Words Matter
Words matter. An observation that is not new or groundbreaking, but can be heartbreaking. By that I am referring to the conversation of life as it exists today in the public forum. Abortion is front and center as it usually is in an election season and if you pay attention to words you can clearly see where people stand. Those on the side of life will speak of the baby in the womb, the child, the person in the womb, while those who are on the side of abortion will speak of viability, number of weeks, the mother, the doctor, to name a few. But the saddest and most heartbreaking word they use is when a baby is born alive because the abortion didn't work. The baby in some states will be allowed as they want to put it, expire! Expire? Your warranty expires, a baby DIES!!!! It is in the words that you see the presupposition of the person and I pray that we at a minimum use words
that are correct and true. A baby in the womb is a person, and to kill that baby is murder of a person but not just a person, a defenseless person. Aren't those the ones that Jesus told us to care for?
#amazinggrace
Tom Crouse
God Loves Me “even though”
Someone recently used the term ”even though” in a conversation with me, and it occurred to me that is a great description of how God loves us in Christ. Because of Jesus God loves us “even though” we are sinners. But that is too general let’s be honest and tell the truth about ourselves. God loves me even though I failed people. God loves me even though I walked away from Him. God loves me even though I hurt people I love and care about in my life.
Let’s switch it up, even though I fell He loves me. Even though I got to the place of wanting to take my own life He loves me. Even though I am proud arrogant and have broken all of the law as Jesus preached on the Sermon on the Mount, I am loved by my Father. And with all of the “even thoughs” in my life He has never left me never loved me any less and has always been sitting right there with me.
To know this kind of love is mind blowing and very humbling. To be able to show that to others is a tremendous gift. I pray today that you remember your Father loves you with all He is in spite of the “even thoughs” of your life. And I am not minimizing the pain and suffering those even thoughs cause people and the scars you may be walking with. But I am saying my fellow broken traveler in Christ, you are so loved and delighted in by your Father, regardless of the “even thoughs”. So rest and enjoy His “even though” love and grace for you today. I love you all!
#amazinggrace
Tom Crouse
When God Hits Pause
Have you considered the pauses of God? Where He takes time to accomplish all that He intends to accomplish? We see in Scripture Moses away for 40 years before God comes and calls him to lead His people to the promised land which is another 40 years. You see Anna and Simeon with a promise they would see the Messiah before they died and they spent their whole lives waiting in the Temple. Then when they were on the cusp of eternity here comes a young Jewish girl named Mary with an infant boy named Jesus. There are so many accounts in Gods word between His promise and the fulfillment.
It’s one thing for it to be a Biblical account, but it is quite another when it’s our story. If you are like me you don’t so much appreciate the pauses. I am wired to want it now and to make that request known to the Lord. But I have learned there is so much beauty and grace in the pause of God. So much to go through to learn to be made ready for the blessing. It’s why I am so passionate to share my story, of being in the dark facing the enemy it felt face to face. Wanting to end it all and getting to a very scary place but then Jesus who was there all the time pulled me out, more like carried me out. And the years of the battle with the enemy of our souls was a pause. A God allowed pause to get me ready for the fulfillments of promises I was not even aware He had made for me.
And so I share this to encourage you who are in a pause between the promise and fulfillment. He is there He is for you and there is tremendous blessing coming, the greatest of which is seeing and knowing Him better. I live today with such joy and love and excitement it is amazing. One day I will share more of those details as well.
Finally my fellow recovering broken sinners we all are in the ultimate pause. The glorious in between of Jesus first and second coming. We are waiting that day come Lord Jesus! I love you all rest and enjoy the grace he has for you even if you are in a pause!
#amazinggrace
Shalom❤️❤️❤️
Tom Crouse
Was it a Good Friday?
This is the week the world celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ. During this time there is what is known as Good Friday. I have never understood that day being given that name. Our Lord and Savior went through the Hell of crucifixion, but that was not the worst of it. As hard as it is to believe, there was something worse than having nails driven through your flesh and bones, followed by a slow painful death of ultimately- suffocation. What could be worse than that? For Jesus the scandal of the cross was not the pain and shame of hanging there naked bleeding and dying. The scandal, the worst part was that moment when Jesus cried out, ‘ my God my God why have you forsaken me?’ In that moment for the first and only time in all of eternity, Jesus became sin and was separated from the Father. This was not a Good Friday.
