Discovering God’s Grace

Understanding and Applying

the Grace of God that

Transforms Our Lives

Dan Peloquin

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Scripture quotations marked (NASB) are taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright © 1960,1962,1963,1968,1971,1972,1973,1975,1977,1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Cover design by Derek Murphy

of Creativindie Covers.

Special thanks for bringing what was

in my heart into view!

bookcovers.creativindie.com

Facebook at Creativindie

Copyright © 2013 Dan Peloquin/Peloquin Publishing

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 0988592401

ISBN-13: 978-0988592407

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to my lovely wife, Jacque,

without whose support, this book would never have been written.

Thank you, my friend, my love, my sweetheart!

I love you, I cherish you!

And I dedicate the book to my children,

Elizabeth, Brian, Katherine, Jonathan, Samuel, Josiah, Rebekah, and Isaac,

who are a reward, a gift, and a delight in my life!

God has taught me so much through having you, holding you, raising you,

and having relationship with you!  Each one of you is a treasure to me!

Most especially, this book is dedicated to God,

whose grace has abounded in my life,

bringing about my salvation,

and the transformation of my life.

To Him be the glory!

And a special thanks to

Harry, Lynette, Rich, Ann, Eric, Rich, Ray, and Bob,

for your time and effort to review and comment, to critique and edit,

and to help me take my first book

from a burden in my heart from God, to a reality!

FOREWORD

Grace is one of those words that cannot be defined by a few lines in the dictionary. It takes volumes to even begin to bring out the depth and beauty of its meaning.  One hymn writer called it “Amazing Grace.” This description only begins to describe what it truly is.

God’s grace to all people is the central theme of Scripture. St. Paul devoted at least two epistles to it: Galatians and Romans. It seems to appear on every page of the Bible. Grace is God reaching out to us, it is God enabling and bringing us to Himself, it is God with us in eternity. Even with all of this, it is even more.

Since the days of the early church, both pastors and the great divines have sought to understand and explain how grace intersects with daily life. The Reformers spent a great deal of time writing about its role in bringing people into a right relationship with God. They understood grace as being essential for salvation. Wanting to make sure that people knew exactly how to obtain salvation, grace was put to great study in its relationship to justification, causing volumes to be written on “saving grace.” Years later, the holiness movement went on to explore living holy lives. So grace was put to great study in its relationship to sanctification. Volumes were written on “sanctifying grace.” Recently attention has been on the wonderful experiences the believer can have in the presence of the Lord, so grace has fostered lyrics for an untold number of hymns and worship songs. From the days of the New Testament through today, grace has remained the subject of Christianity. Indeed, it always will and should be!

Grace does change one’s standing before God; it provides empowerment and wonderful experiences; yet it is so much more! The author of this book writes with a wonderful awareness of the depth and grandeur of grace. He is aware of those ahead of him who have written about its ability to save and launch forward. Here he seeks to show how grace can be lived out in such a way that it actually is at work in the Christian moment-by-moment providing all that is needed to become all that one can be. He gives attention to grace as the enabler of God’s work into the deepest places of the soul where genuine transformation and so much more occur.

I encourage you read this book with the expectation that grace will come alive in you and your life will be more than enriched; it will become amazing!

“And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work,” 2 Corinthians 9:8. (NIV84)

Rev. Richard D. Lafferty, D.Min.

Sr. Pastor

Christian Life Church

Willimantic, CT

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1 – Grace: An Expression Of God’s Love

Chapter 2 – Grace: Defined

Chapter 3 – Grace: Received

Chapter 4 – Grace: In Salvation

Chapter 5 – Grace: Empowered By The Spirit

Chapter 6 – Grace: Transformed From Within

Chapter 7 – Grace: Power In Weakness

Chapter 8 – Grace: Everything We Need

Chapter 9 – Grace: Enabled To Resist

Chapter 10 – Grace: Activated

Chapter 11 – Grace: Training For A Different Life

Chapter 12 – Grace: Enabled For Ministry

Introduction

Grace…

God’s grace.

There is something amazing about God’s grace!  I don't mean that to be a cliché!  I truly believe and hope to convey to you in this book the reality of just how amazing God's grace truly is!

Songs are often written about profound experiences, truths, and realities in people’s lives.  The songwriter tries to express in prose the feelings and emotions that fill a human's soul during moments of our lives!

Grace has been the topic of so many powerful songs of the past and present!  Some are very familiar to us!

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound

That saved a wretch, like me!

I once was lost, but now am found

Was blind, but now I see!

Billions have sung the words to “Amazing Grace,” at times perhaps, not knowing or fully understanding the profound truths expressed by those words.  Amazing Grace is often sung when tragedy has occurred.  The beloved hymn is sung when troubles and trials of life have come our way, and we have endured and pressed through.  Many have sung these words recognizing that we are helpless at times in the face of what nature can do, as well as during challenges that life brings our way, or what other human beings choose to do.  It has been sung in acknowledgment of the divine providence and provision of God during times of great need.  Most especially, for anyone who has come to the life-changing reality of salvation through Jesus Christ, “Amazing Grace” arouses and provokes wondrous feelings of gratitude and appreciation to God for what He has done in their lives!

Grace, grace

God’s grace

Grace that is greater

Than all our sin!

Grace that is greater than all our sin!  Ah, the wonder of it, that God in the richness of His love would send His Son to be our Savior!  That our Lord, our King, would suffer and die for us.  Grace, God’s unmerited and undeserved favor…that He would send Jesus to save us, though we were so very, so completely undeserving.

A grace that is greater than all of our sin!  A grace so profound that while we were yet sinners, He would die for the whole world!  And while we were yet sinners, He would reach out to us as individuals and draw us towards Him with the intention of His heart to give to us His wondrous gift of salvation!

But can grace be greater than ALL our sin?  Can grace actually affect our life in such a way that it becomes greater than the sin we are accustomed to? Greater than the temptations to sin we constantly struggle with?  Greater than the tendencies we have to fail God during trials and tribulations?

I want to encourage and propose to you that emphatically, God's grace is all of that to us!  The possibilities of living a holy life, a different life, and a life that is pleasing to God in every way are attainable! What seems impossible with us IS possible with God!  It becomes a reality in our life through His amazing grace.

Another song!

My chains are gone, I've been set free

My God my Savior has ransomed me

And like a flood His mercy reigns

Unending love, Amazing Grace!

While we embrace and revel in the realities of God's grace expressed in songs like this, I would suggest to you that there is so much more to His grace than many of us fully understand, appreciate, and benefit from.

Like many truths of God's Word, we sometimes do not fully experience the blessings that are to be ours because we do not fully understand the truth itself.  We do not grasp the expressed promise, the very “prescription” of God that has been issued to us that is the remedy for our ailment and needed medication for our benefit!  We cannot experience what we cannot embrace; we will not embrace what we do not understand.

The purpose of Discovering God’s Grace is to help us better understand God’s grace in all of its wonder and to understand, apply, and benefit from it as completely as we should!

Through the years it has been my personal and pastoral experience that grace tends to be grossly misunderstood.  Like anything we do not understand, we will not get the full experience or benefit of it without this understanding.  I am often grieved as I listen to someone express their heart in regards to God, about a personal struggle in their life, or a sin that is habitual and controlling.  As I listen to them lamenting their situation, I realize they simply do not have a grasp of the power and reality of God's grace for their life that should be bringing the change or help they are desiring.  It is real.  It is available.  They misunderstand it, and therefore they miss it, and miss out.

It is tragic when any of us do not comprehend the wonderful love and grace of God that He desires to express to us in the offer of salvation that comes as a free gift, through what Jesus has accomplished on the cross.  But it is also desperately unfortunate when we do not take full advantage of the benefit grace has afforded us after we have received Christ as our Savior.  I will endeavor to discuss both of these elements in the following chapters.

John 1:14 says that Jesus came “full of grace and truth” while John 1:16 says, “And from his fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace.”

Jesus came full of grace and truth!  Oh, how true that is!  And, from His fullness we have all received!  What have we received?  We received grace upon grace!  Grace upon grace!  We have received from the fullness of Jesus’ grace; grace upon grace.  Grace, and more grace.  Grace heaped on top of grace!

When we see or read passages like those we should be provoked to think and ponder whether we really understand grace, and if we are receiving and experiencing this grace, this “grace upon grace!”  So if asked what the fullness of Jesus' grace is, and how it is that we have received “grace upon grace,” what would our answer be?  How would we explain it?  Is it only that He has provided this incredible gift of salvation, and we have received it?

If we hesitate, or struggle at explaining it, then it is possible that we do not fully understand it.  If we do not fully understand grace, then how can we benefit fully from it?  If faith comes from hearing, and hearing from the Word, but we don’t understand what His Word has expressed to us in regard to grace, then how can we have faith in God’s grace as we should?  When we truly understand God’s Word, our faith is often stronger because we not only know what we are believing in, we know what we are believing for and most importantly, we know who we are believing and trusting in!  We should know and understand well what God’s Word says in regard to grace, so our faith in God in regards to grace will be accurate, strong, and beneficial; as beneficial as God intended it to be!

The New International Version (NIV) of the Bible expresses John 1:16 this way: “From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another.”

If from the fullness of His grace we have and can receive “one blessing after another,” then we need to understand what grace is and how grace works so we can be in the place of receiving "one blessing after another!"  If it is from grace and through grace that we receive "grace upon grace," then we need to understand what grace is and how grace works!

This cannot be said with enough force, or enough emphasis.  We need to fully understand what grace is and how it operates, so that we can receive all the benefits of grace that God intended for us.  Ask the Holy Spirit to help you truly get a grasp of what grace is, and how it works in your life as one of His children!  The benefits are ‘one blessing after another,’ blessings that God intended for us to know and experience on a continual basis…day-to-day, and moment-to-moment…grace upon grace!  One blessing after another!

Romans 12:1-2 says, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. [2] Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

Every human being, and certainly every Christian, should realize that it is God’s will and intent to transform and change us.  He wants to save us and sanctify us.  He wants us to have an intimate, dynamic relationship with Him, growing in our knowledge and understanding of Him, while benefiting from that relationship and living differently by His enabling help.  He wants to bring about a change within us, by which we are enabled to offer ourselves back to God as a living sacrifice, which is our reasonable and spiritual service of worship to God.

God wants us to discern His will!  By learning the Word of God, and by growing in our knowledge of the God of the Word, we can grow in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.  When we come to a place of testing all things, we can figure out what His will is for our lives in any given moment, or in a particular situation of life.  He wants us to know what is good, acceptable, and perfect from His perspective, and be able to do it!  This is what He intended for us, even from before the creation of the world!

When I have discerned and now know His will, and been enabled to do it by God Himself, and do it, then I am presenting my body, my physical body and my soul, as a living sacrifice, a living offering, holy and acceptable to God; a joyous and wondrous spiritual expression of worship to my God.

Ponder this for a moment.  The Sovereign God of the universe, the Creator of all things, wants to help us to know, understand and discern exactly what pleases Him; and give us the power and ability to actually live it out before Him!  How many of us are searching and yearning for that in our lives?  And desire to see it in a consistent way?

When we do this consistently, it becomes a wonderful spiritual act or display to God of worship before Him!  Oh, how we should want our lives lived out before God to be a concert, a symphony of worship to God!  This should be done before Him moment-by-moment, day-by-day!  What glory is given to God as we constantly live like that before Him, not just in our own effort, but because of Him, and His grace at work in our lives!

Grace is the means by which God brings this about in our lives, so it is vital we understand grace!

Romans 8:29-30 says, “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. [30] And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. ”

I know this is a difficult verse with some deep theological words and concepts!  What it is saying is that God knew, even before the creation of this world, those who were going to become His Child through Jesus Christ, and He destined them to enter into a process whereby they would be conformed into the image or likeness of His Son.  This process was His plan, His intention, His very destiny for each and every one who would believe!  What an incredible reality, what a powerful thought to comprehend, what an amazing truth to grasp!  God’s intended plan for each who were known by Him, even before creation, was that when they responded to the call, they would be justified, and then glorified.  He set in motion His purposes, plans and destiny for them, that grace would be at work in them, and they would be transformed and conformed into the very likeness or image of His Son, Jesus!  All of this comes about and happens by His grace!

God intends for us to be renovated from the inside out and transformed into the likeness of Jesus in this life, and certainly in the life to come.  And God is for us in this regard!  He very much desires for it to happen, and in fact is at work in every believer to see to it that it does happen!  This is what grace is all about!

So Jesus came full of grace and truth, and from the fullness of the grace that comes from Him, we receive the effects of grace that brings us to salvation, then we receive the continuing effects of grace that work to change and enable us to live for God in a way that is so pleasing to Him, the very thing He desired and intended!  Grace working again and again…grace upon grace…brings about one blessing after another in our lives!

In the Parable of the Sower, Luke 8:14 says, “And as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature.”

Herein lies the crux of the matter!  If we are believers, then we have heard, believed and received salvation by grace through faith.  The seed of the Word has landed in the soil of our heart and has sprung to life and is growing.  We must be cautious and careful to tend to it well, or it will end up as a seed sprouting up among the weeds!  We can easily become choked by life’s cares, riches, and pleasures of this world that cause us to prevent the fruit growing in us to ever come to maturity.  I will show you how grace becomes the means by which we tend to the seed and produce the good crop!

Cares

We can be in denial about cares and worries in our lives, acting as if we have no worries that are diminishing us or grinding down on us, no concerns that are keeping us from maturing and bearing the fruit God desires.  Or, if the truth were told, we are well aware of the worries!  We know we are juggling the cares of life all the time!  We just don’t want anyone else to know about it, or at the very least we want to excuse it!

We sometimes call our worries or our cares by other names so as to maintain some level of denial and our appearances with others.  We are just “a bit anxious”.  We have “anxiety”.  We are “just a bit concerned” (afraid) about the future.  We are just “struggling” with a given situation.  We aren’t “worrying,” we are just dealing with “stress.”  To have “fear” is to be a failure, so we avoid the honesty it takes to admit it is there.

If, as the Word says, God has given us everything we need for life and godliness, then does God have something for us that enables us to deal with stress, depression, and the burdens we bear?  Does God have a means or prescription for our sleepless nights, our long cries, or our ulcers?  Is there more to this relationship with God then simply casting a prayer towards heaven and hoping things change?  Yes, yes, yes!  I will show you that there is a better way!  Read on!

Riches

Along with the cares that can distract us and choke us out so that we do not bear fruit or see the fruit ever mature, many of us struggle with riches.  Again, we can have a level of denial or ignorance about how much “riches” affect our heart and lives!  Most of us would say we really don’t want to be rich; we just want to have what we “need.”  In many ways though, we really want to have what we want, and we catalogue those things as “needs!”  We don’t necessarily want to be rich, or have all the things that being rich would get us, but the truth be told, we sure want more!

1 Timothy 6:6-8 says, “Now there is great gain in godliness with contentment, [7] for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. [8] But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. ”

Godliness with contentment is supposed to be “great gain.”  Yet, godliness with contentment seems to be nothing but a huge challenge for us!  Are we content with merely having food and clothing?  That is a hard place in our minds to get to!  Can we find a place of contentment with what we have, with a standard of living different than we have known in the past?

We may find ourselves in a situation that God has brought about or led us into, or at least in His sovereignty has allowed to occur.  In that place, can we find contented rest and peace, having just the basics, and not be driven by the desire to have riches?  To have more?  We can be so prone in our heart to desire much more than we have.

Does God have a way for us to deal with this and similar kinds of issues and struggles in our hearts?  I believe He does.  Please, read on!  You will see that God has made a wonderful way for us to live that is transforming and empowering!

Pleasures

Cares and riches and pleasures of life!  We all have a right to pleasures, don’t you think?

Generally speaking, I believe there are three kinds of pleasures in life.  First, there are pleasures that are just simply sinful in and of themselves, with little or no doubt or debate about it.  They may be in some measure pleasurable, but they are also wrong before God without doubt or argument.

Secondly, there are pleasures that are not sinful in and of themselves but they are weights that hinder us in our relationship with God, for various reasons.  They consume and distract us, while interfering with other priorities of life.  God simply says it is a “no” for us!  The list of those kinds of things could go on and on!

Romans 14:23 says, “But whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.”

If our pleasure does not proceed from faith, from a reality that we have heard from God that it is okay and permissible, then it is sin.  It is a good principle to put into effect in our lives!  It may not be outright wrong, a direct violation of God’s laws or principles of His Word, but what does God think about it?

The third are pleasures that are wholesome, suitable, and fit into the priorities of our lives as believers.  God would have no issue with us participating in these!

Pleasures that consume us can be physical pleasures, surely!  But there are many others!  We all have egos that demand stroking!  We want to feel good about ourselves, and want others to think well of us!  We want the pleasure of position, the pleasure of power and control and the pleasure of our esteem being lifted.  We want the pleasure of relaxation, of enjoying our hobbies, etc.  The list could go on and on!

So, God has an issue with the first two pleasures, as they are sinful and often great distractions to our walk and service for Him.  His grace is available to enable us to put these aside, to be done with them, and to find pleasure where it is most appropriate or where we have permission from God to pursue it in a certain way.

