Another meditation on God's grace

When you begin to understand God's grace, it changes everything. How you perceive God, how you perceive yourself, how you perceive other people, how you deal with sins and shortcomings in yourself and others, how you deal with successes and recognition (both yours and others'), and how you handle all kinds of situations - all these things start to change. At least, this is what I am starting to see in myself as God has seemingly been coming at me on every side with this concept of grace, and interestingly enough, I'm seeing this change even in the midst of my sin. I don't mean that I'm suddenly sinning less, unfortunately, but that my response to my own sin is qualitatively different, at least a little bit. Sin does not automatically lead to despair, when grace is present; one failure does not mean that we need fear losing God's acceptance and love, when His grace has covered all our sins already and has reconciled us to Him.

The wonder of God's grace is that even as we mourn over and despise our own sin we can find peace for the past, strength for the present, and encouragement for the future through our hope in Jesus Christ. Do you know that wonder, of finding the strength in Him to forget the failures of the past and to try again to follow Him? The liberty of God's grace is that our lives are no longer bound by a list of "oughts" - a book of duties supplying an correct course of action for every situation - but rather by His love. Do you know that liberty, that breathtaking freedom of learning to live by grace rather than by law, of stepping outside the rigid walls of earthly duty and walking in the love and light of heaven? Outwardly, your actions may not change much, but the heart behind them will be altogether new. The burden of God's grace - and yet it is not a burden at all, but a gift whose value is beyond measure - is that He desires us to become channels, to pour out to others in every trivial daily event of our lives the great grace which He constantly pours upon us. To be able to give that grace to others, not as yet another thing we ought to do for God, to please Him with our law-keeping; nor yet with condescension, as if we were so great that we could certainly spare some grace for those lowly people around us; but with humility of heart, knowing we need grace at least as much as they do, and with gratitude of spirit that God has given us this chance to imitate Him in this most beautiful of His works toward us - that is a gift beyond description.