On the other hand it was a very good Sunday as Jesus rose from the dead proving He was who He said He was, God in flesh. His resurrection is the ‘good’ in this week. His resurrection guarantees us that we are following the right one. He is I Am! So this week let’s remember on Friday the brutality and pain He went through for us, but most of all let’s remember that greater pain He suffered. And let us celebrate the grave not being able to hold Him, He took the sting out of death for us and soon and very soon we are going to see the King!
Much Grace
Tom Crouse
His Way is Best!
Gods ways are not our ways is what we are told in Scripture, as far as the heavens are higher than the earth so His ways are higher than ours Isaiah writes. In other words we should not try to figure out God. So what do we do? Spend most of our lives trying to figure out God, hence the term sheep for us from Jesus lol.
What we can do is understand the purpose of His ways and rest in that. What the Lord does is always always always for His glory and the joy of His people. But the truth is we don’t always see it. It’s our nature to doubt God which is why we are easily tempted by the enemy to doubt. If what God is doing is mind blowing amazing and beyond what we could ever imagine or hope as Paul writes we think well this is too good to be true. What’s the catch when will the shoe drop? And when God works through what seems to be awful, well it can’t be God as it is too painful.
To that point the best example is the cross. If we were there watching this amazing kind gentle powerful teacher and healer being murdered you would think this is the worst day in the world. Not a “Good Friday”. Tragic brutal sad awful would be the description. As people mocked Him, telling Him to rescue himself, it would have been heartbreaking and a cause for serious doubt. Yet we know that it was actually the best day. As what was happening that no one watching could have imagined was Jesus became sin and cancelled the debt for all that were His, past present and future.
No matter what God does, regardless of how unlikely, how awesome or painful, it brings the same result. Glory for God and joy for His people. I don’t know where you are today, mountain top, valley or somewhere in between. I do know that we are told in Romans that all things will work for good for those that are Christ’s. In other words it ends up in joy for us. We are way better off not trying to diagnose and figure out God and His ways, and simply resting in the promise that this will ultimately bring joy.
Your Father is for you, loves you delights in you. He is not some grumpy old man in the sky looking to throw a lightning bolt at you. He is ordering your days and nights and life so that you would know Him better and have a greater joy in Him. As there is nothing as powerful than a child of God living out their joy in the Father. So rest and enjoy Him today as He is bringing every circumstance in your life to the same place; His glory, your joy!
#amazinggrace
Tom Crouse
It is Better to Receive than Give!
A stunning truth about our Father that is more and more apparent to me these days is His love of giving gifts to His children. All of His gifts are amazing because He is God, but maybe the most incredible reality is that He doesn’t want or expect anything back! And he doesn’t want our response to His gifts to be some sort of payback. Contrary to what you might have heard in church and to what I might have preached in past sermons, it is not; “He has done so much for me I must give my life for Him.” That is a faulty premise, that we are in a transactional relationship with the Father. He does for us we do for Him, and eventually after a white knuckled semi miserable, fairly joyless life we get to go to Heaven. Does that sound like good news or an attractive message to a lost and dying world? Of course not, but sadly it is the case for many who claim Christ as their own.
What God wants us to do with His gifts, and they are many, and some are uniquely special to us, the response that delights the Father is that we not look to repay Him but rather enjoy the gifts! The radical truth is our desire to repay, as moral and righteous as it may look (see the Pharisees), stems from a wrong belief that there is something we must contribute to this relationship other than our sin, which we have wanted since the Garden.
The good news, no the great life giving joyful news is all the Father desires for us is to enjoy the gifts He has given us. He watches us always with the smile of a happy Father delighting in watching His children open and play with their gifts on Christmas morning. It may be better to give than receive when it comes to our relationship with others but when it comes to our Father all we do is receive and receive and receive, praise God
So my fellow broken travelers, enjoy and rest in the amazing gifts your Father has and will continue to delight to give to you!
#amazinggrace
Tom Crouse
The Scandal of Forgiveness
I love Jesus so much these days and spend much more time thinking about Him. Watching Him through the lens of the gospels one thing is very clear, He was scandalous. To the religious culture of the day He was as radical as anyone could ever be. And what I love so much is the intentionality of His words and deeds to drive the religious crazy. Healing on the sabbath to poke at the Pharisees time and time again. Hanging out with the exact people the religious looked down upon. Going out of His way to find samaritans to speak with, lepers to hug and heal, both groups lumped in the same category by the religious. But maybe the most scandalous thing He ever did and certainly contributed to His ending up on the cross was the statement that we are to forgive people seventy times seven!