Does God have a way to help us change our very heart regarding pleasures of life that pull and hinder us, while keeping us from His very best for us?  Yes, He does!  Read on and we will discover God's grace and how it helps us grow and mature, enabling us to have a noble and good heart that bears the fruit in our lives that God intended!

One last song!

Turn your eyes upon Jesus

look full in His wonderful face

and the things of earth

will grow strangely dim

in the light of His glory and grace!

When we have our eyes upon Jesus, when we are looking full in His wonderful face, the things of this earth will grow strangely dim when they are in the light of His glory and grace.

When we are immersed in His grace during the moment-to-moments of life, we will no longer be drawn down by the situations that cause us worry, the riches we wish we had, or the pleasures we have been convinced are our right.  When we have our eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face and are in the light of His glory and grace, the things of this earth will grow dimmer and dimmer…even strangely so!  We will see the light of His glorious grace leading us on and leading us through to one victory after another!

Changing Our Thinking

We are, without doubt, a product of our thinking!  Proverbs 23:7 says, “For as he thinks within himself, so he is.”  When our thinking changes, our feelings change.  When our thinking and feelings change, our decisions and our will change as well.  God sets out to transform our mind and thinking, so that it is no longer set to the pattern of this world, but is in line with Him and His Word.

“Um, Dad?” our son would say.  For a period of time this was a very common way for one of our eight children to address me every time he had a question.  His Mom and I did not feel that starting a conversation with “Um, Dad” was very appropriate, and not something we wanted him to do as he grew up and began interacting with teachers, supervisors, bosses, etc.

My wife and I had to work diligently to get him to address me as “Dad,” or with “excuse me Dad” at the beginning of his sentence or question.  Needless to say, as it can be with children, it was a bit difficult to get him to stop doing what he had become accustomed to doing, and start doing what we wanted him to do.  You may have experienced this yourself with your children, or as a child yourself!

My wife instituted a little “consequence training,” when she began to insist that if he started a sentence or question with “Um, Dad,” he had to take a ten-minute pause before coming and asking the question again.  Needless to say, it did not take long before he came around!

It may have been said to you, and perhaps as a parent it is being said by you...“Think!”  I know it was said to me when I was growing up…a lot!  Think!  Think before you speak!  Think before you do something!  Think, so you can avoid needless “accidents.”

I wholeheartedly believe that God is trying to change and modify our thinking.  He certainly is a master at “consequence training,” and is trying to get us to see and think about things differently, and to make different and better choices.

Romans 12:2 quoted earlier says, “…be transformed by the renewal of your mind.”  God wants us to think before we speak and act, and think about our attitude and our motives!

What we think within us and what we ponder, often becomes what we believe.  What we think and believe within us greatly affects how we feel.  What we think, believe and feel, often drives our decisions and directly affects our will.  God wants to influence and impact our thinking, including what we believe and how we feel, so that we make the right decisions within our will, and live in a way that is pleasing to Him.  God wants to change our character and our conduct!  He wants to change what we do, and why we do it!  As has already been said, God wants to change and transform us into the likeness of His Son, our Savior, Jesus!  When this happens, God receives the glory!

The word “transformed” in Romans 12:2, means change, transfigure, or metamorphose.  God is after a renovation process in our mind!  He wants us to start as a caterpillar and end as a butterfly!  God wants us to start as a heathen but help us end up holy!  God wants us to start as pagans but end up pure!  God is not nearly as interested with our beginning as He is with our ending!

Several years ago, our church bought a building that had been an American Legion bar.  It was dark, dreary, dirty and dingy.  We began an eleven-week renovation with our own hands to transform this bar into our church.  Some of us still today, more than six years later at the time of this writing, revel in what we did, what we put our hands to, and what that building became as we struggled and toiled to bring about the renovation!

It was a lot of work.  One of our tasks was to redo the floors throughout the building.  We tore up the ugly, old carpet only to discover there was a wooden floor underneath!  It was covered with carpet glue, but it was there.  Many of us took our turn working on the floor.  We tried many different techniques to try and get that nasty glue to come up without damaging the floor underneath.  We tried scraping it with sharp chisels; we tried using heat and scrapers.  We tried stripper solvent.  We even tried a stripping machine, but found we were quickly eating up the stripping pads.  Despite this, we were determined and eventually got the floor in good enough condition that the professionals could come in, do a final stripping, and apply the finish.  Because of our labor and efforts, we have a beautiful wooden floor today, and get many compliments on how beautiful it looks!

God does many things and uses many things to bring about our transformation.  But without a doubt, it is by and through His grace that the process is undertaken.  Grace is the way by which God works within our heart and life to affect that change, and alter how we live for Him.  The better we comprehend what His grace is and cooperate with Him in applying it to our lives, the more profound the change can become!

2 Peter 1:3 (NIV) is so profound: “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.”

Grace is a dominant New Testament theme regarding what God does in our lives and how He does it.  Certainly grace is part of the “everything” we need for life and godliness!  It is a prominent part of the “everything” that we have been given!  It is a portal by which much of the “everything” comes flowing to us!  It is the way by which we enter into and live the abundant life Jesus intended for us.

If all of what has been said to this point is true, then it is vitally important that we understand what grace is, and how it works.  In doing so, we ensure that we receive the full benefits of grace in our lives, and through us into the lives of others in ways that are pleasing to God, and truly, in the end, glorifying to God!

If real and lasting change in our hearts and lives is what God and we are after, grace is the means by which it will happen!

What good is God’s grace to us if we do not understand what it really is and how it really works?

Please endeavor with me to discover God’s grace and how to understand and apply a grace that transforms our lives!

Let the adventure begin!

Chapter 1 - Grace: An Expression of God's Great Love

As we begin our adventure to discover God's grace, let us consider what the Apostle Paul tried to relate to the church he had started in Ephesus.

Ephesians 2:1-10 “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins [2] in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— [3] among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. [4] But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, [5] even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved— [6] and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, [7] so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. [8] For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, [9] not a result of works, so that no one may boast. [10] For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

Love

Look again at verse four and five, and then write them down!  Take a note and store it away mentally!  Remember this; it is of utmost importance and memorize it!  We need to get it rooted down in our hearts, meditate and ruminate on it, until we truly comprehend it and are living it!  God has a great love for us, and for you and I, with which He loved us, and is continuing to love us!

1 John 3:1 (NIV) says, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!”

God has a great love for us, a love He expressed when Jesus came to die on the cross for our sins.  This great love was lavished on us when He allowed us to be called the children of God, and treating us as His children!  This love continues to us in a constant, active manner throughout our earthly lives.

Grace, this grace by which we are saved, is an expression of God’s great love for us as His children!

He has lavished His love on us!  To lavish or bestow is to pour out, express or give profusely in great amounts, or without limit!  God’s great love is being poured out towards us without limit and in great amounts!

It is poured out in the restoration of the relationship that He brought about and so desired.  It is expressed profusely in the way He is willing to have a relationship with us.  One of the ways it is being poured out is in the expression of grace to us by which we are saved and transformed!  A grace coupled with mercy, expressed in kindness and flowing from His great love!

One of the first things we discover in regard to God’s grace is that it is an expression of God’s love for us!

So then, the SOURCE of God’s grace is God, and the CAUSE for God’s grace flowing to us is an expression of His great love!

As we go on to define grace and discover all of what God’s grace is about, whether in salvation, sanctification, transformation, trial or temptation, it always comes back to this incredible reality; God has loved us with a great love, and is actively loving us today with a lavishing, limitless love!  God continues to love us in the midst of all of our situations, whether things are going well or not. He loves us whether we are going through a trial or testing at the moment; He loves us whether we are failing or being a great success.

God’s PURPOSE in expressing His grace to us and in us is to increasingly bring about the life of Jesus in us, to the glory of our Father.

WOW!  We just need to sit back and ponder that!  And, in awe of it, adore Him!  It is truly amazing!

Mercy

A second thing that we learn regarding God’s grace from this passage is that not only is it an expression of God’s love, it is also coupled with God’s mercy.  God’s love expresses both mercy and grace to us, but grace is directly tied to or coupled with God’s mercy, which we will expand upon a bit later in this chapter.

Let’s discover a little of what God’s mercy means, because the better we understand God’s mercy, the better we will understand the definition of God’s grace, the reality of God's love being expressed to us in this manner, and the wonder of His purpose in making grace available to us and being active in our lives!

Mercy is defined as the outward manifestation of pity.

Now let's be careful here!  We generally don’t like the word pity!  We say things like, “Don’t pity me!”  We think negatively of people who are having a “pity party” (By the way, be careful of your “pity parties” that you have for yourself.  They are often self-centered pride parties!  We are bowing to the situation or circumstance, instead of bowing to God.  In the midst of a pity party, we are missing the opportunity to receive from God what we truly need, and instead, are usually looking to receive from others, and often things we really don't need)!

Mercy is defined not just as an outward manifestation of pity, but also of compassion.  It is more than just seeing a need, or the empathy that knows or senses and shares in the feelings of the person in need.  Mercy is pity and compassion with a powerful drive and desire, a willingness and purpose to meet the need!  Yes, God sees us as we are, and sees our needs and weaknesses, not just outwardly, but inwardly. He has such a powerful desire, drive and willingness because of His great love; His lavishing, limitless love, to meet our needs!

Mercy, by definition, assumes a need on the part of the person receiving it, but also assumes the resources are adequate to meet the need on the side of the one providing or offering it.  How profound a thought that is!  Yes, in mercy, God knows our needs and desires to meet them, but the very word assumes the resources on God’s side are adequate to meet the need!  He offers and provides it, packaged in grace!

Not only is the definition of mercy profound, but also consider how much that definition so describes our God and His grace expressed to us!  Our God is a God of mercy!  Look at that definition again and ponder this Scripture: Lamentations 3:21-23 “But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: [22] The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; [23] they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

Yes, His mercies never come to an end, and they are new to us every morning!  A friend recently said to me that the LORD showed him that His mercies NEVER come to an end, because it is always morning SOMEWHERE on this earth every moment of the day!  Even as you read this, it is sunrise and a new morning somewhere. His mercy is there to meet the one awakening and rising to a new day with His mercy!  His mercies NEVER come to an end!  Rejoice in that!

The understanding of the definition of mercy is so very important to our complete and enabling understanding of God and His grace!

God, as an expression of His very being, loves us with a great love, rich in mercy and sees us with great compassion.  He understands exactly what our needs are and has within Himself the resources adequate to meet them, and He reacts by showing us grace!  His grace, an expression of His great love, draws us to what we need, which is from Him, and then He gives and provides it!  It never ends, it is new in each of our mornings!  How awesome is that?

So, we have discovered that grace is an expression of God’s love, coupled with an expression of God’s mercy, and an expression of His great love!  He sees my need and purposes to do something about it, out of the resources He possesses!  How wonderfully wonderful!

Kindness

A third thing that we learn regarding God’s grace is that it is an expression of God’s kindness!

Ephesians 2:7 tells us “…he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

Kindness is defined in Strong’s Bible Dictionary as “moral excellence (in character or demeanor): gentleness, goodness, kindness.”  God shows his moral excellence and His moral character in the gentleness, goodness and kindness He displays.  He displays it all of us in whom Jesus is and what He has accomplished for us.

Kindness is also defined as “the grace which pervades the whole nature, mellowing all which would be harsh and austere. The word is descriptive of one's disposition and does not necessarily entail acts of goodness.”

Grace is the expression of God’s love, coupled with His mercy and kindness being expressed to us!  It is God's very disposition towards us!  God is a righteous judge and if He condemned us, He would be right in doing so.  And yet, in grace, out of love and mercy, there is a mellowing of what could be harsh and austere!

While we were still sinners, without a proper knowledge and understanding of Jesus and what He has done for us, God still came looking for us, calling us, drawing us, and doing His very best to bring us to a place of knowing Him, being saved, and entering into a dynamically different life, the abundant life that Jesus said could be ours!  Out of His great love, mercy, and kindness, God has shown us His grace, even grace upon grace, one blessing after another!  What an incredible expression of God’s love grace is!

Let’s continue to discover what God’s grace is all about!

Throne of Grace

We find some additional basic but vital truths regarding God’s grace in Chapter 4 of the book of Hebrews.

Hebrews 4:15-16 “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. [16] Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

The throne that we are invited to draw near to is called the “Throne of Grace.”  That is amazing, in and of itself!  Please consider and think on that for a moment!  Ponder it, because it is profound!  In heaven, our Father sits upon His throne.  Jesus, our Savior, our Advocate, and our High Priest is seated next to the Father on His throne.  That throne is called the “Throne of Grace.”  It is not called the Throne of Love, the Throne of Mercy or the Throne of Forgiveness.  It is not called the Throne of Holiness, the Throne of Righteousness, or even the Throne of Judgment.  Of all the things that it could have been called, God Almighty, the eternal Godhead, named His throne the “Throne of Grace.”  That alone should make us aware of how immensely important grace is to God, and therefore how critical it is for us to discover what grace is, what it is all about, and how it works in our lives!

The reality that we have access to this Throne of Grace is also profound in the way by which it came about!

Hebrews 10:19-22 says, “Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, [20] by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, [21] and since we have a great priest over the house of God, [22] let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.”

We have been granted access to the Throne of Grace because our High Priest, Jesus Christ, was willing to suffer and die in His flesh, which symbolically was the veil in front of the Holy of Holies.  When Jesus died on that cross, paying the debt of our sin with His blood and suffering in His flesh unto death, the physical veil of the temple was ripped. But His body, the Veil of the Holy Place of Heaven, was ripped so we could have entrance into the Throne Room of God in heaven, the Holy of Holies in heaven, where the Throne of Grace is located.  Along with that, He, as our High Priest brought His own blood and sprinkled it on the Mercy Seat of God where God the Father is seated upon the Throne of Grace.  That, my friend, is incredible!

As a believer in Christ Jesus, we now have access to the Throne of Grace!  Our High Priest sympathizes with us, and has ensured a way into the Throne of Grace for us permanently, because of His sacrifice.  We are now encouraged to, as Hebrews 4:16 and 10:19 says, enter the Holy Place with confidence!  We are children of the Most High God, and we have righteousness in Christ Jesus. We have this access because of our High Priest and His Blood, and we should come into His presence and to the Throne of Grace!

Now, look again at Hebrews 4:16.  It explicitly tells us what we are to receive when we confidently approach God our Father, and Jesus our Savior at the Throne of Grace.  It says we are to draw near so that, “we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

So, in His great love, God expresses to us mercy and kindness through grace, and makes a way for us to come to His Throne of Grace confidently anytime we want, to receive mercy and find grace in our time of need!  What an awesome God!  What an amazing grace!

Time of Need

We have more “need” than we are usually willing to admit, and more needs than we are usually contemplating or fully understand.  Yes, we have overwhelming needs at times in our lives, and we need God’s mercy and grace.  But God wants to be a part of our every need, applying His mercy and grace to it all, no matter how little or how large.

We have needs in our relational situations; from marriage, to children, parents, relatives, neighbors, bosses and co-workers.  We have need of patience to deal with people, forgiveness issues, etc., etc.  It can go on and on.  We have issues with how we deal with money, our ego, loving others, and in being loved.  We have health issues, financial issues, and issues or trials of many, many kinds.  We have temptations.  You have need in all of them.

God cares about every one of our needs.  Most importantly, God has grace for all of them!  It is an expression of His love; it is an outflowing of His mercy; it is a blessing of His kindness; and it is an intention on His part to meet our needs with His means from Heaven and from Himself!

We have access to the Throne of Grace to receive mercy and find grace, and it is a daily privilege, and an all-day-long truth, and a moment-by-moment reality!  While we will occasionally say that we live one day at a time, the truth is we do not just live one day at a time, but rather one moment at a time.  And in those moments, we live one choice or one decision at a time.  Our choices before the choice and our decisions before the decision must be to go to the Throne of Grace and receive mercy and find grace in our time of need!  If we will do that, we will live differently!

There will be moments in our life that we can prepare for, while other moments will happen that we cannot prepare for, but we can find grace for them all!  If God cares about the sparrows and knows the number of hairs on our heads (or lack thereof), then He cares about all our needs.  He cares about all of them and wants us to find from Him the grace we need to deal with every need!

How wonderful a thought this is, that God has made a way that I may now enter His throne room at any time regarding any need, and come before His throne, the Throne of Grace, to receive mercy and find grace in my time of need!

He will see me with mercy…see me with pity and compassion, and with a purpose out of His adequate supply to meet the need.  And how?  He will provide grace!  I can find that grace for every momentary need!

Grace – Source of One Blessing After Another!

John 1:14, 16-17 “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth… [16] And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. [17] For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

John 1:16 NIV “From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another.”

Jesus was the Only One who ever came from the Father, and He came “full of grace and truth.”  From the fullness of His grace we receive grace upon grace, or “one blessing after another.”

