We are Children of Grace
Grace is the beauty of the Christian message. The word of grace is not a core feature of the message from God to His Church and to a dying world. It is the message.
Grace Will Change Everything for Children Of Grace
No divine revelation ever given has a parallel power to transform and restore broken humanity like the message of grace. It will change everything. It will change how you view God and relate to Him.
It will extend to how you live and serve God as a believer. It will further extend to how you perceive and relate to your fellowman. In fact, one of the most tangible physical effects of grace will be seen in your relationship to others.
The love and the kindness of God will overflow from within you to the people around you. Our hearts will cry out like David’s:
So the king asked, “Is there anyone left of Saul’s family that I can show the kindness of God to?” Ziba said to the king. “There is still Jonathan’s son who was injured in both feet.” (2 Samuel 9:3, Holman Christian Standard Bible, HCSB)
Grace: The Antidote for Sin’s Effects on Children Of Grace
Grace is the divine antidote of sin and its effects on humanity. The entrance of sin into the world left an eternal scar on humanity with devastating spiritual and physical consequences. Any iota of doubt about the reality will be dispelled quickly as you look from within yourself, your family around you and then the society at large.
Creation is groaning in birth pains from the cicatrices of sin. In His almightiness, God has overcome and over-restored man through the cross. Grace has stepped into the world to rescue broken humanity—not back to its first state prior to the Fall but into the excellent glory of the Father. This superfluity of divine kindness is no chance event. God has a purpose tag on it.
…so that in the coming ages He might display the immeasurable riches of His grace through His kindness to us in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:7, HCSB)
Grace and Jesus: Inseparable for Children Of Grace
This grace of God is inseparable from the Person and Work of Jesus Christ. We will never know Him as our Savior and know the mysteries of the cross until our eyes are flooded with light about the grace of God. And we will never know what this grace is until Jesus is revealed to us. One thing I can guarantee will happen to anyone as the Lord begins to unveil the mysteries of grace to that individual is that they will go crazy about Jesus!
The more you know why He came and what He did for people like us, the more you will yearn to know Him, love Him, live for Him and serve Him in ways beyond what any commandment can ever achieve. The revelation of Jesus can be likened to the fire that kindles a dynamite in us.
It always amazes me how easy it is to become born again and embrace the routines of church without a personal revelation of the Person and Work of Christ through the cross. The emptiness of the form of Christianity without the Life of it will certainly overwhelm us someday with boredom and burnout. It is the highway to a dead church and a dead spiritual life. Contrarywise, the revelation of grace will set us on fire for God, with a blessed spontaneity and an overflow of life from the Spirit.
Grace is God at Work for Children Of Grace
In grace, God is at work on the earth in and through man. Christianity is not the work of human might, zeal or goodwill. We will save ourselves a tremendous amount of heart- and headaches by heeding the words of the prophet Zephaniah:
So he answered me, “This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by strength or by might, but by My Spirit,’ says the Lord of Hosts.” (Zechariah 4:6 HCSB)
Christianity is an exhibition of divine handiwork while grace is a treatise of God at work for man and in man. It is the distinguishing feature of Christianity from all other religions. A God who came in search for fallen humanity. When Christ was conceived and born, that was divinity at work in full display for all eyes to see. He went to the cross, overcame the grave, was received in glory and then comes to dwell in us as His Spirit to fulfill in us His eternal desire.
We will enter divine rest when we understand this truth, that our new life is God at work and not an effort on our part to prove what we can do. This is grace. All too often, believers are caught in this trap of living under pressure as though they have to “prove something” to God. (good!) In so doing, they are unaware that they are becoming one of the greatest obstacles God has in working on the earth—man trying for himself to accomplish what only God can do. Our human strength, or what we consider is our strength, is actually our greatest weakness. And likewise our weakness is our greatest strength as it allows God to work uninhibited in our lives.
But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may reside in me. (2 Co 12:9)
Grace Magnifies Christ for Children Of Grace
Grace magnifies Christ and gives Him leeway to work His eternal purposes on the earth. Grasping the message of grace is not optional for the Church in the days in which we are living. The world and the Body of Christ does not need an intensification of teachings to boost our zeal, desire for holiness, longing to serve God etc. The world as well as the Church is in desperate need to know who Jesus is and what has been done through the cross. Grace is not a new revelation.
It is the old story received for all its worth. The same old story this dying generation desperately needs to take a hold of. The majority of the Church has “matured themselves” out of the simplicity of the gospel; however, the importance of absolute reliance on the cross and the empty tomb does not diminish over the years.
Rather, as sin mutates and takes forms we have never seen or experienced before, or the old forms are intensified, we need not create “new revelations” or “another gospel.” The old story is more than enough and it will stand the test of time. We should run back to where we started and take a firmer grip of it for therein lies our power to overcome.
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