The context is Matthew 18 and Peter asks Jesus how many times must I forgive one who sins against me? Peter offers up the equation of as many as seven, and Jesus tells him not as many as seven but seventy times seven. Now is Jesus saying that on the four hundred and ninety first time there is no need to forgive? Of course not. Jesus is using that number to say there is no limit to forgiveness! We are to always seek to forgive as an imperfect broken people who desperately need it as well.
But the greater scandal here is that Jesus is teaching that we can forgive this way because this is how we are forgiven in Christ! Nothing held back nothing held against us, completely totally forgiven and cleansed in and through Jesus. This drives the religious crazy as they want their pound of flesh. They want to see the law carried out on people who deserve to be punished. And though their assessment of the problem is true, we are definitively deserving of great punishment, their presumptive prescription is wrong. As Jesus became sin for us and we are forgiven forever through all eternity, seventy times seven.
To be honest and open I have, to my embarrassment, that Pharisee in me at times that wants to see others punished who “deserve it”; We all have that Pharisee in us, but maybe more damaging is the ever present struggle to believe that I need to be punished. I was talking to someone recently who was speaking of the fear that their actions may mean they won’t be welcomed home to glory one day. This person has a sweet love for Jesus and in speaking with them it occurred to me that this is the greatest struggle we have. The scandal of the seventy times seven can be hardest to believe for me because I know me! This sweet person knows truly who they are and like the rest of us at times finds it hard to believe it’s all forgiven. But praise God it is! We are the glad recipients of the seventy times seven, and we are to be the willing givers of that same equation to a lost and broken world full of people who desperately need to hear of the grace and love of our Jesus. So today let’s rest and enjoy being the people of the seventy times seven!
#amazinggrace
Tom Crouse
Jars of Clay
In 2 Cor 4 Paul writes of our having this treasure in jars of clay. The treasure is Christ, the gospel all that it is, our adoption our being children of the living God. Point being that we are described as jars of clay. A couple things to note about jars of clay at the time Paul writes this description. First jars of clay were for common use. In a home they would be in the kitchen, and the toilet area as well as by the door. So there would be many in a house used for the common things in life. They were also very fragile, easy to crack and break. It didn’t take much for them to wear out. The next interesting things is that they were made by hand. The potter would shape mold and determine the use of the clay.
The exciting truth shouts at us today, as scripture tells us He is the Potter and we are the clay. And He has entrusted us with Himself, knowing that we are common, nothing special, ordinary people. Not only that He knows we are fragile and prone to break. In fact we break a lot, and at times spend more time broken than not. And yes He knows this about us because He made us with His hand. And He continues to put us back together again and again and again, never upset always with love and care picking up the broken pieces and putting us back together.
If it were me I would not choose jars of clay for such a treasure. But His ways are not our ways. We are told why He does this in 2 Cor 4., and it is so show that the surpassing power, greatness and glory belongs to Him and not us. He gets the glory and we get the amazing grace and joy of being safe in the hands of the potter. To understand this it to unlock the key to joy. My fellow common, broken traveler, we are made and held and cared for by His hand. He never leaves, He just keeps putting us back together, with love and gentle care. He shows His power through our fragility and we receive love grace and mercy each and every moment of every day. What a gift to such undeserving jars of clay like us! Celebrate, enjoy and rest in the loving hands of the potter today!
#amazinggrace
Shalom,
Tom Crouse
How Do You View the Law?
What is grace if not everything? People outside of the ‘church’ when told about it see it as living water for the soul. While many in the ’church’ struggle and even get upset over it. The issue at hand is ones view of Gods law. You see it is simple, Gods law from the time given to Moses to the preaching of the sermon on the mount is very clear, to be accepted by God you must be perfect. There is no wiggle room or grading on a curve. In other words there is nothing you can do apart from being perfect. This is where grace comes in like a knight in shining armor. Jesus comes and says I did not come to do away with the law but to fulfill it. This is grace, amazing grace. The undeserving, you and I given, the righteousness of Jesus, His perfection, while He becomes our sin for us. Why? Grace! And to the extent we have a high view of the law and an understanding of how far short we fall, to that extent will be the joy in our lives. People who know themselves, truly know, they revel and marvel in grace. Grace is the foundation, it is the structure of their lives. And those people tend to be joyful and gracious to others. On the other hand, people who have a low view of the law, meaning they believe there are things they can do to keep it, those people tend to be less joyful, less forgiving and actually at times angry about grace. We want to be told what to do. We want the 10 steps, the magic formula the roadmap to follow in order to be “pleasing to Him”. When in fact all the commands of the law and all the commands you see in Gods word are meant to point us to one truth, we need Jesus! Be holy as God is holy, love the Lord your God with all your heart soul and mind, pray without ceasing, these and more are impossible to do before and after Christ. To say it is attainable is to lie to yourself and others. The glory, freedom and joy in the commands is that Jesus fulfills everyone of them for us. Which should make us of all people joyful and gracious. As someone put it;
’Church should be so full of laughter and joy that outsiders press their noses to the window wanting to get into the party.’