Wow!  From the fullness of God’s grace, as children of God, He intends for us to receive grace upon grace, and one blessing after another!  Oh, how awesome a thought!  Grace, an expression of God’s love flowing from His mercy and kindness that he sheds abroad to his children.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we discovered what God’s grace is all about?  What it is; how it works or operates in our lives?  Wouldn't it be fantastic to find ourselves experiencing one blessing after another, grace upon grace, and because of the effect of grace, be changed and transformed in the moment by moment, from glory to glory, into the likeness of Jesus!  Wouldn’t it be awesome if we discovered a grace from God that we could understand and apply to our life that transforms our lives?

Take the time to ponder all these things and meditate upon the powerful truths of God's Word and grace expressed to us!  God’s grace is an expression of His love, coupled with mercy and expressed in kindness, giving us access to the Throne of Grace to receive grace in a continuous way, in all of my needs!  What we have need of, God has the answer to. It is sourced in Him, and He wants to meet the need!  Truly, an amazing grace!

When we fully understand this, when we begin to have faith in God about it, and begin to trust Him that He is acting like this towards us, it begins to transform our lives!

If you have the study guide, take time to answer the questions and prayerfully consider what God is showing you!

After you have done this, let's move on to discover how God’s grace is further defined!  You will be amazed!

Chapter 2 - Grace: Defined

In defining God's grace beyond what we have already discovered, we will begin by looking at three definitions of grace from a secular dictionary, followed by three definitions of grace from Strong’s Bible Dictionary.  The definition from Strong’s is important, as it gives us an understanding of the word from the original Greek used in the New Testament.

Let’s look at three primary definitions for grace from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, which defines grace as:

•  A charming or attractive trait or characteristic; a pleasing appearance or effect; ease and suppleness of movement or bearing.

•  Approval, favor, or privilege.  Disposition to or an act or instance of kindness, courtesy, or clemency.

•  Unmerited divine assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification

Strong’s Bible Dictionary defines grace as:

•  Graciousness of manner or action

•  Acceptable, benefit, favor, gift, grace/gracious, joy, liberality, pleasure, thank(s).

•  The divine influence upon the heart, and its reflection in the life.

Now let's look at these definitions in a side-by-side comparison, looking at one of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary definitions alongside one from Strong’s Dictionary.

First Definition of Grace

Merriam-Webster Dictionary:  A charming or attractive trait or characteristic; a pleasing appearance or effect; ease and suppleness of movement or bearing.

Strong's Dictionary:  Graciousness of manner or action

We can imagine someone who displays grace.  I think of the Queen of England, or a princess; someone who is impeccably dressed, charming or pleasing in appearance, but also with an ease and suppleness of movement.  They move with a proper bearing in all they do while displaying an ease and excellence in the way they speak.  Always proper in their decorum!

The Bible Dictionary reflects much the same when it says, “graciousness of manner or action.”  Certainly God, and in the flesh, Jesus, displays grace.

John 1:14, 16-17 “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth… [16] And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. [17] For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

Is there any doubt that our Lord Jesus was full of grace, displaying graciousness in manner and action?  He was full of grace and displayed it in what He said, how He said it, what He did, and how He did it.

God, in His great love, mercy, and kindness, from the fullness of His grace, always acts with grace in what He does towards us, and in what He says to us.

Let’s compare the second set of definitions.

Second Definition of Grace

Merriam-Webster Dictionary:  Approval, favor, and privilege.  Disposition to or an act or instance of kindness, courtesy, or clemency.

Strong's Dictionary:  Acceptable, benefit, favor, gift, grace/gracious, joy, liberality, pleasure, thank(s).

God desires so very much to show us benefit and favor; to declare us acceptable, and to give good gifts to us!  It is from this definition we get the most common definition in the church for God’s grace – "God’s unmerited favor."

I do not know how many times I have asked a congregation or a person how they would define God's grace, but the answer I get most of the time is “God's unmerited favor!”  No matter how many times I have asked the question to Christians, predominantly their first answer is the same.

Grace is God’s unmerited favor, of that there is no doubt; a favor that we do not deserve.  Gifts from God that are not given based on anything we have ever done, but are simply offered to us based on His great love, mercy and kindness.  Certainly an instance of clemency!

Ephesians 2:4,5,8 says, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, [5] even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved— [8] For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God…"

With scriptures like this and the definition of grace as we see above, it is no wonder that we come to an understanding that it is by grace we have been saved, through faith.  It is not from ourselves and it is not by anything we did or could do.  It was a gift of God; we have simply received and accepted it!  It was an expression of clemency, it was a benefit or favor from God that we did not deserve or earn.

As children of God we must understand that God’s grace being expressed to us in this kind of favor, gifting and blessing, continues on in our relationship with Him.  While initially, His grace is expressed in the gift of our salvation that was unmerited, undeserved and unearned, we need to clearly understand that He continues to show a grace to us, grace upon grace and one blessing after another, as we walk through the balance of our lives.

Let's look at the third definition of grace, the one that will be vital to us discovering God's grace in the chapters ahead!

Third Definition of Grace

Merriam-Webster Dictionary:  Unmerited, divine assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification.

Strong's Dictionary:  The divine influence upon the heart, and its reflection in the life.

This definition of grace is vitally important and the most grossly misunderstood aspect of grace.  In the day-to-day needs of grace that we have, this is by far the most important understanding we need to have about grace.  This unmerited, divine assistance from God is not just for our regeneration, but is also for our sanctification, the complete change in us that God purposes to bring about in us.

Grace – the divine influence upon the heart, and its reflection in the life.

It is this definition, and the understanding and application of what this means, that can most dramatically change our lives!  This definition is found expressed in spiritual truths throughout God’s word, as we will see, that show us how God intends to work in our lives to change and enable us to live for Him in a way that is pleasing and glorifying to Him.  I would encourage you to consider memorizing this definition and ponder it on occasion!

We are purposing to discover God’s grace, what it is and how it works.  This is a key definition to truly discovering God's grace, and understanding and applying it to our lives in a manner that brings about the abundant life Jesus promised, the freedom that the Word guarantees, and the transformed life God is bringing about in us.  This definition and our understanding of it will determine our ability to respond to God’s grace, being able to release it to work within our lives in its intended way.  We must try to understand what is being said here.

This third Biblical definition of God's great grace, “the divine influence upon the heart, and its reflection in the life,” breaks down into two crucial parts.

1. Grace is God Attempting to Influence Our Hearts.

God is divinely working to influence our hearts.  Think about that with a bit of awe and wonder!  He was working to influence our hearts before we came to salvation, and in the moments when we came to salvation.  He is continuing to work to influence our hearts even today.  Even as we read a book like this, God is trying to influence our hearts.  He is trying to move us into a deeper knowledge of Him, towards another truth to believe, another command to obey, another blessing to receive, another promise to trust and another moment of glory as we are transformed a bit more into the likeness of Jesus!

God wants to influence our thinking.  He wants to influence what we believe and why we believe it.  He wants to influence our faith, because without faith we cannot please God!  He wants to influence our thoughts, so much so that He tells us to capture every thought and make it obedient to Christ! (2 Corinthians 10:5)

He wants to influence our emotions and feelings.  We worry about so much.  We have fears and phobias along with anxieties and concerns. We allow feelings to control so very much of our lives.  He wants us to know a peace that transcends our understanding, and guards our hearts and minds! (Philippians 4:7)  He wants us to know comfort in Him and from Him, because He is the God of all comfort!

He wants to influence our will.  He wants us to submit to His will, because it is the very best thing for us.  I often call this our “want-tos.” The truth is, we don’t always want to go God’s way, although God tries to influence our heart and will to want to go His way.

Let me give a brief example.  Most of us would agree that God wants us to forgive.  He does not want us to just forgive some people, but ALL people!  However, we don’t want to.  We will say emphatically that we simply can’t forgive a certain person for what they have done.  We know what God says, but we don’t want to do it, or we kind of want to obey God and His word, but we believe that in the end, we can’t or we won’t.

In this kind of a situation, God’s grace is at work.  God is setting out to apply a divine influence on our heart, purposing to get us to want to!  If He can work on our heart to get us to want to, then He can begin to enable us to actually carry it out.

Sometimes, the very first thing we need to be praying about is for God’s grace to HELP US!  We need to pray for God to change our “want-to” so that we give in and become aligned with His will and His heart in the matter!  Sometimes, before I can forgive, I need God to truly enable me by His grace and divine influence to want to do things His way!

But it does not stop there.  There are two crucial parts to this third definition of grace, “the divine influence upon the heart, and its reflection in the life.”

2. Grace is God Attempting to Bring the

Reflection of His Influence Into our Lives.

What does this mean?  Well, God is not only trying to divinely influence our hearts, He is also very much willing and desiring to give us assistance and power for His will to be acted out in our lives!  He wants His divine influence to be accepted and acted upon, and therefore, reflected into our lives!  He wants to enable right actions in our lives in such a way that we look more and more like His Son, Jesus, and we bring glory to our Father, just as Jesus did.

The silversmith heats up the silver again and again, skimming the dross off each time, until he sees his reflection in the silver.  We are being refined like silver or gold by God, with His intention being that our lives reflect the life of Jesus.  The refiner works it until He sees His own reflection in the silver!  Our Father refines us like silver, until He sees the reflection of His Son in our lives!

What good is it for God to influence our will, but not influence our ways, our works, and our actions as well?  What good is it for God to influence our will, if he does not give us power to carry it out?  How many of us can identify with Paul that we feel like a wretch at times because the very thing we want to do in our heart-of-hearts we do not do, and the very thing that we no longer want to do, we keep on doing!  God has not left us like that, and we need to fully understand and discover God's grace and how freeing and enabling it is!

As He, through grace, influences our thoughts and emotions and then influences our will, when we finally give in within our own will and submit, God will provide more of grace…power and ability…to actually bring it about, so it is reflected into our lives!  I say it this way at times:  Grace is God influencing our “want-tos” and empowering our actions so that the life of Jesus is lived out once again in these moments of our lives, so that both Jesus and our Father are glorified!  Amen!

To continue our example from above regarding forgiveness, imagine if God worked divinely on my heart to help me want to forgive, perhaps for the first time in a given situation.  I begin to acknowledge His Word.  Seeing what it says, I accept that it is the way I should live!  Because of God and for God, I now develop a desire to forgive.  As I submit to God and desire to forgive, I can then further pray and expect that God’s grace will continue to aid me, giving me the ability and power to actually go to someone and forgive them from my heart.

I have experienced it, and perhaps you have as well.  While I was working my first civilian job after leaving the Marine Corps, I got saved.  Not long afterwards, I felt this very strong prompting to NOT sit with my normal gang of people, all co-workers and mostly Christians, but to go to sit with a loner, someone who sat every day by himself off to the side of the cafeteria.

I never would have done that before, and did not do it out of my own “want-to.”  I was being prompted from within by God’s Spirit to do it.  Finally, my will gave way to the Spirit and I went over.  This was NOT something I was comfortable with AT ALL.  But when I surrendered my will to God, something changed during that short walk over to his table.  I suddenly wanted to be there, and I was very comfortable in this normally quite uncomfortable situation.  And I loved him.  I did not know him, I had never met him, yet now I wanted very much to sit with him on break. I loved him with a love that was bubbling up from within that was not my own.  God now owned the moment, and His life was being reflected in and through me, to this man, for His glory.

We can have these kinds of experiences with God and from God that glorify God as we walk in His momentary grace.

Please, in discovering God’s grace for ourselves and for our lives, this is a most important truth that cannot be missed!  It is the key to understanding what God’s grace is, and how it works within our lives!  The balance of Scriptural truths and applications of what grace is about expressed in this book are based upon an understanding of what we have discovered so far:

•  Grace IS an expression of God’s great love!

•  Grace IS a outflowing of His mercy and kindness to HELP me in my time of need!

•  Grace IS the source of one blessing after another

•  Grace IS graciousness of manner or action being displayed by God towards me

•  Grace IS unmerited favor or benefit, a gift, sometimes a one-time event for eternity, and other times a day-to-day occurrence for the moment of my need

•  Grace IS the divine influence upon the heart – God influencing my “want-tos”

•  Grace IS the reflection of God’s influence into my life – God enabling my actions

•  Grace IS what enables us to live differently in this life, and to glorify God!

There are a couple of significant scriptures that exemplify this definition about grace; that reveal it as being a divine influence upon the heart, and an enabling and empowering force that causes God’s will to be reflected into our lives.

First, let’s look at an Old Testament example from Ezekiel.

Ezekiel 36:25-27 says, “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. [26] And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. [27] And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”

This is such a wonderful and powerful Old Testament scripture that prophetically speaks to the reality of our salvation that was coming about through the Messiah, Jesus, our Lord and our Savior!

In our salvation, God has put a new spirit in each of us.  Our spirit was dead in transgression and sin, but it has been rejuvenated in our salvation.  At the moment of our salvation we were born again by the Spirit.  Now, God is purposing to take our heart of stone and turn them into hearts of flesh.  This is the new heart that God has given each of us.  The new spirit came in, in a moment, but the new heart is a work in progress.

Along with that, God says, “I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.”  How very profound and wonderful!  God has put His Spirit within us!  As the New Testament tells us, we are now each a temple of the Holy Spirit!  No Old Testament saint ever had the privilege that we New Testament saints have…the Holy Spirit residing within us on a permanent basis the rest of our days!

This deposit of the Holy Spirit in us is purposed!  The Spirit is there to move us to follow God’s decrees and to be careful to keep His laws!

Wow, this is exciting!  When we set out to discover God’s grace for our every day and our moment by moment, this is a dynamic and exciting truth to realize and grasp.  Grace is God’s divine influence upon our hearts, which comes about by the Holy Spirit within me, who is trying to move and caution me about living as God would want!  Yes, He is working on my “want-tos!”

He is not making us obey, as if we were robots, but He is moving us to obey.  He is not causing us to act beyond our own will and control, but He is helping us to be more careful and cautious about what we choose to do in executing our will.  He is trying to move us in our wills to give way and give in to God's ways above our own…yes, in our will, to submit!  He is attempting to move us to submit ourselves to Him!  A little coaching going on in the moment!

And it doesn’t stop there!  The passage says He is going to take our hearts of stone and make them hearts of flesh.  So, if we will cooperate in our wills and have a pliable heart, then we will begin to have power from within to act differently!  God, through His divine power within us through the Holy Spirit, will enable us to carry out the actions that are pleasing to Him!

Most often than not, the reason we have no power from God to act correctly is because in our will, we do not give way or submit to what the Spirit is trying to move us to do or not do.  If we will not submit or surrender in that moment, then we will not experience His power enabling us to live out the moment correctly in a way that blesses and honors God.  If we will not depend on our willpower, but instead give way to His will, then we will experience His power to live out the moment!

When we give way in our wills to the divine influence of the Spirit, we will find ourselves doing things we never wanted to do, and stop doing the things that we have so desired to quit doing!  All to His glory, because all was enabled by His grace…my desires influenced by His desires…my ability to act enabled by His ability and power!

I remember this distinctly as it began to happen in my life shortly after I was saved.  I realized I was no longer trying to change Dan from the outside in, but that there was something going on where I was beginning to change from the inside out!  It was wonderful, exciting, powerful, and all God!  It made me fall in love with Him even more, and to worship and adore Him with a greater zeal and passion!

For example, I distinctly remember my last drink.  I had been drinking for over ten years, and it had become a habit and addiction for at least 3-4 years.  It became especially controlling over me after I could no longer do drugs in the Marine Corps like I had been doing heavily during the 3-4 years before I enlisted.

Although I had been saved for about nine months, I was continuing to drink. This was despite my going to church at least three times a week, and reading my Bible daily.  With shame I admit that I often went to Sunday night services with a buzz from casual drinking I had done during the afternoon.  But God was working mightily in my life in many ways, even while I was still drinking, and He had His sights set on that, too!

While at the wedding of a friend from work, I went to the bar to get a wine cooler for my wife and a rum and coke for me.  I remember sitting down and getting ready for the first sip of my drink when God’s grace and divine influence went to work on my heart.  I “heard” God, in my spirit, say, “Put it down and be done with it (the drinking), or go back to the man you were.”  I was surprised, and a bit taken back, even shaken.  Again, God said in my spirit, “Put it down and be done with it, or go back to the man you were.”

It was so strong, so clear.  I did not want to go back to the miserable man I was in my past.  In that moment, I gave up my will and submitted to God’s influence on my heart.  As I did, a delight came over me; a joy, and a hope as I put my finger on that glass and slid it as far away from me across the table as I possible could; it had no power over me any longer…I was submitting to a “higher power” now!  I did not want it anymore; I felt no compelling force to have to drink!

I don’t know if my wife remembers that day, but I said to her, “I am done with drinking.”  She said, “For good?”  I said, “For good.  God told me to stop.”  By faith (I had heard God), in a holy fear of God (I did not want to go back to who I had been, or disappoint God), I obeyed!  As I submitted to obey, His grace empowered the moment!  I was delivered!  I have never drank since, by God’s grace!  He enabled me to obey His command; no, not a command of the Old Testament Law of Moses, but a directive from the Holy Spirit, the Law of the Spirit!  It was a Word directly from my Master, Jesus, and from it faith sprang up!  I had heard, I was stirred, and as I gave way to it, I was enabled to obey it!  To God be the glory!  This is how grace works!

