Does he stand high on a hill and bid you climb out of the valley?
No. He bungees down and carries you out. Does he build a bridge and command you to cross it? No. He crosses the bridge and shoulders you over. “You did not save yourselves; it was a gift from God” (Eph. 2:8, NCV).
This is the gift God gives.
A grace that grants us first the power to receive love and then the power to give it. A grace that changes us, shapes us and leads us to a life that is eternally altered.
Do you know this grace? Do you trust this grace? If not, you can. All God wants from us is faith. Put your faith in God.
And grow in God’s grace. More verb than noun, more present tense than past tense, grace didn’t just happen; it happens. Grace happens here.
The same work God did through Christ long ago on a cross is the work God does through Christ right now in you.
Let him do his work. Let grace trump your arrest record, critics and guilty conscience.
See yourself for what you are—God’s personal remodeling project. Not a world to yourself but a work in his hands. No longer defined by failures but refined by them. Trusting less in what you do and more in what Christ did. Graceless less, grace-shaped more. Convinced down deep in the substrata of your soul that God is just warming up in this overture called life, that hope has its reasons and death has its due date.
Grace.
Let it, let him, so seep into the crusty cracks of your life that everything softens.
Then let it, let him, bubble to the surface, like a spring in the Sahara, in words of kindness and deeds of generosity.
God will change you, my friend. You are a trophy of his kindness, a partaker of his mission. Not perfect by any means, but closer to perfection than you’ve ever been. Steadily stronger, gradually better, certainly closer.
This happens when grace happens. May it happen to you.