Rest in and enjoy the amazing grace that fulfilled and continues to fulfill the law for you!
Rest In His grace today,
Tom Crouse
The Grace of Weather
I used to say all the time I hated the snow and I only believe God created it by faith. But coming back to New England I have gained a new appreciation for the glory of snow and all the weather God creates!
In snow, you see at times the beautiful white picture of purity as well as breathing in the crisp clean air. Or in other parts of the world, even in the worst places I have been from shanty towns in Manila to the poverty of Haiti, there are still birds singing, sun shining and beautiful skies. All this is Gods creation, His message to us that He is. His creative joyful handiwork in the animals, the colors of a rainbow, the glory of an ocean. His humor in the creating of things like an ostrich. And of course there are the questions, why the mosquito God? lol. His creation is a panoramic view for us to see again who He is and what He is like. Martin Luther said;
“God writes the gospel not in the Bible alone, but on trees and flowers and clouds and stars.”
Oh the glory of a clear night and the stars on display! Or an amazing sunset like the ones Gina and I have been seeing. Colors so beautiful. So as you wake up and get up and walk through your day try to slow down, listen, look and see the gospel of grace in this glorious creation He has put you in. It is a reminder from our Father to us that He loves and delights in us. That He is for us always. He is with us, never leaves ever. Never abandons us. Look around today, rest in and enjoy the grace of the gospel on display for you.
Rest In His grace today,
Tom Crouse
Why Sweetly Broken Ministries?
Why Sweetly Broken Ministries?
The simplest answer to this question would be that we are all broken people in need of Jesus Christ. I preached for decades of His steadfast love that never leaves or forsakes, but it is only in the last 6 or seven years that I have experienced this love firsthand. Fallen and failed out of ministry, at the lowest point in my life, going to the worst place one could imagine and Jesus was there. He miraculously spared my life that July evening in 2022. More than that, He has shown me that I am loved and cared for and delighted in just as I am. All the things I have preached, His love for us, His never letting go, His righteousness being ours etc. etc. It is one thing to preach it and another to go through the crucible of failure and sin and consequences for that and realize you are still wildly loved and cared for and it is time to get up and tell people what the Lord has done with your weakness. I was the one that I would have looked at years before and said, “well he must not have been truly saved”. Displaying my ignorance or more accurate, arrogance. How small minded and immature of me to presume to know the mind of God in that way. Today I hope I am a little slower to judge or speak and quick to go to my Father instead and pray for those whose brokenness is on display.
It is our hope that this ministry will be used of God to encourage broken people whether they are Christ’s or not. To share the good news that it is finished, and it is for all who would believe on the Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins. So finished that in Christ there is never a second when you are not crazy loved by the Father. And He did not adopt you as His son or daughter in spite of who you are but because of it.
So here we are ready to serve you in whatever way the Lord would open the door. To God be the glory great things He has done!
Rest In His grace today,
Tom Crouse
Amazing Grace
Amazing Grace
Grace is the undeserved kindness of God towards man. Giving us what we do not deserve. For all people this means we get to enjoy life, God's creation, food, love, music, art etc, etc. Gifts given to all, but for those who are Christ’s there is saving grace. The grace of God that gave Jesus Christ for the sins of all who would believe. The scandal of all of this is that God sent Jesus Christ to take the place of, die for, sinners, disgusting vile sinners like: (Insert your own name here). Jesus not only died for sinners, but in fact God's Word says He became sin on the cross! For the only time in all eternal history there was a moment of separation between the Father and the Son, heard in the cry on the cross from Christ of being forsaken.
All of this done for those who would believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. There is only one qualification and that is you must be a sinner. We all qualify and in fact as Martin Luther said, our sin is what we contribute to our salvation. We contribute our sin and God gives Jesus to pay for it all forever, past present and future. We deserve condemnation, shame and eternal punishment, yet God gives us Jesus so that we are never condemned again and are adopted as sons and daughters of the living God!
This is grace, this is amazing!
Rest In His grace today,
Tom Crouse