Grace Abounds

I am back in school and I am studying Grace, Grace, Grace. We discuss Prevenient Grace, Justifying Grace, Sanctifying Grace, until it all swirls in our heads. We are save by grace through faith. We are given faith from God, grace comes from God, we are enabled to receive both from God, he empowers and equips us to accomplish his purposes and transform us in his image. While it is grace, grace, grace for sure, it's truly God, God, God at the heart.

I am not at all discrediting my classes, my professors, theologians who have spent many hours in intense study and prayer. They have in many cases spent their lives working out these conflicts and contradictions and they have presented reasonable propositions for what appears to be going on. Different faith traditions lean one way or another, different times and cultures are impacted differently. It's all great for my mind to begin to explore the whys and wherefores and I have benefited more than I can possibly say. But this I also need to say, any conclusion we come to that does not start and end with God is wrong.

I have a great appreciation of those who have gone before us. I think we have no idea how much our faith has been shaped and impacted by God and his revelation to all those who have worked out the faith with him in fear and trembling who have enabled us to do it with a double portion. Just as Elisha received the blessings of Elijah and his own, we receive the revelation of all those who have left footprints for us to follow and we have been able to perhaps go farther, learn more, It's an amazing gift and I am so very grateful. It's also abundantly clear to me that in each generation we try to figure out how it is we control and contribute to our salvation, justification, and sanctification and the answer must always come back to the same place, while it's grace, grace, grace, its grace because of God, God, God.

Hot discussions this past week about what work means to the salvation of God's people. Nothing new there either. Solomon was right about that, wasn't he? Nothing new under the sun, indeed. It has caused a lot of serious study and page thumping and scripture quoting. I am just fine with that. Dig in and find out what the Book has to say, my friends. Excellent idea! Here's what I think you will find, it's still all God, God, God.

I can't tell you what a screw up I am. I tell you, just the minute I get a knot worked out, I have tied three more. I get stuff right about half the time entirely by accident and the other half because someone fixed it for me. I am so tired of my sinful nature and the number of times I have to come back to the throne of grace and ask one more time to be forgiven and restored. And here is what I can tell you, my father does so NOT because my repentance is superior or the promise I have made to not do the same thing again is sincere, or because I asked the right way or I visited enough of the poor and widows and orphans this week. It's simply because of God's nature and his willingness to sacrifice his all to enable me, and all of you, to be welcomed at his feet. Beloved children worth the price. Why does he do it? Because it's his nature, it's his heart, it's his desire. It's all God.

And before one of you is unwise enough to call this cheap grace, let me tell you my sweet brothers and sisters, there is nothing cheap about this grace. It cost my Father EVERYTHING, and while I am broken enough to fall short day after day after day, it's not because I don't know what price has been paid for my redemption. I know it and it fills my heart with gratitude and love in such abundance it is all I can to every day to try to love him back with all I have. Any thing I have ever done one of you might deem as good was done not to earn my salvation or pay it back, but just in the natural response to having so much love poured in, it had to flow back out.

The kingdom of God is truly at hand. God is very close my friends and he invites all of us to enjoy his unconditional love expressed through His Son, His Spirit, His Word and His Grace. It's truly grace, grace, grace but it's always been God, God, God who calls it into being and reclaims it as his own.