. I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar! 5 3. Grace in the Real World Stomach Girl Tales from the Crypt Magic Pants Embrace Your Cellulite! The Incredible Shrinking Woman The Other Woman Scorched Places Got Guilt? Lily Pads Scandalous Thinking Let It Go! Living with Loose Ends 151 Grace Perspectives 159 Grandma Bonnie s To-Die-For Angel Food Cake 165 About the Author 167 Endnotes 171

3 You Go, Gurrlfriend! 1 YOU GO, GURRLFRIEND! Well, here we are. Just you and me. Woman to woman. Chick to chick. Hormonally challenged to hormonally challenged! I ve been waiting to talk with you for months. Years even. We re more alike than you may realize. You don t believe me? Well, let me offer up the Gurrlfriend Hanky-Wave Test and see how you score. The first thing you have to do is grab a hanky. Now, I realize that if you did not grow up watching your father blow his nose into a neatly ironed white handkerchief and then stuff it back into his neatly pressed dress slacks, you may be unfamiliar with the term hanky. If so, consider yourself blessed... and be sure to write the manufacturers of Kleenex a note of thanks after reading this book. But I digress. Just grab a hanky or something akin to it. A Kleenex, paper towel, or even your bra will do. Simply grab something and get ready to test your girlfriend knowledge. Okay, now you have to assume the hanky-wave position. Do not fear! This demands nothing of you physically. You just gotta give me a little at-ti-tude. And I know you ve got plenty of that. See if you can find something to weight the

4 2 J ULIE A NN B ARNHILL pages of this book down. I d really like you to stand for a moment.... Good. Now bend your right knee just a little. Keep the left leg a bit straighter. Put your wavin hand in the air with your hanky of choice and the other hand on your hip. Now give me a little hip action, girlfriend, and wave that hanky a bit. And as you re doing this you ll want to add a little That s right action to your neck and head. Attitude. It s all in the attitude. If you can t seem to get the hips, hands, arms, and head going, just visualize the stance you might take if, after instructing your two-year-old son to stop some annoying habit in the center aisle of a jam-packed Target store, he bellows, No, you silly old pooh-pooh head! That s what I thought. Now you ve got the body language down pat. It doesn t matter if you ve borne a child or not. Every woman instinctively assumes the Gurrlfriend at-ti-tude position when threatened by a two-foot terror. All right, you are ready to go. I m going to throw out a few statements and observations. If you can relate to them in any way whatsoever, give me a hanky wave. If you have ever enjoyed a bowl of ice cream that was so good you just had to lick the bowl give me a hanky wave. (In the Midwest it s Edy s Grand Cookie Dough. Enough said.) If you grew up in a time when there was never any reason to question Bert and Ernie s living arrangements give me a wholesome hanky wave.

5 You Go, Gurrlfriend! 3 If you ve walked into your parents house and it just felt good wave that hanky. If you believe all forms of control-top panty hose should be banned give me a hanky wave. See, here s the deal. Women who need control tops do not benefit in any way from the control. All these tortuous items manage to do is push your extra flesh up and over the waistband of said hosiery, thereby creating the ever envious and ever attractive inner tube of truth around the circumference of your waist. Just say NO to control tops. If you have ever asked someone, When s your baby due? and she was not pregnant wave that hanky. If you have ever been asked, When s your baby due? and you were not pregnant wave your hanky. (I don t know which one is more painful! Here s some free advice: Assume everyone is carrying a little extra weight and NEVER ask this question.) If you lie down at night and have a million thoughts wave the hanky. If you have ever kissed a man so passionately that you never wanted it to end well, give it up, girlfriend, and proudly wave that hanky. If you long to be a woman of integrity, a woman of spiritual substance... so much that you re going to memorize the Bible from Genesis to Maps, including knowing where the Old Testament book of Habakkuk is located in fact, you ll gain so much knowledge that Kay Arthur is going to call YOU for teaching advice! well, wave that hanky.