So, yes, begin to pray for God to work on your “want-tos.”  Pray for God to affect your desires more and more, and for His strength in the moment to accept His will, and to receive power to live differently.

The ideal New Testament scripture that has this very thought and idea about grace is Philippians 2:12-13, truly one of my favorite scriptures!  If there is any scripture that perfectly portrays this definition of grace, the divine influence upon the heart and the reflection into a person’s life, it is this one!

Philippians 2:12-13 “…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, [13] for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

There it is!  God’s grace defined for us in the New Testament!  That was so awesome and profound, we should pause, go back and read it again!

Grace is God working in us to affect our will and enable us to act according to His good pleasure, His purposes!  How awesome, to think that the God of the universe would save us, then take up residence in us, and from within, purpose to affect our “want-tos.” As we bend and submit to His will, He enables and empowers us to live it out!  All to His glory!  That is truly an amazing grace from an amazing God!

We don’t want to take this lightly.  Paul’s admonition is to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” as he leads in to telling us that God works in this way.  Our salvation was purchased with a precious price, the blood of Jesus.  Now, God wants to affect your desires and empower you to live for His purposes, pleasure, delight, and satisfaction.  We should work this truth into our hearts and live out our lives by His power, with a deep and holy fear of God!

That is why Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."  We did not work to attain our salvations; it was accomplished by Jesus.  However, we were created in Christ Jesus, in our salvations, for the good works that God has prepared in advance for us to do, to walk in.  He will move us towards them and prompt us to do them, and as we cooperate, He will enable them to be accomplished!

Working out our salvations with fear and trembling is so very important because God has so much invested in our salvations.  The blood of Jesus and His suffering that saved us, and the presence of the Holy Spirit, the agent of grace, who is resident in us, is purposing to bring about God’s works through us!  The light of our good deeds will glorify the Father; something Jesus surely wants to keep doing through us! (John 14:13)  We need to ponder all this a bit!

Summed up, it is the reality that God the Father and Jesus want to live out Jesus’ life through us, by the grace of God, which is working in us through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit!  This is what God has destined us for!  Not living to a Law that we cannot fulfill and is powerless to help us, but now living by the Law of the Spirit within us, grace, a divine influence of our heart to go the right way, and the enabling power of God to bring it about in me as I submit to it!  AMEN!

We are discovering much about God’s grace, and it IS exciting, but there is even more!

Chapter 3 - Grace: Must Be Received

Without a doubt, grace is a profound expression of God’s love to us, coupled with mercy and expressed in kindness to us!  As we better understand what grace is, along with how it is defined and shown to us, we will be able to better apply it to our lives and receive the advantage of the benefits God intended for us.

How powerful it is when we understand and receive God's grace in our lives!  A precious gift of God in the moments of our salvation, it is also experiencing the personal working of God in our lives in an ongoing way, enabling us to live differently!  When we sense and know that the Sovereign God of the Universe is moving upon our hearts and lives to bless us, and show us His love, His mercy, and His kindness, it compels us to love Him even more, and desire to serve Him with our whole heart!

But grace must be received!

Ephesians 3:20-21 says, “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, [21] to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”

God is able to do abundantly more in and through us than all we could ever ask or think, and more than we can ever imagine!  He does it by the power of the Holy Spirit, the power that is already at work within us.  When it happens, to Him be the glory, but we must receive His grace in the moment, or we will miss out on what we really need!

We can have something, but not use it!  We can have the potential for something without ever expressing it.  Imagine having a chain saw to cut logs for splitting.  How silly would it be to take it to the woodpile to cut wood and then not start it?  Could you imagine being seen using a chain saw as if it were a hand saw to cut a log?  That would be crazy, wouldn’t it?

If we are born again we have the Holy Spirit within us.  He has taken up residence within us in a miraculous and powerful way!  But if we don’t receive from Him the grace we need for the moments of our “need,” what good is He to us?  What benefit is there if I don’t allow Him to divinely influence my heart?  What advantage do I have if I refuse to allow His power to enable me to live as my Father would want?  How can I be changed into the likeness of Jesus and truly bring glory to God if I don’t receive the grace I need for the moment?  The Spirit is within me, but grace must be received to be productive!

We have a God like no other god.  We have a salvation that is unlike any other salvation.  We have a Holy Book from God that is unique from all other books on the face of the earth.  Think about this and ponder it.  We have a God who not only offers us salvation based upon the Son of God appearing in the flesh, living a completely holy and perfect life, and then suffering and dying on the cross for our sins, but gives us One who comes and takes up residence within us at our salvation, who works to influence our soul, and empowers us to live a different life.  He does not simply demand holiness, but is helping us by working from within to enable us to be holy.  That, child of God, is amazing!  Truly, an amazing God!  Truly, an amazing grace!

God’s Grace

Did you know that the Gospel is called the “gospel of the grace of God?”

In Acts 20:24 Paul says, “But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.”

Did you know that the Gospel is also called the “word of His grace?”

In Acts 14:3 Paul says, “So they remained for a long time, speaking boldly for the Lord, who bore witness to the word of his grace, granting signs and wonders to be done by their hands.”

In the NIV it says, the “message of his grace.”

Not only is the Gospel called the “gospel of the grace of God”, the “word of His grace”, or the “message of His grace”, but the Holy Spirit is called “the Spirit of Grace.”

Hebrews 10:29 says, “How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has spurned the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace?”

While this is a solemn and strong verse, we will not spend time on it, other than to make the point that the Spirit is called “the Spirit of grace.”

One more scripture to consider; Philemon 1:25 says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.”

So, when we believe and receive the Gospel of His grace, the Good News of the grace of God, we receive the Spirit of Grace, the Holy Spirit, into our spirit, so that the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ can be right there with us within our spirit!  By the Gospel of the grace of God we receive the word of His grace, so we can have the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ with our spirit, always!

The Agent of Grace

As mentioned in Chapter 1, the SOURCE of God’s grace is God and the CAUSE for God’s grace flowing to us is it being an expression of His great love!  The DELIVERER of God’s grace to man is Jesus, who came “full of grace.”  God’s PURPOSE for grace is to bring about the life of Jesus in us more and more, in order to bring about the transformed life He has intended for us and bring glory to Himself through this new life we live!

Let’s make sure we clearly understand that the AGENT of grace in our lives is the Holy Spirit.  Yes, it is up to us to receive grace in our time or moment of need, but the AGENT of grace is now right here with us ALL the time!

Again, Ephesians 3:20-21 says, “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, [21] to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”

That God can do exceedingly and abundantly above all we are asking or imagining, there is no doubt!  But He does this “according to the power that works within us.”  What power works within us?  The Holy Spirit!

It is the Holy Spirit who brings the “divine influence” upon our hearts and empowers the reflection of it into our lives.  As Philippians 2:13 says, “…for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

Look at what Ephesians 3:14-17 says, “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, [15] from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, [16] that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, [17] so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith…”

What a wonderful prayer Paul prays for the saints of Ephesus!  We will cover this passage more in depth in chapter five.  However, we must make the point that as verse sixteen indicates in the above passage, it is the Spirit in your inner being (your spirit) that strengthens you with power!  How many of us would be honest and say that we need power in our lives in order to act right?  We all would!

The more power we have in our inner being (our spirit), the more grace is surging into our hearts by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, the more Jesus comes alive in our hearts and therefore, in our actions.  When we are FILLED with God’s grace by the Holy Spirit giving us power in our spirit and bringing Jesus alive in our soul, we will think and feel differently. We discover, when grace comes in, that our desires become more attuned with the will of God and our actions will follow our heart, to the glory of Jesus and our Father in heaven!

You are born-again.  You are a new creation, a new creature and are no longer just the old nature, the old man.  You now are a supernatural being.  You have the presence of God within you, influencing your heart and empowering your life!

The reality is, rather than trying to live by our own willpower in an attempt to fulfill the Law, we are now living by the Law of the Spirit.  As He divinely influences our heart and we submit in our will, His enabling power goes to work and we live out this “new life” we have been given!  It is truly amazing grace!  We no longer live by our will power, but instead we submit our will to God's and then live by His power!  Grace!

Do Not Miss God’s Grace

If all of what we have discovered about God’s grace so far is true, then it is imperative we live by grace, and that we do not miss the grace of God at work within us!  This is what the Word admonishes us in the book of Hebrews.

Hebrews 12:15 says, “See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no ‘root of bitterness’ springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled…”

The NIV says, “See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.”

None of us, no one, should fail to obtain the grace of God or miss it.  It must be received!  God is constantly offering us this incredible expression of His love and kindness, coupled with His mercy.  Through Jesus' blood and death, a way has been made to the Throne of Grace for us to receive grace in our time of need.  Given that God has given grace to us for our benefit and blessing, we should not fall short of it, or miss it or fail to obtain it!  It must be received in my time or moment of need, and I am responsible for making the intended and purposed effort to receive it.

Certainly this has much to do with salvation.  God desires that no one would fall short of His grace in salvation, and that no one would miss the grace of God in the offer of salvation that He has made available to us as a free gift.  God is working, drawing and convicting people.  He is prompting them from within to hear and receive the message.  It is best for them not to miss the offer of this great salvation!

But it means more.  Much more!

God’s grace is at work within us by the Holy Spirit, desiring to both divinely influence our heart and will on a moment-by-moment basis, and enable us to live and act according to His pleasures and purpose.  He sees us in all of our need, and with compassion He is working to see us live our lives differently than we have in the past.  He wants us to live in a way that glorifies Jesus and our Father in heaven.  He desires for us to be transformed into the likeness of Jesus; the life of Jesus being lived out in us and through us.

In this regard, He can do exceedingly and abundantly above all we could ask or imagine by His Power that is already at work within us.  He will empower us to live differently as we respond to grace and give way in our will to His will.  It will happen if we don’t miss or come short of the grace of God.  Grace must be received!

Take time to consider the areas where you truly need the grace of God to work in your life.  Is it someone you need to love such as a stranger or someone very close, like a spouse?  Perhaps it is someone you need to forgive or a habit you have to overcome and put an end to.  Maybe there is a sin that always entangles you that you need to be free from, or a trial or testing in your life that is difficult and hard to endure.  Consider these areas and confess with your own mouth that God’s grace is at work in you during these situations!  Confess that God can and will do exceedingly, abundantly above what you are asking or imaging by His grace, His power, that is already at work within you!  Ask for grace, God’s power through the Holy Spirit, to be applied directly to that place of weakness in your life!  Receive it in the moment and apply it to your life!  Be empowered!

When we miss God’s grace, bitter roots spring up to cause trouble and defile many.  It becomes a moment gone awry.  How many of us could go on and on with testimonies of how we missed the grace of God, and defiled moments of our lives with all kinds of troubles and consequences that we still bear?  All of us could!

Here is an example of grace missed, or us falling short of the grace of God.

Suppose God has been working on your anger issues.  He has been divinely influencing your heart over and over, trying to move you to follow His ways.  You have read it in the Word and heard it on Sunday during the pastor’s sermon.  It came up in your home Bible study.  It comes up again in morning devotions.  In a conversation with dear friends in Christ, it comes up again!

You know He is prompting you to be patient, show restraint, and to show meekness.  Then it happens, you get into a moment with your spouse, your boss, your coworker or your kid, and you miss the grace of God, again!  You miss the divine influence; refusing to submit to God in the moment. Because of this, you don't receive His power to act differently; and instead you go in your own will and way, and act out wrong again.  You fall short of what God intended with the moment of grace; falling short of what could have been, had you taken hold of the grace of God.

Missing the grace of God or falling short of utilizing His grace for our benefit causes trouble.  It causes anger, fighting, wrong things being said and all of those things that causes defilement.  The moment is contaminated and stained.

How many of us live with hurts we have caused in our relationships, which are stained and contaminated by the trouble we have caused because we missed God’s grace?  How many of us are lamenting in sorrow over sin we have committed again…and again…and again, because we have missed the grace of God?  Far too many, I fear.  Sometimes these contaminations and their consequences go on for years, destroying relationships, causing trouble and defiling many!

In the soil of unforgiveness, roots of bitterness easily spring up and defile many!  Unforgiveness and the roots of bitterness that spring up in the person who has been offended will cause all kinds of troubles!  It will defile many!  Deep-rooted bitterness in the heart of a woman, wife, or mother can easily cause trouble for her husband and children, as well as other family members.  It can also cause defilement in her relationships with friends, co-workers and others.

When we fail to respond to the grace of God that was trying to draw us into God’s mercy and love to allow for forgiveness during the moment of an offense or immediately after, bitterness can begin to root in, and begin its tragic process.  Receive the grace of God that prevents bitterness and promotes forgiveness!

Evidence of the Grace of God

Early on in the Church, some unnamed men went to Antioch and began to preach the Good News to the Greeks.  Those who heard began to believe and be saved and come into the Kingdom.  When the Church in Jerusalem heard this, they sent Barnabas to check it out.  Acts 11:23 says, “When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose…"

The NIV says, "…saw the evidence of the grace of God"

There likely is evidence of the grace of God in our lives, even though we often miss it or fail to completely discern it ourselves!

The evidence of the grace of God in our lives is our salvation.  The evidence of the grace of God in us is the transformation that has begun in our lives and God is intent on bringing to completion.

Another evidence of the grace of God is the deliverance experienced from bad habits; the healing we have had from past hurts and the wholeness that has come into areas of our lives where we had crippling hang-ups!  In many ways, we do not speak the way we used to speak, or act the way we used to act. We are not the people we once were!  The evidence is there!

It might be a small amount of evidence so far, but it is there and there is likely more evidence that we are not recalling.  It is God’s intent to continue adding evidence of His grace in our lives in order to build a case that He is a part of our lives!

I would like to encourage you to remain true to the Lord with all your heart and let the evidence of the grace of God grow in your life!  I believe that as you discover what the grace of God is all about, what it really is, how it really works in us and for us, and apply it to our lives more and more; that the evidence of the grace of God WILL also grow more and more!  We WILL live in freedom, we WILL be transformed more and more, and we WILL, from glory to glory, reflect the life of Jesus in our lives more and more!  The evidence will mount!

Remember, He can do exceedingly abundantly above all you’re asking or imagining!  Do not let your past experiences dictate how you will live today!  Live by His Spirit!  Live in the wonder of God’s grace and let your life bring glory to God!  Come to know, understand and experience just how amazing God’s grace truly is!

Remember, Ephesians 3:20-21 says, “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, [21] to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen."

The AGENT of grace is the Holy Spirit and the EVIDENCE of the Spirit at work is grace enabling us to live a new, different life!  The RESULT of grace at work is Jesus and the Father receiving glory!

For the evidence and the results to come, grace must be received!  Let’s practice the art of receiving the grace of God in our lives!  Let’s ask for it, believing we will receive it; and as we sense it working during a particular moment, receiving and responding to it, the enabling, empowering power of the Spirit will bring Jesus’s life alive in our souls and we will live different!

Let's continue on to discover God's grace in all of its different expressions!

Chapter 4 - Grace: In Salvation

Ephesians 2:8-9 says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, [9] not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

We may have heard this Scripture quoted when someone was sharing the Gospel, the Good News with us.  It is very likely that we have quoted Ephesians 2:8-9 ourselves, heard it read from the pulpit or being said to someone being witnessed to.  We have heard it dozens of times, and likely many more!  Probably, we have taken it to simply mean that it is by “God’s unmerited favor” that we have been saved, or some definition like that!  With that, we have taken it to mean it was a gift given of God that we did not deserve or earn, and could not possibly be entitled to.  But does it mean anything more?

In discovering God’s grace, we have learned many things so far.  Hopefully, you are beginning to understand more and more about grace.  We have addressed what grace is, what the source of grace is, who the agent of grace is, what the evidence of grace is, and what its purpose is.  Now, let’s see how we can apply what we have learned to better understand salvation and how it actually comes about “by grace.”

Think about it for a moment.  When we say, “by grace you have been saved,” what do we mean?  Do we simply mean that salvation is a gift of God’s unmerited favor?  Is that what we understand it to mean?  I suggest to you that it means much more!  Let’s discover some more truths about God’s amazing grace!

Please bear with me and re-read this important passage in its entirety.

Ephesians 2:1-9 “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins [2] in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— [3] among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. [4] But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, [5] even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved— [6] and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, [7] so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. [8] For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, [9] not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

For many years I simply accepted that being saved “by grace” meant that it was by God’s unmerited favor that this gift of salvation was offered to me.  I was undeserving, but it was offered to me and even though I did not merit it, I could simply receive it!

As I have read and studied the Word, and in particular grace, I have come to realize that there is much more to it than that.  Much, much more!

Let’s look at the work of grace in salvation, the part that grace, as we are defining it, plays in our coming to salvation in Christ Jesus.  We will look at this in three parts, just as we defined grace in three ways in chapter two.

