Max Lucado Celebrates ‘Golden Anniversary of God’s Great Grace’ With First Tattoo
Pastor Max Lucado, a beloved Christian author and preacher, revealed on Good Friday he received his first tattoo to commemorate the 50-year anniversary of his conversion to faith.
“I’m celebrating the golden anniversary of God’s great grace in my life,” he wrote in an Instagram post featuring a picture getting the word “tetelestai,” which is Greek for “it is finished,” tattooed onto his forearm. “[Fifty] years ago this spring, grace found me. My testimony is interwoven with my favorite word in the Bible.”
The word “tetelestai” is a reference to John 19:30, when, on the cross, Jesus declared, “It is finished,” before taking His last breath.
“This was the message that changed my life,” wrote Lucado. “I was a 20-year old scoundrel, a bum, a train off the tracks. My priority was six-packs; not the kind that come from crunches, but from Coors. Friends, I was a mess. Not only was I drunk, I was a racist, a misogynist, a brawler, and a schemer. Worst of all, I was a hypocrite. I wondered, honestly wondered, could Christ forgive a jerk like me?”
Lucado, currently filling in as interim teaching pastor at Gateway Church near Fort Worth, Texas, said it was a spring evening in 1975 when he heard a preacher deliver a sermon on “a grace that is greater than sin.”
It was during that service Lucado realized for the first time that Jesus “paid my debt” on the cross when He took on the full weight of humanity’s sinfulness.
The famous preacher acknowledged “not everyone likes the idea of a 70-year-old pastor getting a tattoo,” but added, “That’s OK. I didn’t do it for people, I did it to say thank you to Jesus who paid a debt I could not pay. Do you know this grace?”
“I could[n’t] care less if this truth is tattooed on your skin,” he wrote, “but I care deeply that it be tattooed on your heart. My Good Friday prayer is simple: May Christ grant you what He has given me — grace upon grace.”
During a recent conversation with CBN News, Lucado said the “promise of the return of Christ, in which the world that’s upside down right now will be turned right-side up,” should “give us hope in these days that feel so dark, that feel so desperate.”
“Satan’s greatest lie is that God is against us,” he continued. “That’s hogwash. God is for us, and the first pages of the first book of the Bible reveal God’s intended plan for eternity. And that is we will reign with Him in a perfect state, in a perfect paradise, in perfect harmony. And God will have His garden. Just because Adam and Eve fell away — that doesn’t mean God changed His mind.”
You can watch the full conversation with Lucado below:
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