6 4 J ULIE A NN B ARNHILL If you have ever fallen asleep while praying zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. If this is YOU, then you, like me, need a lavish dose of God s scandalous grace. And that s exactly what this book is about. You see, he wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son, 2 because he knew of our need for it long before we ever did. I believe passionately this divine grace is for those who aren t perfect (I m waving my hanky) and for those who may feel they are a grave disappointment to God and others because of their weight, lack of talent, mental acuity, sexual mishaps, and stubbornness (I waved my hanky more than a time or two on that one). This book is written by a woman just like you. And, more than anything, I hope somewhere between this first chapter and the endnotes you come to regard me as a friend. Your friend, who wants nothing more than to talk with you about what scandalous grace is and why you and I so desperately need it. It s all about wrapping our minds around the preposterous nature of God s grace, embracing it for ourselves, and then extending it to those around us. Scandalously His, Julie Ann Barnhill

7 Grace Perspectives GRACE PERSPECTIVES These quotes have acted as stepping-stones on my own journey toward understanding scandalous grace. Perhaps they ll do the same for you. Grace is uncontrollable, arbitrary to our senses, apparently unmerited. It s utterly free, ferociously strong, about as mysterious a thing as you could imagine. First rule of grace: grace rules. Brian Doyle, quoted in The Best Spiritual Writing 2001, edited by Philip Zaleski 38 Grace overcomes shame, not by uncovering an overlooked cache of excellence in ourselves but simply by accepting us, the whole of us, with no regard to our beauty or our ugliness, our virtue or our vices. We are accepted wholesale. Accepted with no possibility of being rejected. Accepted once and accepted forever. Accepted at the ultimate depth of our being. Lewis B. Smedes in Shame and Grace

8 160 J ULIE A NN B ARNHILL Now I m turning you over to God, our marvelous God whose gracious Word can make you into what he wants you to be and give you everything you could possibly need in this community of holy friends. Acts 20:32 Grace can never be possessed but can only be received afresh again and again. Rudolf Bultmann God gives his gifts where he finds the vessel empty enough to receive them. C. S. Lewis, quoted in God Hunger by John Kirvan In becoming grace, you start from a place of emptiness. When you empty of expectations, you open to the wonders that happen in moments and nanoseconds of revelation. With God s grace active in you, nothing can go wrong. Every thought, word, and action, when joined with grace, will be formless and serve goodness. Shoni Labowitz in Miraculous Living For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. Romans 3:23-24, NASB You are seeking for secret ways of belonging to God, but there is only one: making use of whatever God offers you. Jean-Pierre de Caussade, quoted in Praying Dangerously by Regina Sara Ryan

9 Endnotes ENDNOTES 1 Frederick Buechner, Now and Then (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991). 2 Ephesians 1:7-8, Eugene H. Peterson, The Message (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2002), Corinthians 12:9, ibid., Colossians 2:7, ibid., Romans 5:20, ibid., Philip Yancey, What s So Amazing About Grace? (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1997), Used by permission. 7 2 Corinthians 9:9, Peterson, The Message, Romans 6:14, ibid., Timothy 2:1, New American Standard Bible (LaHabra, Calif.: The Lockman Foundation, 1977), Beth Moore, Breaking Free: Making Liberty in Christ a Reality in Life (Nashville, Tenn.: Lifeway Church Resources, 1999). 11 Julie Ann Barnhill, Til Debt Do Us Part (Eugene, Oreg.: Harvest House Publishers, 2002), Psalm 139:13-16, Peterson, The Message, Ephesians 1:4-5, ibid., Isaiah 58:11, ibid., Isaiah 58:12, ibid., Shea Gregory, Confessions of a Sex Starved Single: What Should I Do with Raging Hormones? Today s Christian Woman, (January/February 2000). As cited on-line at: Ephesians 2:2-5, Peterson, The Message, Romans 7:15, ibid., Timothy 2:13, ibid., Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies (New York: Pantheon Books, 1999), Colossians 3:13-14, Peterson, The Message, 2148.