Grace in Salvation – Part 1

The first Biblical definition we looked at for grace was “graciousness of manner or action.”  In God's actions toward man regarding salvation in general, and in our individual salvation, God was acting in a graciousness of manner or action.

Remember, we said that grace was an expression of God’s love.  It flows directly from His great love for us, as verse four says above.  In the offer of salvation that God has made to man, we must see God as acting in a graciousness of manner and action.  He does this by expressing His great love toward us in Jesus coming to earth to suffer and die on our behalf, in order to purchase our salvation.  We must see God acting in kindness and love, in long-suffering and temperance, while withholding a righteous judgment that we surely deserve.

John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

Yes, it is by grace that we have been saved!  Grace is an incredible expression of His rich mercy, as verse four states.  It was a wonderful outward manifestation of pity and compassion expressed toward mankind.  It was kindness being shown to us, when judgment and condemnation were so deserved.

Remember, we defined mercy as not only assuming a need on the part of the person who receives it, but also the one providing or offering it having resources adequate to meet the need.

What are the needs on our side?  Destitute, deserving of condemnation, objects of wrath, having acts that were like filthy rags on our own, and by our own efforts and works, we were and are sunk!  We are worthy of judgment!

What are the resources on His side?  Love, mercy, kindness, tolerance, long-suffering, a desire for a relationship, intimacy and reconciliation, wanting to forgive, and to bless us with every blessing!  It was the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness, which provided salvation while we were all still sinners.  YES, YES, YES…it IS by grace we have been saved…and remain saved and secure.

“Grace…grace…God’s grace…grace that is greater than all of our sin!”

Grace in Salvation – Part 2

The second part of our Biblical definition of grace was “Acceptable, benefit, favor, gift, grace/gracious, joy, liberality, pleasure, thank(s).”  This is where we get the idea within the word grace that it is a gift from God, and certainly a gift to us that was without merit or based on anything we had done!

Salvation is a gift received by grace.  Not only that, out of God’s great love, mercy and kindness Jesus came to purchase salvation on behalf of the whole world.  It is then offered to us as a free gift.  This is what we call “God’s unmerited favor.”  Giving a good gift, based solely on His love.  Grace.

Ephesians 2:8-9 “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, [9] not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

We are not saved by our works or our efforts. We can never be good enough to be saved or overcome the sin we had committed.  It is by grace we have been saved, it is the very gift of God!

Romans 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

But there is a greater and exciting part that we may be unaware of.  This third part correlates to the third definition of grace, which in itself, is broken into two parts.  This is the part of grace applied to us in salvation, which most are often not aware of.

Grace in Salvation – Part 3a

The third part of our Biblical definition of grace is “the divine influence upon the heart, and its reflection in the life.”  Here is the part that some are either unaware or vaguely aware of.  Hopefully it will be clearer, and we will better understand God’s grace in regard to our salvation.

Ephesians 2:8-9 “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, [9] not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

Grace is not just God showing graciousness in His manner or action, deciding that He so loved the world that He would send Jesus.  It was not just His love, mercy and kindness being displayed in Jesus coming and laying down His life on our behalf.

It is not just the offer of a free gift of salvation, although it certainly is a gift and blessing, which we never could have attained by our own works; a gift that was unmerited, a favor or blessing we were not deserving of.

Grace is also God working to divinely influence our hearts in our salvation.  Then, when our wills submitted, surrendered, gave in and gave way to God, He caused the work He was doing in us to be reflected into our very lives!  This is wonderful, awesome, and profound!

God, in His great love, not only was gracious in providing the gift and showing love and mercy to us by offering us a gift we did not deserve, but He goes on to influence our heart to accept the gift.  When we accept the gift, He does a work of grace in us once again, causing us to be born-again and setting His power to work within us to reflect what He has done in our life!

Yes, it is by grace that we are saved through the divine influence God brings to bear upon the heart.

How does He divinely influence our heart in salvation?

First, He draws us.

John 6:44 says, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.”

Have we ever read it?  Do we remember it and revel in it?  This is a personal, loving God who desires reconciliation of the relationship between Him and man.  Not only does He send Jesus, full of grace and truth, but He draws us to salvation.  Yes, by grace we have been saved.  God the Father, through the working of the Holy Spirit within our spirit, applies a divine influence to the heart, drawing us towards Him.  This is without a doubt, grace in action!

Not only does the Father draw us, but secondly, He enables us to believe!

In John 6:65 Jesus said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”  The NIV says, “no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him.”

Imagine…He will move upon our hearts, influencing them and drawing us to Himself. He does this by drawing us to someone who will share the Gospel with us, drawing us into the Word of God to read and hear what it says and drawing us into church, where we can hear the preaching of the Message of Grace; all the time and through all of this, stirring up within us the faith to enable us to believe!

Lastly, the Spirit will bring a conviction upon our hearts.  John 16:8-9 says, “And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: [9] concerning sin, because they do not believe in me…”

He will draw us, enable us to believe, and He will convict us in regard to our sin, because up until that point, we had not believed and trusted in Jesus.

Now, that does not mean that He makes us believe!  No, not at all!  He has given us free will and He respects it.  But by grace and the divine influence upon the heart that draws us to Him and stirs faith within us, and convicts us, He enables us to believe!  He will not make us believe, but He will move us to believe!

If this is true, then how can we boast?  We can’t.  It was not our own works that bought us salvation, but the work Jesus accomplished on the cross.  It was not us who decided to pursue God the Son; but it was God the Father, through the Spirit, who was drawing us to the Son!  It was not our own intellectual assent that brought us salvation, not just our own ability to decide.  It was by faith we were saved; faith that comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ, the message of grace, the Gospel of grace.  A faith stirred within us by the Spirit in response to God’s word!  GOD enabled us, He ensured we HEARD and stirred faith within our soul!  How?  By the agent of grace, the Spirit of Grace!  And to God, therefore, be the glory!

YES, we had to believe. We had to express our will to want…to trust…to say yes and to receive.  God did not bypass our will, our volition, and force us to accept His gift, but He certainly influenced it!  Give God His due and the credit He deserves; give Him the glory!  You are saved by grace!

His heart expressed in love, mercy, and kindness. His heart expressed in a gift, unmerited and undeserved, but nevertheless offered. His heart expressed in an effort to draw me to Him and the gift He was offering!  His heart expressed in giving me the ability, the faith, to receive Him!  This is wonderful!  It is an amazing grace expressed to us!

Where does the Spirit, working on behalf of the Father, draw us and point you?  What does He enable within us?  He enables us to believe and trust in Jesus!  The Father, through the work of the Spirit, draws us to believe and trust in Jesus, because He is the only way to be reconciled to the Father!

In John 14:6 it says, “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’”

No one comes to the Father except through Jesus, and no one comes to Jesus except the Father draws him; and the Father draws no one, unless the Holy Spirit convicts and stirs faith within the individual, enabling them to believe.  And all of that, by definition, is called grace!  We have nothing to boast about in it!

It is the graciousness of manner or action on God's behalf, expressing His great love for us, which brings about the purchase of the gift of salvation!  It is the unmerited favor of God that offers the gift of salvation to each and every one!  It is the grace of God that is moving upon us by the Holy Spirit to draw and stir us from within, to divinely influence the heart to believe and receive what has been offered!  Hallelujah!

Ephesians 2:8-9 “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, [9] not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

Oh, how we owe God a debt of love for the love He has shown us!

Grace in Salvation – Part 3b

The third part of our Biblical definition of grace has a second part to it.  It says, “the divine influence upon the heart, and its reflection in the life.”

When, from God’s grace, Jesus comes and purchases salvation, that is an expression of God’s grace.  When this salvation is offered to man as a free gift, that is an expression of God’s grace.  When the Father draws, enables and convicts us through the working of the Spirit to come to a point of volition, of decision, in regard to this message of grace; that too, is an expression of God’s grace.

It does not end there.

If we respond to God and to His drawing, if we are enabled to believe with the faith stirred in our hearts by Him, and if we respond to the conviction that weighs upon our conscience, then God’s grace is bringing a reflection, a working out of His great love into our lives.  If, in our volitions, we decided to believe, receive, and to put our faith in Christ, trusting Him and Him alone, then God’s grace is bringing about a reflection of his mercy and kindness into our lives by that same grace, by the working of the Spirit in and upon our innermost beings, our spirits!

In that very moment, our spirits are regenerated!  They are instantly and miraculously made new!  We are, in that instance, a new creation – not a finalized product, but very different within, with potential for great change!  As Ezekiel said, we have a new spirit within us now.  His Spirit within us, and God setting in motion what will change our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh!

In John 3:5-8 (NIV) Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. [6] Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. [7] You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born again.' [8] The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

By Grace You Are Justified

Titus 3:4-7 “But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, [5] he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, [6] whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, [7] so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”

As Christians who understand what God’s Word declares regarding being saved, we have to further understand that there will be people who die and go to hell because they have not received Christ as Savior.  Unfortunately, they will be without excuse because God will be able to show that He was working on them and in them through grace, seeking to draw and enable them to believe, while convicting them.  It will be shown that in their will, they rejected Christ because they rejected the working of the Holy Spirit that would have brought them to the Father through Jesus Christ, had they allowed it to happen through their will.

Justified.  When we believe, we are justified by His grace.  Justified means we are acquitted and freed.  We are declared to be not guilty and innocent before God.  We are, in that moment, set free from the condemnation that had been declared over us before we put our trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross!  As the Bible says, in that moment of believing and trusting, we crossed over from death to life!

Grace brings about a washing of rebirth, a renewal by the Holy Spirit, and we become heirs with a hope, because we are justified by grace!  It is reflected into our lives by grace!  This reflection into our lives does not just include our standing before Him, but the supernatural change that has occurred within us as we are born again, and then the ongoing change that has been set in motion.

Romans 3:21-24 says, “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— [22] the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: [23] for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, [24] and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus…”

His grace justifies us freely, through redemption!  Amen!  We are redeemed.  The payment that brings about our freedom!  We are free, and justified freely by His grace, so that we can live life and live it more abundantly!

Again, we have nothing to boast about.  To God be the glory, for the things He has done!

Let’s continue to discover more about God’s grace.

Make sure you take the time to answer the questions in the study guide, and to ponder and meditate on the great things God has done in providing salvation, and the joy of knowing that you have come to that place of faith in Christ by His grace.

Chapter 5 - Grace: Empowered By The Spirit

We all lament about how we are and what we are like.  We want the power to live differently!  There are things in our lives we have wanted to stop doing, and things we have either wanted to do, or wished we could do them better, but have failed at.  Even if we have been in Christ for a long period of time and grown in many ways, there are very likely still things that should be changed in us, and we know it.  Some things we may be frustrated with, and have given up on ever seeing them changed.  How many of us know the reality of having a desire to do what is right, but not having the knowledge or ability to carry it out?  I dare say that most of us have that reality in our lives in some measure!

Paul shares that lament when he says in Romans 7:18-24, “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. [19] For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. [20] Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. [21] So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. [22] For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, [23] but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. [24] Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

The hope offered by God is that through grace we can live differently and be delivered from this body of death!  We can be free!  We can be transformed!  We can live this new life promised by God in Scripture.  From the fullness of what Jesus was doing, accomplishing, and setting in motion, we have all received grace upon grace!

John 1:16 says about Jesus, “…from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace."

When we are born again and washed in rebirth as we discussed in the last chapter, we receive the Holy Spirit within us, the very Agent of Grace, the Spirit of Grace, to enable grace to be an operative agent within us in an ongoing way.  This is the hope we have of having the ability to actually carry out living differently, and honestly, the only hope we have!  If left to ourselves, we will fail.

From the fullness of His grace, we receive grace upon grace, or “one blessing after another.”  The Holy Spirit is within us to empower us to live the abundant life, and live in the freedom Jesus has purchased, helping us receive “grace upon grace,” and one blessing after another!

Yes, we are promised, and have expectation of a new life.

2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”  NASB says, “…he is a new creature…”

Likewise, Romans 6:4 says, “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”

Lastly, Ephesians 4:22-24 says, “…to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, [23] and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, [24] and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”

This new life, which begins at salvation, starts with the Holy Spirit touching and affecting our spirit with God’s grace.  We are a new creature, a new creation!  We have the promise of being able to live a new life, a life lived for God.  We can put on the new self, created after the likeness of God!  This new life is the life of Christ being made manifest in our lives!

Look how Paul gives salutation or final greeting in his Epistles:

Philemon 1:25 "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit."

Galatians 6:18 "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers. Amen."

2 Timothy 4:22 "The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you."

The promise inferred in these Scriptures by Paul is that the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ would be with our spirit!  He would be right there with us, and within us!

We are going to take a look at Romans 8:5-16 and see how the Holy Spirit makes Jesus present in our lives and how the Spirit brings grace alive to our spirit.  It is the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ being with our spirit that enables this new life!  His grace with us!

The Holy Spirit In You

Romans 8:9 says, “You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.”

This is simple enough.  If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.  However, if we are born again of the Spirit, then the Spirit of God dwells in us, and that Spirit of God is the Spirit of Christ; and remember, He is also called the Spirit of Grace!

The Holy Spirit is said to be a seal of the ownership of God in our lives (2 Corinthians 1:22, Ephesians 1:13, 4:30).

This should be an astounding and amazing truth, which should bring a sense of awe to us. To think that God would take up residence in man as we have said earlier.  Each one of us have become temples of the Holy Spirit.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, [20] for you were bought with a price.  So glorify God in your body.”

We should have a sense and understanding that we are no longer our own, and are no longer on our own!  God has bought us with a price, and that price was the blood and suffering of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Because we are now His, He is in us.  We have received the Spirit from God.  He is the Spirit of Grace and the Spirit of Christ.  He is a seal, and a pledge or earnest from God.  With all that in mind, we are charged to honor God with our bodies.  This does not mean just our physical body, but the whole of who we are in our flesh, our physical being and our soul.  It is our mind (our intellect, our every thought), our emotions (every feeling of the heart), and our will (our volition, our ability to decide and make determinations).  It all belongs to Him, and it should all be used to honor and glorify Him.

If we ever say that Jesus will be with us and that we have Him in our heart, it is because we now have the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit, residing within us, purposing to transform us and make the life of Jesus come alive once again through us.

The Spirit of Sonship

Romans 8:15 says, "For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, 'Abba! Father!'

Romans 8:15 in the NIV says, “…you received the Spirit of sonship.”

The Word says that before we came to salvation, we were aliens and strangers to God and His family (Ephesians 2:19).  But now, we are fellow citizens with the saints and members of God’s household!  We are the children of the Most High God, and with the Spirit of Christ within us, we have received the Spirit of sonship!

Now, as we live by the Spirit, we should keep in step with the Spirit (Galatians 5:25). We should begin to walk in the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23); in the gifts of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:7-11), and in the weapons of spiritual warfare (2 Corinthians 10:4) with our full armor on (Ephesians 6:10-17)!

With the Spirit within us, we can become aliens and strangers to this world and abstain from fleshly lusts that wage war against our souls (1 Peter 2:11)!

Be Controlled By The Spirit

“You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.” Romans 8:9 (NIV)

Romans chapter 6 tells us now that we are in Christ, sin is no longer our master.  I have a new master to obey, and that I can obey.  Not only should I obey Him, but by the Spirit I have also been empowered to obey Him.

He will not make us into robots.  We still have a choice to submit ourselves to being “in the flesh,” and possibly do what Satan is tempting us to do, and be controlled by our sinful nature; or we can give way to being and walking “in the Spirit.”

Being “in the flesh” is like submitting and being controlled by a boss.  We are either going to be controlled by our bosses or ourselves.  We will either give way to his directions and his commands, or to our own.  It is the choice of our will which determines if we get the benefit and blessings of a paycheck and benefits or rather we would rather trade that and give in to our sensual pleasures.

If the Spirit of God lives in us, then we should be controlled by the Spirit.  We should be “in the Spirit.”  In other words, we should be giving way to the Spirit’s desires and directions in an ongoing way!  Letting the Spirit of Grace, by grace, guide, lead, and empower us.

He has purposes for us, and we should allow ourselves to be controlled and directed by Him, staying in step with Him, submitting to Him and Him alone, moment by moment.

As has already been said, the Spirit of Grace is the AGENT of Grace, and is the one who is striving to move us to obey, to work from within to will and to act according to God's desires!

We Have An Obligation

Romans 8:12-13 says, “So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. [13] For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”

The NASB says, “…we are under obligation, not to the flesh…”

We are now under obligation to the Spirit who is within us.  The Spirit of Grace is bringing divine influence upon our hearts, and desires to see it reflected into our lives.  The Spirit is working from within to will and to work, to will and to act according to God’s good pleasure, and we have an obligation to live by the Spirit!

Free will is still at work.  We have to make a conscious decision to submit to the Spirit, and not live according to the flesh.  Like submitting to our boss, we must conform our will to His and do the work He wants done, as well as follow and execute His directions, purposes, will, and whatever else he asks us to do.

