GOD'S GRACE FOR TODAY

 

God's Grace and You

GRACE PERSONIFIED

• The story of Jesus is a story of grace.  
• The theme of Jesus' life's purpose and His doings is fully-lived grace. 
• The spiritual already-lived past bespeaks of grace. 
• The spiritual future-joy promises abundant grace. 
• This spiritual present-moment infuses grace in the divinely awakened.

 ABOUT GRACE

I have spent much of the past fifteen years talking about love: Christ's love, God's love, our need for love, the need for loving others, and the importance of love in the world. Not enough have I devoted my thoughts to ponder the gift of grace given to us by God through Christ.

This week I've been reading a book by Charles Spurgeon about prayer, The Power of Prayer in a Believer's Life. He emphasizes how prayer is wrapped beautifully in grace. Another book I'm reading is by author Eugenia Price, The Burden Is Light: A Spiritual Autobiography. She shares her story of waywardness until the grace of God entered her life and changed her heart.

I was astounded the first time I read in My Utmost for His Highest that it is good for us to have difficult people in our lives. Who wants to be around difficult people? Not me. Yet grace is most apparent when it is applied as it is being lived out. Our lives are an example of this. God gave us undeserved grace. We were recipients of His grace. To live grace with difficult people means we approach the Source of all grace by allowing ourselves to be grace-filled through His divine mercy and grace. Then we will act accordingly to the ways of grace in the difficult situation. Our flesh roars to the surface more often than we care to admit, but it is soon overtaken by God's grace that lives in and through us.

Grace, besides love, is the great compelling and fulfilling of the spiritual reality in life and living. A true Christian is "living-grace" to the lost, unawakened world. Grace does not see division or hopelessness. Grace sees hope and life and resurrection in the small to big things.

It's all about grace. It's all about love. It's all about Christ. It's all about redemption. It's all about life and living through the new life that can be had in Christ Jesus. "Grace, grace, God's grace; Grace that will pardon and cleanse within."

 God’s grace is freely given, not duly earned.

APPLICATION

Every time we pray, the very act of praying, is in supplication of God's grace. Awareness of God's grace becomes a way of viewing life through the spiritual lens of grace. Your life alters when grace becomes your partner throughout the day. Conversations and actions are converted to spiritual happenings once this is realized fully in you. 

Annoyances become opportunities to extend grace, to live grace, to be grace to others. To do this well requires supernatural grace to flow freely in us, through God's enabling. Since God is grace, He can liberally give us grace, from out of which, we are, in turn, able to give forth His grace to others.

1. Do you have a difficult person in your life right now? (I do) 

2. Ask God's grace in your interactions with them; then watch what happens.

3. God will help us.

Why a Yoke is Essential: Intervention 18

A Yoke is a Tool for Working Together

Finding God in the Daily

Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, 
for I am gentle and lowly in heart

 and you will find rest for your souls.

Matthew 11:29

God's yoke binds us with Him in a secure relationship that cannot be broken.

TAKE MY YOKE UPON YOU is the whole man active. Active again? Absolutely.

The yoke has a function that acts in a spiritual fashion. We take it upon us.

But why? 
     -Why would we want to do this?
           -Why do we do this?
                  -Why the symbolism in the word, yoke?

Christ tells his children to take his yoke upon us and in doing so we will learn from him. That's a pretty sweet reason. A yoke suggests a joining, a binding together, a union. At salvation, when we chose Christ, we were bound in a heavenly relationship with our heavenly Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Triune, three-in-one, God. The yoke that we take upon us, has a purpose, it instills a relationship which tethers the Trinity and Christ's followers together. The relationship is a living reality and needless-to-say, an interesting concept.

When my father was a boy, my father's dad had a team of horses for working the many functions of a dairy farm. Then one horse from the team died. The other horse was calm until they removed the dead horse from the corral. The live horse went crazy-like and panicked. The newly purchased horse for the team was young and willful. It wanted to pull faster than its partner. Dad's mother or father would have to slow him down so the two would pull together in tandem while pulling the implement.

Metaphorically, God tethers us to the yoke and then we get to the business of learning how to live this spiritual life God's way. Once yoked spiritually as one together, we follow God and are unable to act independent of God without a responding action. When we pull ahead of God, He slows us down. When we fall or drag behind, God lifts us up and helps carry us along. God is in us, with us, and we are dependent on His presence.

God's yoke is a gift. It keeps us on track, and it helps us when we are weak or self-willed. Just watch a team of horses or cattle bound with a harness or yoke, and you will see that they must work together or they will be at odds, which means little will be accomplished and much will be confused.

Christ's followers desperately need His tempering and guidance. This is a kindness to us, not a burden that inhibits our progress. God is becoming our strength as we learn to depend on Him.

We are able then,
-to place our trust in Him
      -with our daily stuff
           -our scary stuff
                  -and even our good stuff.

And that's a good thing.

To God be the Glory

† † †

Grace Giver -- Inspiration 10

Grace Gives Grace

Image from the recent Northern California Camp Fire 

-Beauty from Ashes-

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

2 Corinthians 12:19

O LOVING GRACE, beautiful grace, bountiful grace. What would the world do without grace? When grace is given it is received but not necessarily deserved. A prodigal son receives grace when he is welcomed home. Sinners are given grace when their sins are forgiven them. A recipient of an act of grace, do welcome it. Grace plays out in a myriad of ways. They could have gotten in trouble but they didn't, they've been given a second chance after a mess-up,  they are forgiven a wrong, or when they are loved just because. That's grace giving from out of its nature, extending grace because that is what grace does. Helping someone who is hard to help, like a person suffering with Alzheimer's Disease, is on the grace side of giving. God's grace is even greater. His grace chooses to redeem rather than punish, to set free rather than encage, to give to rather than to break down. Grace is greater than all our sin. We repent. God forgives. Grace pardons the offense. Grace covers with His feathers. Frequently grace carries an individual through a difficulty. They are given grace when they could have lost their job, a friendship, a relationship, or their reputation. Grace says they are worth it. They were worth a Son to Him. That's a hard understanding. Ultimate grace becomes human reality from its Giver of the divine Gift. Grace grows and blesses as God's grace multiplies in the interior self.

Dear Father in Heaven, spiritual life has many benefits and grace is one of them. You give grace to the humble, You give grace to us, You show us the ways of grace. Thank you for Your grace that welcomes us as part of Your family. Amen

To God be the Glory