God-given #GRACE
God's grace. Day after day after day. This is the kind of thing that keeps my heart twisted up in Jesus in the greatest way possible.
Just the way grace works. One definition describes it as unmerited, undeserved, unearned, yep…unearned… one more time for those in the back, UNEARNED > favor. That unearned part is what captivates my heart and reminds me of the depth of God's love for me, because heaven and earth knows I haven't earned it. It's what brings me to my knees some days when I have totally blown my teacher role, or my mom hat is just barely hanging on. When I've had the best intentions, but the friend or family member that's been on my mind 100 times that week hasn't heard a word from me. When my calm, encouraging spirit gets replaced by a muddle of anything opposite of calm and encouraging. When I don't feel like I'm doing enough or serving enough.
I feel so undeserving and failure consumes me in that moment, leaving me feeling weak, disappointed, and discouraged. Without skipping a beat, my mind goes there...at least for a moment, trying to convince me, that was it. That was the last time God would pass out the grace card. Regardless of my "good intentions", He had to be tired of my failures and exhausted by my half hazard ways. Case in point, undeserving. How in the world could God give me grace? Again?
Yet, He does.
It's unearned you guys. The realization that God could and can still favor me...yeah. My heart and soul get swept away once again, after the guilt is put away and the grace sets in. My conviction turns me back to my purpose...to my faith in this incredibly forgiving God Who still calls me His own, Who still sees meaning to my life, and Who welcomes me with open arms {usually followed up with some conviction and sometimes even discipline} but even that is out of love. God’s grace is not just an extra display of His goodness and love that simply sweetens the deal, it came at a cost. This acronym you’ve probably heard sums it up pretty well…God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense.
Through this underserving gift, my failures are transformed from loss into lessons learned (hopefully). I'm reminded in 2 Corinthians 12:9 that God's grace is sufficient for me, that His power is perfected in my weakness. And because of God's undeserving goodness and grace, growth takes place. I am able to dust myself off, get up and give it another go.
Another favorite is Ephesians 2:8-10, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as 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 so that we would walk in them.”
So even on the days I fail, my aim is to keep the faith, to remember the significance and actualization of Jesus’ sacrifice, and not to sit and dwell in my failures, but to make the most of this God given grace.