He Gives Life To Our Mortal Bodies

“But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. [11] If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.” Romans 8:10-11

The NASB says, “…yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness…”

The same Holy Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead is living in us and wants to bring about grace in us in an on-going way.  He wants to give everlasting, eternal, and supernatural life to our mortal bodies.  He wants to give God-life, abundant life to the wholeness of our being, through His Spirit who lives in us!  He wants to reign in every portion of our soul, and as we submit to Him, the Father of our Spirit, the one who is with our spirit, He will affect the whole of our soul.

Evidence Will Be There

Romans 8:13 says, “For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”

The Spirit has a purpose in being within us. He wants to bring divine influence to our hearts and have it reflected in our lives.

As we give way in our will and allow our life to be controlled and directed by the Spirit, we will be enabled and empowered to put to death the misdeeds of the body…and live!

This is a key to victorious living in Christ.  It is by grace, by the Spirit of Grace and of Christ, that I can be divinely affected in my will to live and act differently.

There is power from within to live a life pleasing to God.  We can put to death the misdeeds of the body by the Spirit!  This is grace at work, that glorifies the Son and the Father!

If we get into a rhythm, a step, or a cadence with the Holy Spirit, and sense Him moving and influencing us to do or not to do something, and we are quick to respond in our wills to His, submitting to God in the moment, we will experience power to put to death the misdeeds of our flesh!  It is an exhilarating and exciting experience to live!

If we are struggling with sin, temptation, and wrong thinking, this is a key to our freedom.  It may also bring about the understanding of why there is a pattern of failure in our lives. We are missing the grace of God!

Romans 8:6 states, “For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.”

The mind of sinful man is death, but “the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace.”

Those who finally learn to give way to God’s grace, and give way to the moving of the Spirit upon their lives, will be controlled by the Spirit, not by their flesh!  The Spirit’s presence will be evident in them because they will be living their life for God, and they will have peace.  It will be evident because they will be putting to death the misdeeds of the body by grace, by the life of the Spirit within them.

Romans 8:16 states, “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God…”

All the things that the Spirit brings about in our lives are evidence of His presence within us.  It will be reflected into our lives in an ongoing way.  When our spirit sees the evidence of what the Holy Spirit is doing and accomplishing, we will know more and more, and revel more and more, in the fact that we are God’s children!

Romans 8:15 says, “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’”

When we are moving, living and having our being in God like this, the Spirit of Grace within us will cause us to cry, “Abba, Father!”  Gratefulness will exude out of us and adoration and praise will be on our lips.  We will love like never before, and love more like God!  We will walk in humility, and have an even greater desire and willingness to serve and to be poured out for God.

Grace!  The AGENT of grace is the Holy Spirit, and through the Him we are empowered to live a totally different life!  It is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Grace, who divinely influences the heart and brings about the reflection of Christ’s life into our lives!

Chapter 6 - Grace: Transformed from Within

Discovering God's grace will help us to understand better what God's grace really is, how it works, and how it can truly benefit and transform our lives.  Grace is more than just God's unmerited favor, it is His divine influence upon our hearts and the reflection of it into our lives as we are learning!  It truly is God working from within, empowered by the presence of the Spirit to affect our will and enable our actions, enabling us to live the life He desires!

The agent of this wondrous power at work in our lives is the Holy Spirit, who is the enabling and empowering force that can transform us from glory to glory, into the likeness of our Father's Son!

Consider the following passage of Scripture as we prepare to look at how grace enables this transformation from within, from the inside out, by the power of the Holy Spirit!

Paul is praying for the Ephesians when he says in Ephesians 3:14-21, “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, [15] from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, [16] that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, [17] so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, [18] may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, [19] and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. [20] Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, [21] to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”

We have tried and failed on our own.  Before and after our salvation, we have tried to live our lives by our own will power and most of us have experienced failure, at least in many or even most areas of our lives.  We have desired and determined to lose weight, to stop drinking or smoking, to start exercising, to forgive the hurts of the past, to truly love people that are so very difficult to love, and so on.  After trying to change ourselves from the outside in we have discovered it is very difficult, if not impossible to do.  We certainly have to admit that we are not like Jesus in many ways.

These failures are particularly frustrating because the scriptures seem to promise change.  The Word admonishes us to live a different life, a new life; and while we might see change and improvement in some areas of our lives, we remain frustrated, convicted, condemned and unsatisfied with our inability to truly live as we believe we should.

That life is attainable!  God's grace is purposed and intended to bring it about in us!  It is the result of the working of the Holy Spirit within us, bringing about the transformation that He desires from the inside out, and that we have had a desire to see happen.

As we go on, we will see how we can begin to better apply the grace of God in our lives to bring about that change in us.

Strengthened With Power

Ephesians 3:16 says that we are strengthened with a power from within!  "…that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being…"

Paul's prayer as he kneeled before the Father was that out of God's glorious riches, He would strengthen the Ephesian believers with power, through His Spirit, in their inner being.  How glorious this is!  How awesome!

God's glorious riches are endless and beyond our imagination!  They certainly include what we have already spoken about in previous chapters:

•  It is out of God’s glorious riches that we are strengthened with power!

•  God’s grace is an outflowing of His great love, His mercy, and His kindness!

•  God desires and determines to give us power in our lives to live right, and to love right!

•  This power is His life affecting our hearts, and enabling our lives, through the presence of the Holy Spirit in our spirit, our inner being!

•  God, working from within, to will and to act!

Power Comes Through The Spirit

We addressed this profound reality that the Agent of Grace is the Holy Spirit.  We are empowered by the Spirit, and the evidence for it will manifest itself in our lives.  In this chapter we see how the Spirit actuates that power into our lives, so we are enabled and empowered to live differently!

2 Corinthians 3:7-11 says, “Now if the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses’ face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, [8] will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory? [9] For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory. [10] Indeed, in this case, what once had glory has come to have no glory at all, because of the glory that surpasses it. [11] For if what was being brought to an end came with glory, much more will what is permanent have glory.”

The ministry of the Spirit in our lives is glorious!  It is incredible, it is supernatural!

Imagine, when Moses received the Ten Commandments and the Law, he came down from that encounter with God with a glory glow on his face that was so bright the Israelites could not even look upon him.  If that is what happened when Moses went up and came down, imagine what can happen to a man when the Spirit of the living God is right inside of him!  This is a ‘surpassing glory,’ a glory that surpasses the glory of what Moses experienced!

The reality is that we are a new creation. We are supernatural beings…our natural is now indwelt by the Holy Spirit!  He is in us and trying to strengthen us!  He is working to create in us the very life of Jesus Christ, so the world can see the likeness of Christ displayed through our very lives!  The potential for love, for life, holiness, righteousness, and for right living before God is abundant; it is surpassing in glory!

The Strengthening By The Spirit Begins in

Our Inner Being…Our Spirit

Ephesians 3:16 states “…that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being…”  It is in your inner being, your spirit, that the Holy Spirit strengthens you with power.

At the moment of our salvation, the Holy Spirit brings about our regeneration.  Our dead, decrepit, sin-sodden spirit is renewed, regenerated, washed from sin and given new life. We then become ‘born-again,’ not from our mother's womb, not from water and flesh, but from the working of the Spirit.

He then takes up residence in us.  How do we fully or adequately explain that?  It is certainly part of the mystery of God and His workings, but the reality is that He is there!  Through His presence, we can be empowered and enabled to live new lives and experience the effect of His presence and working…grace!

We have already seen that Paul repeatedly says, “May the Lord be with your Spirit.”  We have already seen that the Spirit of Christ is in us, and with us, causing the prophecy of Ezekiel to be fulfilled in us!  We must believe and truly accept and receive the reality and benefit of what the Word says; that greater is He who is in us, than he who is in the world!  Greater is He who is in us than the devil or any demon trying to influence and tempt us!  Greater is He who is in us than our sinful nature that is easily led away and led astray!

This strengthening with power is the root cause that enabled the Fruit of the Spirit to be born in my being!  This strengthening with the life of Christ in us is the effect of the Spirit working upon our spirit, beginning the transformation of our whole soul and life!  The Spirit’s purpose is to work at changing our thinking, our emotions, our will, our purposes, and our motives in order to make everything sanctified, cleansed, and made righteous before God!

The imagery of John 15, where he says we are a branch that is now grafted into the Vine, which is Jesus, is very powerful.  What we receive from intimacy with Jesus is the life giving power of the Holy Spirit flowing into us like the sap or water that flows up through the vine or trunk to the branches.  It is that sap that sustains the branch, and causes fruit to grow.

This strengthening with power is the very grace of God being brought to bear on our human spirit, with the result being the transformation of our soul through the enabling of our new life in Christ!

We need to be strengthened in power…we need to seek the Spirit, and the strengthening He brings…we need this intimacy with Jesus, the benefit of fellowship with the Son of God… in humbleness we need to declare our need for God…and to what purpose?  What purpose is carried out in our spirit by this strengthening with power by the Spirit?

Christ Dwells In Our Soul

Ephesians 3:14-17 says, “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, [15] from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, [16] that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, [17] so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith…”

The purpose of the Spirit strengthening our spirit with His power is to enable Christ to dwell in our hearts!

This expression, “…in your hearts…” in verse 17 refers to our souls.  Our souls are made up of three parts; our mind, our will, and our emotion.  Our heart in this regard is our ability to think and reason, our ability to have emotion and feelings, and our ability to determine our choices and express our free will of our own volition.

Jesus wants to dwell in all of our being, if we will let Him, by the presence and power of the Spirit, by the grace of God; with His grace acting upon our spirit, affecting our soul!  If the Spirit is going to bring about a change in us that continuously transforms us into the likeness of Jesus, He has to move upon our spirit and soul.  We then have to be willing to submit to this moving and decide to obey and follow God's ways.  When we do, the Spirit will enable us to actually carry it out!  What hope this gives us!

Let's look at how the Spirit strengthening our spirit begins to bring about Jesus dwelling in our heart!

Christ Dwells In Our Minds

2 Corinthians 10:4-5 says, “For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. [5] We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ…”

As the Holy Spirit strengthens us with power in our spirit, the result will be the mind of Jesus dwelling in our mind and controlling our thoughts more and more as we yield to him.

Satan is a liar, and the father of all lies.  He desires to prevent us from having a knowledge of God and from truly experiencing the fullness of God in our lives.  He does this by setting up arguments and pretensions in our soul, mind, and in our old flesh!

Countering lies with truth is very important.  But sometimes, countering the power of demonic forces coming against you must be accomplished by the divine power of God working as a weapon we fight with, enabling us to take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ!

The weapons we fight with are not carnal, fleshly, human…they are spiritual…and for what?  For the tearing down of arguments and pretensions that keep us from a knowledge of God!

As the Spirit strengthens us with power in our spirit, part of the effect is that our thinking begins to change.  It is with divine power, the power of the Holy Spirit strengthening our spirit, that we can now take our thoughts captive and make them obedient to Christ.  We can then allow Jesus to dwell in and have lordship over our thoughts.

As we have already said, having a mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace!  When we are strong in our spirit through the power of the Holy Spirit, some thoughts are simply not there anymore.  Others, if they rise up, are ignored, rejected, and put down immediately because they are not of God and have no benefit to the Lord or His Kingdom.  They are taken captive and made obedient to Christ.  These thoughts are put under the Lordship of Christ, and are not thought or dwelled upon, because Christ would not dwell upon them.

Christ Dwells In Our Emotions

When Christ begins to dwell in our heart and soul through the presence and power of the Spirit, He not only begins to dwell and affect our mind, but our emotions as well.

Philippians 4:4-7 says, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. [5] Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; [6] do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. [7] And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

When we are being strengthened with power by the presence of the Holy Spirit, Jesus begins to take up residence in our emotions.  He begins to guard the thoughts in our minds and the emotions of our hearts.  We are no longer apprehensive, fearful and troubled.

When our minds and our hearts are guarded in Christ, when all of our thinking and ponderings are resting in the trust we have in Christ, then faith wells up in us.  Jesus is dwelling in our heart through faith.  We are quickened to, and reminded of all He has said and promised in regards to us, and of our relationship with the Lord.

Jesus is dwelling in our hearts, and is affecting our faith.  It settles our emotions, we are at peace and it stomps out fear, anxiety and worry!

Christ Dwelling In Our Will

When the power and presence of the Holy Spirit is empowering our spirit through that spiritual connection, Jesus begins to be manifested and dwells in our heart. By affecting our thinking and emotions, our wills are far more likely to be compelled to give in to God and His ways.

In Philippians 2:12-13 it says, “…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, [13] for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

How we think and feel guides us in what we will do, what we will choose, and how our “will” will be expressed!  When the Spirit is giving our spirit strength and moving us to obey God, and our thinking and emotions are being impacted by the reality of Christ guarding our heart and mind, we are far more likely to yield our will to God.

Those of us who grew up in the world (not knowing Christ, not being saved, not being born again,) know what it is to struggle with our will!  We are not alone.  I have raised enough children to know that there is a sinful, old man nature at work within them as well!  All of us fall short of the glory of God, unless we walk in the grace of God!

God has His good purposes for us in each and every situation of life.  When we are strengthened with power by the Holy Spirit in our spirit, Jesus dwells in our hearts.  By the empowering of the Spirit, God begins working in us to affect our will, and in doing so, affects our conduct according to His good purpose.  Jesus takes up residence in our heart, thoughts, emotions and will.  As our wills give way to the Holy Spirit, we are much more likely to give way and adjust our conduct to perform what the Lord would have us to do!

We see the purpose of God’s Spirit strengthening our spirit!  When we are strong in the Spirit, and strong in grace working on our will, it will begin to affect our actions! We will, by the Spirit, begin to be able to put to death the misdeeds of the body!  What glory this begins to bring to our God!

We Grasp The Love Of Christ

God has a wonderful plan.  Each of us as believers in Christ are heaven bound.  When we die we will be in His presence!  Simultaneously, the LORD has plans that are coming to fruition throughout the world.  In the meantime, while we are still here the LORD wants to have an intimate relationship with us, and bless us with an abundant life!  He wants us to know Him, have a personal relationship with Him, and live for Him in a way that glorifies the Son and the Father, even as we live in this fallen world.  God wants us to know and experience the profoundness of His love while we live in this world.

Ephesians 3:17b-21 says, "…that you, being rooted and grounded in love, [18] may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, [19] and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. [20] Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, [21] to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen."

The LORD wants us to grasp how wide, how long, how high and how deep the love of Christ is for us.  The word “grasp” means “to lay hold of so as to possess as one's own, to appropriate.”  When we are rooted and established in God’s awesome expression of love to us, we will begin to truly lay hold of and possess as our own, this wide, long, high, and deep love of Christ!

We Are To Know This Love

That Surpasses Knowledge

There is a love that surpasses knowledge…that doesn’t make sense and we cannot fully explain, or fully grasp.  We may not be able to explain it entirely, but we can experience it!  Yes, we can know and experience this love.  It is overwhelming, deep and powerful.  He loved us so much, and showed such mercy for us, wanted so much to show us kindness that not only did He send Jesus to the cross to die for us, He sent the Holy Spirit into us so that we could be transformed, changed, empowered and enabled to live a different life!  He enabled us to live as He desired for us to live.  We have been enabled to have an intimate relationship with Him and begin to experience this love, this profound love that surpasses knowledge!

Filled To The Measure Of All The Fullness Of God

Ephesians 3:17b-19 says, "…that you, being rooted and grounded in love, [18] may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, [19] and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God."

Paul has prayed a profound prayer and revealed the astounding truth that we can be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God!  This fullness is the power of the Spirit in our spirit, bringing about the dwelling of Jesus in our heart and a powerful awareness of the love of God that we can experience.  These things fill us with all the fullness of God that we can be filled with, bringing about the life of God, the new life we are to live.  Filled, changed, enabled to live life, and life more abundant!

This is not just a good feeling inside our hearts during worship!  This is a life lived out in every temptation, testing, trouble and tension by the power of God, living the very life of God out, so we look like the God-imitator we are supposed to be!

Look at the kinds of things Paul goes on to say after this prayer:

•  Ephesians 4:1 “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called…”

•  Ephesians 4:17 “Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds.”

•  Ephesians 4:30 “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”

•  Ephesians 5:1-2 “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. [2] And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

Immeasurably More

I do not know what change you are asking God to bring about in your life, to transform and fix your flaws, but I do know one thing.  God is able to do immeasurably more than all we are asking or imagining through His power that is at work within us.  This power that is at work within us is God's grace!  This incredible grace of God that works from within to will and act according to His purposes, the grace that divinely influences our hearts and reflects into our life is brought about by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.

Ephesians 3:20-21 says, “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, [21] to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”

When we begin to live by the grace of God filled to the measure of the fullness of God, living by His power and now, being an imitator of God, knowing and expressing the very love of God, we bring glory to the Lord Jesus Christ and to our Father in Heaven!

The reality is, we then no longer live in our own will or by our own power, but we live submitting our will to His and living by His power.

We no longer live “one day at a time,” struggling to get through the day on our own effort, but we now live “one moment at a time,” allowing the Spirit to move and enable us to live out a moment in God's way, for His glory.

