If you’re like me, you’ve heard a hundred sermons about grace in your lifetime. But if you’re also like me, you still might struggle to understand exactly what it is, what it means for you, and how to live it out in your life. That’s where Joby Martin comes in. In his new book Run Over By the Grace Train, he does a deep dive into grace, and he talks about it and explains it like no one else. I’m thrilled to invite Joby Martin to the farm’s table today…
Guest Post by Joby Martin
At my house, we’re Georgia Bulldog fans.
Why? Because we’re Believers.
My Bible’s written in red and black, so just take it up with the Lord.
We’re pretty die-hard fans so we usually go to the opening game of the year.Georgia typically schedules the biggest cupcake team of the year for that game, and that’s my favorite kind of game to go to.
I don’t need to go to a close game. I don’t need stress. I want to sing, “Glory, glory to old Georgia,” until my voice is gone. I want half the stands to be gone by the end. Hope we win by 200.
My family and some friends and I drove up for the game. We won. I lost my voice. I think the score was 7,000 to nothing. Then we checked into this hotel. Pretty swanky. All the doors faced the atrium. When I was a kid, all the doors faced the parking lot. This was not that.
When you walked into this one, the atrium was massive. Twelve stories. You could fly a plane in there.
Shops and restaurants all around the edge. We checked in, and then my daughter, Reagan, and her friends, Wiley and Windsor, went to their room to do whatever girls do, and the boys and I went to this little bar and grill.
I ordered some chicken wings and refreshments, because my throat was parched because I’d been singing “Glory, glory to old Georgia.” We were just sitting there waiting on the wings when this alarm sounded. “Fire, fire, please move to the exits. Fire, fire.”
And I did what any good dad would do. I sat there, because it was probably nothing. Plus, I had wings coming. But my friend said, “Well, let me check.” He walked out to the atrium, looked up, and immediately spun and ran back in, panicking. And he ain’t a panicky dude.
“Bro, it’s a fire.”
But I was not convinced, because I had wings coming, so I sauntered out into the atrium and, when I looked up, it was not a little bit of smoke.
It was legit.
I grabbed all three… Wrapped my arms around them…I squeezed them in and started jabbering, “It’s going to be okay . . .”
Where did my thoughts immediately go? Right.
Reagan and her friends were on the tenth floor. Fire on the twelfth. And my mind went to all the places where every mama and daddy’s mind goes. All I could think is, “Reagan is on the tenth floor, I’m down here, I have to get there.” Chaos had spread through the hotel. People were running everywhere in every direction. Not to mention that the glass elevators had been shut down.
I found the stairs and started running. I reached the stairwell, opened the door, and was run over by a sea of people coming down. And I thought, “I got to get to Reagan.” And so I went huffing it up the steps and elbowing my way against the current.
About here, two things hit me with equal weight: I had not trained for this. I should’ve upped my cardio game about eight months ago. Second, I was wearing flip- flops. My daddy used to always say, “The only thing you can do in flip- flops is get your butt kicked.” Which is a fact. And about every floor and a half, I’d bump into another hotel employee saying, “Sir, you can’t come up here,” to which I’d respond, “That’s cute.”
To their credit, the hotel workers had been knocking on all the doors. So, about the fifth floor, who did I bump into? I turned one corner and I saw Reagan, Windsor, and Wiley.
I grabbed all three.
Wrapped my arms around them. I squeezed them in and started jabbering, “It’s going to be okay . . .”
If you have been around preteen girls, you know there can be a lot of emotion on a normal day. Add a fire and no dad and, I mean, they were crying, too. There was a lot going on.
At this point, we filed in with everybody else, exited the stairwell, and got everybody reconnected with their family.
We gathered outside our hotel— because it was still on fire— and we walked down the sidewalk to a wing place, because my last order got lost. We were sitting at a table, I was catching my breath, and Reagan was pretty upset. Still emotional. I was trying to calm her down.
“Baby, I don’t care what’s going on, I don’t care what the circ*mstances are, I don’t care where you are or what you’ve done, there is nothing on this planet that could keep me from coming after you. I would walk through fire for you.”
“He loves you enough to walk through fire to get to you, whoever you are, whatever you have done. He already has.“
This is the message of Ephesians 2: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:4–10).
This is the message of the Gospel.
God did whatever it took to rescue His children. When it says in Revelation that He has feet of burnished bronze, it’s because He walked through fire, and the fire refined them.
Later that night—in a new hotel—we pushed our beds together. It was like Daytona. Four wide. And Reagan said, “Daddy?”
“Yeah, baby.”
“You would walk through fire for me?” she asked, with a little crack of emotion in her voice.
“Of course I would walk through fire for you.”
Let me be clear—this emotion, this thing in me that runs up the stairs, or tried to before cardiac arrest set in, did not come from me. It did not originate in me. I love Reagan because Jesus first loved me.
And he loves you too. He loves you enough to walk through fire to get to you, whoever you are, whatever you have done. He already has.
Joby Martin is the founder and lead pastor of The Church of Eleven22 in Jacksonville, Florida. Since launching the church in 2012, he has led a movement for all people to discover and deepen a relationship with Jesus Christ. In addition to providing The Church of Eleven22 with vision and leadership, Pastor Joby is an author, national and international preacher and teacher. He is the author of bestselling books If the Tomb in Empty and Anything Is Possible.
His latest book, Run Over By the Grace Train, explores the topic of grace: what it is, how we receive it, and how it changes absolutely everything about us.
Charles Martin is a is a New York Times bestselling author of 15 novels, including his most recent, The Letter Keeper. He has also recently authored two nonfiction works, What If It’s True? and They Turned the World Upside Down. His work has been translated into 30+ languages.
{Our humble thanks to FaithWords for their partnership in today’s devotional.}