“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. [18] And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” 2 Corinthians 3:17-18

Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom, and the Spirit of the Lord is in us, so we can live in freedom!  Freedom from sin, freedom to live for God!  This is from one degree of glory to another, from “glory to glory” as some translations say, glorifying God in each instance of our lives where we have a chance to let the life of Christ be lived out through us!

Ephesians 5:15-18 says, “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, [16] making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. [17] Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. [18] And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit…”

It is so very important that we be filled with the Spirit.  It is not a surprise that Paul admonishes us to “be filled with the Spirit.”  This is not something that is only done once, but instead is done in an ongoing way.  We should personalize Paul's prayer and pray it for ourselves and our loved ones, and then walk in it!  Walk in God's great grace, filled to the full measure that God has granted and afforded us!  This comes about through the intimate fellowshipping that we must be entering into with the Father, the Son, and the Spirit!

Understanding and applying the grace of God in our lives is what brings about the transformation that God so desires!  How do we apply this grace to our lives…and even grace upon grace, grace and more grace?  If we are better understanding what grace is, what the source of it is and how it works within us, then we can consciously ask God to strengthen us with power through His Spirit in our spirit!  We can go to God daily, and throughout the day, receiving God’s mercy and finding grace in our time of need!  We can simply mutter and think, “Oh, God!  Give me grace right now for each day, and throughout the day, and certainly in the very moment of need!”  He is there and will respond!  Draw near to Him, and He will draw near to you!

He will not turn us into robots; we must be seeking that infilling of the Spirit.  As Ephesians says, we should not be drunk on wine, but rather be being filled with the Spirit.  Just as we might have in the past taken one drink after another until we were drunk, we need to be filled with the Spirit and ask Him to fill us with grace, so we are strengthened and filled to the full measure with the Spirit and His power!

We must believe He is there and that this strengthening and empowering will happen!  We must believe He will reward us as we earnestly seek Him!  He is the very source of power we need in the mist of our weaknesses!

Chapter 7 - Grace: Power In Weakness

Filled!  Filled to all the fullness of God!  What an amazing concept and thought!

We are no longer trying to live up to an external law that is powerless to aid or help us.  We are now living by the Law of the Spirit, by God’s greater grace, with the very source of that grace residing within us!  The Spirit of God at work within us, moving us to obey while bringing a divine influence and an enabling life force alive within us!  Grace is the Spirit affecting our mind, emotions and our wills so that the life of Christ is reproduced in us from moment to moment, from glory to glory!  We experience the very love of God being expressed to us in a profound way!  We can be filled to all the fullness of God that He has planned for and allowed a human being to experience!  As Paul prayed for the Ephesians, we should pray it for ourselves daily, and throughout the day!

May hope grow and be established in our hearts as we discover God’s grace!  A hope that we can apply to our lives that brings about a transformation of our lives.  A hope that can overcome our weaknesses and enable us to live in a way that is truly pleasing to God in every way, and worthy of Him, as the Word says!  This is the purpose God has for us through His grace working in our lives.

“Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed--not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence--continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, [13] for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. [14] Do everything without complaining or arguing, [15] so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe…” Philippians 2:12-16 (NIV)

Yes!  We can become blameless and pure, children of God without fault, shining like stars amidst this crooked and depraved generation that we live in!  How exciting!

What we so often struggle with is displaying weakness at times!  All of us have weaknesses in the very make-up of our soul.  We have tendencies toward every kind of sin of omission and commission!  Some of us are prone to being judgmental and unforgiving!  Some are given to ego, to a need to be seen and heard, while others are control freaks and some are easily angered.  The list could go on and on, and we all could produce our own list of weaknesses that abound!

Jesus had something profound to say to Paul regarding his weaknesses.

“I must go on boasting. Although there is nothing to be gained, I will go on to visions and revelations from the Lord. [2] I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know--God knows. [3] And I know that this man--whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows-- [4] was caught up to paradise. He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell. [5] I will boast about a man like that, but I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses. [6] Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say. [7] To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. [8] Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. [9] But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. [10] That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” 2 Corinthians 12:1-10

The Lord told Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

When we are weak in every place that we are weak, we are made strong, or at least, can be made strong!

Imagine that we come to a place where Jesus’ power and grace, is made perfect in our weaknesses!

Picture coming to a place where, as Paul; we boast about our weaknesses!  We boast about them, because by Christ’s power, by grace, which is sufficient for all of them in every moment, we have been made strong!

Envision us shining like the stars in this crooked and perverse generation we live in, bringing glory to our God!

This chapter is about understanding that grace is the power of God made available to us in our weaknesses.  Let’s discover how we can find and apply that power in our weaknesses!  Let’s discover how grace is at work in this process, and can make a difference in our lives!

Delight In Our Weaknesses

Here is an odd thought for us!  Paul says, “…I delight in weaknesses…” (2 Corinthians 12:10)

What?  Who of us delights in weaknesses?

We are discouraged and dismayed by weaknesses.  We are disheartened by weaknesses, but delight in weaknesses?  That is an odd thought!

We struggle with statements like this from the Word!  In many ways, they do not register with our carnal, worldly minds!  Who, in their right minds, would want to delight in weaknesses!  We are taught and raised to have a natural inclination to do the opposite!  We fight through and struggle harder against our weaknesses!  But delight in our weaknesses?  That is neither normal nor natural for us!

For instance, James 1:2 says, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds…”  Which of us wants to count it all joy when we are going through all kinds of trials?  It does not make sense to our unspiritual mind!  We want to murmur, to complain, to whine and cry!  We want things fixed, and we mean, now!  We want to work hard and overcome the trials as quickly as possible!

How about this one!  1 Thessalonians 5:18 admonishes us to “…give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”  Give thanks in the midst of all the rotten circumstances of life?  It just does not seem reasonable, does it?  Our minds oppose the concept!

Paul says, “…I delight in weaknesses…” The only way that we can do this is to come to the point where we realize our weaknesses are an opportunity for God to utilize grace in us and shine forth through us, glorifying Himself!

When we allow God to work in the midst of our weaknesses and bring grace to bear on each one of them, He gets to express His great love, show His mercy and kindness, and move into our moment!  This brings about in us the life of Jesus in a way that truly brings glory to God!  We have to come to the realization it is this process that brings about the transformation of our lives that God is looking for, planning for, and purposing for us!  In the moment we recognize our weakness, God offers to dance with us, and He will lead!  With Him leading, we are empowered and live differently!  We are filled to all the fullness of God, and infused with power.  Jesus overflows into our souls, and our words become the very words of God.  Our actions and service become the selfsame actions Jesus would do, just as Peter says.

“As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: [11] whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.” 1 Peter 4:10-11

Paul spoke of weaknesses that come from both without and within.  All of them gave Jesus the opportunity to be strong in him through grace, and for Jesus and the Father to receive glory.  Paul came to the place of boasting in his weaknesses, because of the opportunities they brought about in his life for God to be glorified!  In that he could rejoice greatly!  Couldn’t we?  Shouldn’t we?

Accept Our Weaknesses

Look at 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 one more time.  Paul says, “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. [10] That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Let me give you an example of accepting your weaknesses.  I know a dear lady who is enduring a family situation where God’s grace is needed.  In stressful situations, sometimes the worst in people can come out.  Surely, we can identify with that!  Along with the stress of the general situation, there are a couple of siblings involved who just seem to make the situation worse. Their personalities, tendencies, methodologies of life, and their mannerisms are just difficult, making a stressful situation worse!  Can’t we all identify with this kind of a situation?

In her weakness, this saint expressed to me her fleshly, carnal desire to just be done with the situation and give up and not bother; to be done with them, in particular.  In honesty and transparency, she expressed what we all struggle with in the personal situations and interaction of life.

But instead, she prayed and sought the LORD!  She knew what was right, despite how she felt!  Grace was already at work, prompting her to Him, and moving her to the One who could help, and she responded!  She needed mercy and to find grace for her need; she went to the Throne of Grace to receive mercy and find grace in her time of need!  And yes, it had to be done daily, and sometimes multiple times in a given day!  The invitation to dance with the LORD had been made by Him, and she accepted it, letting Him lead!  She was purposefully abiding and looking for the inflowing of the sap, the Spirit’s strengthening that would produce His fruit in her!  She was looking for and finding grace applied to her life that would change her life, her “want-tos” and her actions!

A short time after this she expressed to me that she felt this flowing of God in the situation.  She felt His favor and His presence overwhelming her weakness and struggle with the situation and towards those involved.  She was experiencing the grace of God at work in her life!  It was so wonderful to hear her express it to me!

Now, she was going back into the situation with a purpose to love and work through it well, and be a blessing to those involved.  She saw them through God’s eyes, with mercy, kindness, and love.  It was not her own, but His, flowing through her!  To God be the glory!  Yes, she will have to keep going to the throne to keep receiving mercy and finding grace in her continuing need until the situation is resolved!

We need to give in and admit that we are weak and have weaknesses!  As we do, if we will seek God we will find Christ’s power resting on us as Paul said (2 Corinthians 12:9)!  How awesome that is!  Pause and consider that!  Christ’s power, resting on us!

Oh!  To have Christ’s power and grace resting on us!  For when I am weak, then I am strong!  Let’s go ahead and admit it, and shout it from the rooftops!  “God, I am weak!  I need your help!  I need grace!  I need Christ’s power resting on me!”  Let’s do it!  Then look for and expect Christ’s power to begin resting on us!  As you sense His leading and His heart trying to move your heart, submit and give way to it, step out to do what is right, and God’s power will enable you to carry it out!

When We Are Weak, We Are Strong

This is why Paul says in Philippians 4:13, “I can do everything through him who gives me strength.”

Outside forces will either make us weak or expose our weaknesses.  Paul understood this as he said in 2 Corinthians 12:10, “That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

The outside forces, whether people or just life itself, will expose our weaknesses and bad tendencies.  In those moments, we need to turn to the LORD and receive a greater grace, so that we can turn it into a moment of strength in the LORD, where the Spirit enables the life of Jesus in us!  Christ’s power, resting on us!  When we begin to live like this, we begin to boast in our weaknesses!  When we learn to take up this dance, we can come to the place we actually delight in our weaknesses, perceiving them as an opportunity for the LORD to glorify Himself in our lives!

Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12:9, “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ ”

Perfect here means “…to complete something, not merely to end it, but to bring it to perfection or its destined goal, to carry it through.”  It means to fulfill, to complete, to execute, to discharge.

Jesus’ power, grace, resting upon us and working in us, when brought to its destined goal along with its purposed intent properly executed or discharged into our lives, so that in a moment when we are truly weak, we are instead, strong!  We are made strong because Christ’s power is resting on us, completing His intentions.  From the foundations of the earth He intended this to be the way by which we would come to function, to live and glorify Him in our lives!  This is what He destined us for in this life!  Child of God, we need to stop and ponder this, and rejoice!  We need to begin to boast in our weaknesses!

We can do everything through Him who gives us strength, not through our own efforts alone!  Paul is speaking from a reality that he has learned; that when he is at his weakest, God’s grace is sufficient!  When he was at his weakest, God’s power was made perfect!  It was sufficient for Paul and it is sufficient for us!

Remember, 2 Corinthians 9:8 says, “And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.”

Paul had known what it was to be a Jew pursuing God with zeal, and giving the very best of who he was to live out God’s Law.  He had the right birth, in the right nation, in the right clan, with the right training, under the right rabbi. He was a Pharisee and excelled among his peers.  He had it all, and was pursuing it with gusto!

Paul learned a powerful truth when he came to Christ and began to live for Him and learn His ways.  He learned that he lived best for God when he did not depend on his own strength, his own knowledge, or his own experience; but turned every strength and weakness over to the Lord, allowing God to be the enabling power of His life.  In fact, he came to the point that he counted all other things as rubbish!  Grace…only grace could see him through!

Look at what Paul says in Philippians 3:7-9: “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. [8] Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ [9] and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith…”

We must learn to accept our weaknesses, and even make our strengths to be weak before the Lord!  We need to count all the things that were even our greatest assets and strengths as rubbish compared to knowing and experiencing Christ as we are describing here.  This is a concept that people do not understand!  Our strengths can be such a weakness to us!  We need to make them a weakness to us!  Let’s try to understand it a bit better!

When it comes to living a life before the LORD, our strengths can become an issue between the LORD and us.  Certainly, the LORD may well use our strengths for His purposes and for His kingdom, but the LORD also wants us to have a relationship with Him and be dependent on Him.  He wants us to be submissive and subject to Him, being dependent on His resources more than ours. We need to depend on His wisdom and knowledge, not just our own.  Our strengths become a weakness for us when we rely and trust on them too much, and they actually get in the way of our right relationship with the LORD!

We need to be meek before the LORD, taking all of our abilities, strengths, experiences and powers, and lay them at the feet of the LORD, in complete subjection to Him.  We need to view our strengths as rubbish.  Meekness is power under submission.  Jesus was the ultimate expression of meekness as He put aside His glory, took on humanity, and subjected Himself to the Father as He lived out this human life on display before mankind.

Imagine a knight; regal, strong, full of honor and character, well-trained, seasoned, experienced.  Despite these qualities, he enters the throne room of his sovereign in meekness, bowing his knee to the king.  Laying his sword down before the king, he reaches for the scepter, touching it to his head in a sign of power in submission.  He was ready to serve, obey and defend the king and his kingdom. He is ready to lay down his very life if necessary; subjecting himself to the king, and the king’s wishes only!

Moses had to learn this vital lesson the hard way!  At forty years of age Moses was like a son to the Pharaoh, having been trained in all the ways of Egypt.  He was an excellent speaker and a well-trained warrior.  Besides all this, he was being groomed to eventually take the throne.  He sensed though, that God was calling Him to be the deliverer of His people.  Moses struck an Egyptian and killed him, potentially setting his plans in motion by stepping out to be the deliverer by his own hand, his own strength and abilities.

God would have nothing to do with it, and so it was to the desert for Moses!  He spent forty years being humbled by God as a shepherd until finally God was ready to call him forth.  From the burning bush, until God’s people were free and even beyond, it was about Moses acting with God’s authority and empowerment to do God’s bidding, God’s way.

God’s methods and ways have not changed!  You will have to turn even your strengths into weaknesses!  Lay them at God’s feet and learn not to trust and depend in them, but instead trust, listen and depend on the LORD.  Yes, there will be times He utilizes some of your strengths and abilities, but it will be at His bidding and direction, as He applies it according to His purposes.  This process, too, takes God’s grace at work in our lives, as Paul learned!  God’s working from within to will as He wills, and to direct our actions as He would have them.  Christ’s power upon us to direct our strengths and weaknesses, bringing about His power in it all, so that His power is made evident and made complete in all we do.  Grace!

Boast In Your Weaknesses, Not In Yourself

“Are they servants of Christ? (I am out of my mind to talk like this.) I am more. I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. [24] Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. [25] Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, [26] I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false brothers. [27] I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. [28] Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches. [29] Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn? [30] If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.” 2 Corinthians 11:23-30

“I will boast about a man like that, but I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses.” 2 Corinthians 12:5

And again, 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 says, “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’  Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. [10] That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

We want to walk in the riches of God’s love along with His mercy and kindness, expressed to us in grace!  If we want to experience the influence of the Holy Spirit upon our heart, His power empowering us and the life of Christ being upon us and living itself out through us, we must learn these things:

•  Boast in the things that show our weaknesses

•  Submit even our strengths to God, making them to be weaknesses before Him and acting meek before God

•  Delight in weaknesses that come our way

•  Do not boast in ourselves

Boast in the weaknesses and the things that keep us from relying only on ourselves!  Boast in the things that keep us relying on the LORD, sometimes literally in a moment-by-moment way!  Boast in the weaknesses that become opportunities for Christ’s power to rest upon us, and bring about something in and through us that we never could have brought about ourselves, either in our weaknesses or our strengths!

Here is an example for us to ponder.  Imagine someone goes to work one day and they are greeted with the notice of a layoff and it was totally unexpected!  Here is their prayer, as they boast in their weakness and seek the grace of God:

“Lord, my whole life has just been turned upside down!  My whole career picture has totally changed!  I was not expecting this today!  Lord, I really don’t know where to go or what to do. Lord, this is ALL I have known and all I have DONE. This has been who I am!  Lord, I turn it ALL over to you!  I trust you in it Lord!  This is not a surprise to You, and I know You have a plan for my life!  I am looking forward to what YOU show me to do and what YOU will enable me to do!  I am waiting on you Lord! It will be a great adventure to see what You will do, and how You do it!  It will be great to see how You glorify Yourself in my life!  Help me handle this as You would expect, just as Jesus would have!”

Now, let’s try it ourselves, only instead of a job layoff try a different situation.  It could be a financial situation, a life situation, a relationship situation, a forgiveness situation or any other situation that comes your way.  Let’s try one of our personal “struggle” areas!  Boast in our weaknesses and in the possibility it gives the LORD to work in our hearts and in the situation, enabling us to live differently, and bring glory to Himself!

Boast In Christ, And In His Power

2 Corinthians 10:17 says, “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.”

•       Boast of His POWER, of His WISDOM, of His PROVISION!

•       Boast of every good thing He has ever done for you!

•       Boast of His ability to deliver you in an instant.

•       Boast of His ability to transform you in the midst of every trial and trouble He allows you to pass through, and make you more like Christ!

•       Boast of His ability to walk with you through the worst of situations, and have you come out the other side better than you went in!

•       Boast of every way He has shown Himself strong before…in the Word…in others’ lives…in your own!

Boast in the Lord and receive His grace and power resting on you. Then live it out differently than you would have without Him, and bring glory to His name!  He truly is everything that we need!  We can delight in our weaknesses, because we get to dance with Him, and He brings power into our weaknesses, and glorifies Himself!  He truly is everything we need!

Chapter 8 - Grace: Everything We Need

A dying man’s last words often have a profound message.  If nothing else, they are words that are significant to the man himself; words about something that had great meaning to him.  We ought to value and consider them simply for the fact that they must have some worth, meaning, and wisdom in them, as weighty as they were to him.  Perhaps it is all the more important that we listen when the person is of some prominence in our life and someone we honor greatly.

The passage we look at now is from Peter, and is seen from his perspective as likely being the last communication from him to people that were very dear to him.  His topic, obviously, is something of great importance to him and very weighty in his heart.  What he reminds them of, is therefore highly essential to him, and he believes, critical to them.

“I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder, [14] since I know that the putting off of my body will be soon, as our Lord Jesus Christ made clear to me. [15] And I will make every effort so that after my departure you may be able at any time to recall these things.” 2 Peter 1:13-15

Peter had proclaimed to them that what he had passed on to them were not cleverly invented stories!  He had walked with Christ during his time here on earth. He touched Him, lived with Him, learned from Him, watched all the miracles He did, ministered for Him, and eventually denied Him.  He watched Him die and saw him rise from the dead.  He even ate with Him and now, knowing his time was almost over, he wanted to leave with them something of importance.  He wanted them to be productive in their walk, effective in their ministry, and to never fall, as he had not fallen!

We all need to be reminded of things we have been taught. We learn so many things, some of them we put into practice. We have truths we hold dear to our heart; but there are many that we forget, or don’t fully apply, or we let them slip!  We need to have our memory refreshed on a regular basis.  That is why we should do daily devotions, go to church on a regular basis, meet with like-minded Christians and read good, godly books.

By doing so, we remind each other of these things, even though we know them and are firmly established in them.  Peter wanted to make sure that even after he departed they would be able to remember these things.  Let’s look at what he brought to their remembrance.

It is amazing how grace, or the concept of grace expressed in other ways in various Scriptures is so prevalent throughout the New Testament.  As we discover God’s grace, and understand it better and better, we discover that this is so true.  In the following passage of Peter, we see grace portrayed once again, in what is part of Peter’s parting message to the dearly loved saints.

2 Peter 1:3-11 (NIV) says, “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. [4] Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. [5] For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; [6] and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; [7] and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. [8] For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. [9] But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins. [10] Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall, [11] and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

God’s Grace Is That Divine Power

Did Peter know, understand, and experience something that we do not understand and benefit from today?  Scriptures and statements like these are so bold and profound.  If true, they declare a hope and reality that we must aspire to; to be truly different because God is an integral part of our lives!

2 Peter 1:3-4 (NIV) says, “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. [4] Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.”

Consider what Peter is saying about what the Spirit of God is proposing to us in these words!  His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness!  If our desire is to live for God in a way that is worthy of Him and pleasing to Him in every way, then somehow we need to better understand what is being suggested here, because it is an incredible statement!

On the one hand, we might be discouraged by such a statement.  If we have been given everything we need for life and godliness, why are we not different?  Why are we not doing better with what we have been given?

On the other hand, this statement and the whole passage should strongly encourage us that God has done something profound and supernatural, and that potential is overwhelming and outstanding!  This is, I hope, where we will end up!  In this chapter I want us to come to the understanding that grace is an integral part of the “everything” that we have been given by God for “life and godliness.”

Remember, grace is Christ’s power resting on us!  It is the power of the Holy Spirit influencing and empowering our spirit!  The source of everything we need for life and godliness is God and His divine power which has given us everything we need!  Not some of what we need, not a smidgen of what we need but EVERYTHING we need!  May we be infused with hope once again to walk in faith with God that what He has begun in us, He will bring to completion!  That we will learn to understand and walk in what He has given us!

Think of an analogy of a large, new car battery.  It has 750 “cranking amps” of power to turn the starter, which turns over the motor, and enables the car to start.  The “potential” contained inside of it is significant and its power is enormous!  We would not want to get shocked from such a source of electrical power!

But the truth be told, that battery is useless if it is not hooked up to the car, or if the connections to the battery are corrupt or corroded.  If the connection is not made or is compromised in some way, we will not get the full effect of the battery’s potential, if any at all!

I have certainly gone through that scenario!  My van would not start and I thought, “Oh! No! My battery is dead!”  It was not so!  The battery was fine, the connection was so corroded it could not start!  As soon as the connector and the post of the battery was cleaned and tightly reconnected, the van started right up!  It was amazingly simple!

That is what grace is like for us.  It is simple and amazing!  It is amazingly simple, and simply amazing!  Amazing grace!

Is our failure in given situations because we have no access to power to be different?  NO!  Not so!  It may be that we are simply not hooking up to that power as we should!  It might be that there is corrosion between us and the power source!

Have hope, saints!  If we can clean the connectors and get hooked up to that power source, we can have power and everything we need for life and godliness!  Grace can flow from all the goodness of God into our spirit and soul, and change us from the inside out!

Diving Power Flows Through Our Knowledge Of Him

2 Peter 1:3 says, “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.”

The grace of God, the “everything that we need for life and godliness,” comes from God’s divine power, and flows through our knowledge of Him!  We must understand that grace flows into our lives and enables all of what we have been talking about thus far. It flows from our intimate relationship with Jesus!  If that relationship is corrupted or corroded, we will have issues with the power of God, the grace of God, flowing into our lives.

We first come to “know” Jesus in our salvation.  John 17:3 says, “And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”  This word “know” speaks of an intimate knowing, like a husband and wife.  It is much more than just knowing “about” someone and beyond just an intellectual knowledge.  It speaks of an intimate, personal relationship.

Once we come into that relationship, we are to “know” the Lord Jesus in an ongoing, intimate way.  We are to “dwell” and abide with Him!

In John 15:4 Jesus says, “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.”

In salvation, we came to know Jesus.  We are now one with Him, a branch grafted into the Vine, into Him.  Apart from Him we can do nothing.  We can bear no fruit, no spiritual fruit, unless we are a part of Him, unless we know Him, and unless we abide in Him.

Remaining or abiding of the branch in the Vine allows the sap water to flow from the ground, up through the roots, through the trunk of the Vine and into the branches where fruit is produced!  As we stay in an intimate relationship with Jesus, the Spirit of God, the very Source of Grace, comes flowing into our lives and begins to bring about fruit!  As we said in chapter 7, grace is Christ’s power resting on us (1 Cor. 12:9).

This divine power gives us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him.  The initial knowledge of salvation and the ongoing knowledge of abiding in Him; having an intimate, dependent relationship with Him as a branch to a vine, benefiting from the sap and sustenance that flows through the vine to the branch, causing and creating the fruit that is borne!

Grace requires the continuing intimate relationship with the Lord, from which flows God’s divine power to us, His very grace, more grace, and a greater grace!  When it is flowing as it should, we have all we need for life and godliness. We have all that is sufficient for the overcoming of our weaknesses!  Remember, His mercies are new every morning!  We can go to the Throne of Grace and receive mercy and grace in our time of need…each and every day, and throughout the day!

2 Peter 1:3 says, “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.”

Yes, He has called us by His own glory and goodness.  Again, this is an expression of grace.  God’s glory and goodness has called us; His love, mercy, and kindness being expressed to us as He draws, calls and enables us to believe in our salvation.  His intent in that initial expression of grace to us is that we might continue from blessing to blessing to receive even a greater grace, so that from glory to glory we are transformed into the likeness of our Savior; all of it to His glory!

Do we understand grace even better?

The reality is that we may not be the man or woman we want to be, but we should know one thing; we are not the person we used to be before Christ, and we are not the person we are going to be as we continue in God’s grace!

We should start each day by dropping to our knees and thanking God for the grace that is ours right now!  By faith, believing God said it and accepting it, asking for that infilling of the Spirit that strengthens my inner being to happen now, and throughout the day!  When throughout the day, we have need of more of Him and His strengthening, stopping and dropping, praying and receiving more grace in our time of need!

We Can Participate In The Divine Nature

2 Peter 1:4 says, “…through them you may participate in the divine nature…”

We now may participate in the divine nature of God.  What a wild, amazing and intriguing statement that is!

We are not being made into gods, and when we enter eternal life we will not be gods; but we do have God’s divine power residing and working within us!  His Holy Spirit has come within us!  Through Him, Christ’s power rests upon us, and from glory to glory we can resemble the Father’s Son in the way we live!  This, truly, is Good News!  This is the very grace of God at work, when we are being enabled to participate in the divine nature, while dominating and overpowering our old sinful nature!  When we are strong in the LORD, in His mighty power we can prevail in any temptation, trial or trouble!  In our weaknesses we can be made strong!

The book of Ezekiel tells us that God’s Spirit would be put in us, in whom the fulfillment of the ages is coming to pass, and that God’s Spirit would move us to do the right thing, to live as we ought!  It further tells us that our heart of stone would be turned into a heart of flesh.  Ezekiel’s prophecy, fulfilled and in action is God’s divine power at work in us, enabling us to participate in the divine nature!

God knew we needed to be changed from the inside out; and so he provided power from within to choose to live differently.  An outward law was not enough to make us different!  The Law was holy, but it had no power to enable us to live differently. In the end, the Law only emphasizes how wicked our hearts can be!  But this is the Law of the Spirit at work!  This is grace, which has power to enable us as it works from within us to influence our “want-tos” and enable our actions; each of us now participating in the divine nature because of His divine power!  WOW!

Notice it says we “can” participate in the divine nature.  The truth is that we do not always choose to participate in the divine nature; rather, but rather we often choose to continue to live in our old sinful nature, even though we have been set free from its being our master.

In order to participate we have to continue to make the right choices so that it becomes prevalent in our lives, until it becomes ingrained and imprinted into our lives.  But even in that, the Lord is working.  Our Father disciplines and trains us in it, influencing us by grace to keep making the right decisions so that we participate in the divine nature on a regular basis.

The things that we could not do before, we can now do! The things we could not understand before, we now understand.  Those things we never thought we could experience, we now experience.  What we thought we could never stop doing, we now stop doing!  The person we never thought we could be, we become!  Most importantly, the person God wants us to become, we become by His grace, to His glory!

We Can Escape The Corruption Of The World

“His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. [4] Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.” 2 Peter 1:3-4

Corruption in the world is all around us.  It is in our hearts that are exceedingly wicked beyond imagination at times.  It is in the world and its ways that are not God’s ways.  Corruption is in our enemy, Satan, who wants nothing more than to draw us into temptation, sin, and death.  The corruption in the world is caused by the evil desires that are continuously attacking our souls!  Peter warned saints of this in his first Epistle: 1 Peter 2:11 says, “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.”

In the NIV it says, “…abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul.”

The reality is that we all struggle with these passions of the flesh, these sinful desires which war against our souls!

Ephesians 4:17-19 says, “So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. [18] They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. [19] Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.”

That is a pretty clear picture of the depravity of man.  Here is another:

“At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another.” Titus 3:3

That we can be free from the evil desires of this world and the resulting corruption that comes from all kinds of sin is an exciting thought!  The possibility of us being free from our own personal sins, struggles, failings, habits and addictions by this incredible power of God at work in us, and being able to live a life that glorifies God, is a marvelous thought!

Out of the richness of His great love, in mercy and through grace, He allows us to participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.  Do not be discouraged, but rather be encouraged!  Through grace, as you abide in Christ, you can escape the evil desires that percolate within us at times!

God’s Grace Enables Our Efforts

“For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; [6] and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; [7] and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love.” 2 Peter 1:5-7

When, from God’s divine power and promises, we have been afforded the opportunity to participate in His divine nature to receive His grace, it is then our reasonable act of worship unto God, our reasonable duty to our King, to make every effort to add to our faith what it is that God desires.  We are to add goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness; brotherly kindness, and love.  This is a partial list of the ‘fruits’ from participating in the divine nature, and being grafted into the Vine!  Add to that the ‘fruits of the Spirit’ from Galatians, and other lists of what the New Testament says we should be like, and we get a pretty good picture of Jesus being reproduced in our very life, to the glory of God!

We must make the effort; it is our duty, it is our worship!  We should possess them in increasing measure!  They should get deeper, broader, and more profound in our lives!  To the glory of God!

God’s Grace Makes Us Effective And Productive

“For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. [9] But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins. [10] Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall, [11] and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” 2 Pet. 1:8-11

God’s grace is moving and flowing in us, even today!  We should not get stagnant when it comes to these “qualities.”  They should be possessed in increasing measure!  We should not become complacent or think that we have arrived, and everyone else just has to catch up with us!

As we continue to abide in Christ, allowing the Spirit to move and enable us, we will bear more and more fruit. We will see these qualities in increasing measure, and they will keep us from being ineffective and unproductive in our knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We can do it!  We have been given everything we need for life and godliness!  We have been given everything we need to be effective and productive in our knowledge of Christ!

We want our lives to glorify God and proclaim to others that God is real, that God is love, is able, and that He cares.  We want our lives to produce fruit, more fruit, and a greater fruit, otherwise what kind of a branch are we, really?

If we are not making the effort and are not growing by adding to our faith in Christ, if we are not allowing the Father to really prune us, if we are not maturing and staying intimate with Jesus, then we will not be effective or productive for God!

If we focus on striving toward these things, we will not have to ever worry about being unproductive for God.  We will never need worry about being in danger of falling away from our faith relationship with God.  There will never be a concern about our calling and election being unsure!

Make Your Calling And Your Election Sure

2 Pet. 1:10 says, “Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall…”

This is powerful!  It is glorious!  When we take hold of the greater grace of God, and by His powerful grace live out the new creation life we are supposed to live out, bringing about the transformation God promised, we can rest assured that we will never fall!  By adding these qualities through the presence and working of the Spirit, we reinforce and strengthen the faith, belief, and trust in God by which we were saved.  When we are abiding and living like this we never have to worry about a sinful lifestyle destroying our faith in Christ and causing us to fail and fall!

Grace Assures A Rich Welcome Into Eternity

“…and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” 2 Pet. 1:11

Finally, what an awesome thought to think we would receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!  That should be the goal of our lives!  As we live this life full of grace going from glory to glory, possessing these qualities in ever increasing measure, we can be sure we will have that entrance!

Notice that Peter does not mention martyrdom, full-time ministry, or public ministry.  Rather, he mentions a list of things that we can all do to add to our faith!  This and the other lists we have mentioned are a list of things we can all do in any of the circumstances or situations of life we have either gotten ourselves into, or been led into by God.

Our performance can lead to a greater reward, and a richer welcome!

Let’s take hold of the divine power of God, the greater grace, so we can participate in the divine nature of God, so we can be empowered to live in a way pleasing to our God!  Clean the connection to the source of power!  Stay intimate with God and remain grafted into the Vine so you may receive what you need!  We have been given everything we need for life and godliness, and can escape the corruption of this world through our evil desires!  We have been enabled to resist!

Grace!

Chapter 9 - Grace: Enabled To Resist

What a joy to know that we are not only empowered to live in a way that is pleasing to the Lord, but we have also been enabled to resist sin, the world, and the devil!  All of us need that, and all of us likely want that in our lives!

1 Corinthians 10:13 says, “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.”

There is our way out!  Whenever a temptation comes our way, God provides a way of escape for us!  He is not a liar!  God is faithful and true, and He truly has provided the way of escape.  We can escape the corruption of the world!

We are discovering God’s grace, and in that, we are discovering what the way of escape is!  Yes, our Father has provided grace through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit that influences our hearts and enables our actions, bringing the very life of Christ alive during our moments, so that Christ’s power rests on us, and we are able to escape the temptation!  Through grace, we are participating in the divine nature and escaping the corruption of the world caused by evil desires!  Jesus dwells in our hearts by faith, so that we have the thoughts of Christ. Our emotions are tempered in the Lord, and our will is caught up in His love, enabling us to move past the temptation and take our escape route!

Yes, we can endure it, as the end of verse thirteen says.  We can endure the temptations that come our way because we are not on our own, and we are not alone any longer!  We are being influenced and empowered!

In this manner, we are heeding Jesus’ warning from Matthew 26:41, which says, “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

REALITY CHECK #1: Yes, our spirit is willing.

REALITY CHECK #2: Yes!  The flesh is weak!

REALITY CHECK #3: Yes!  We are truly a new creation!

We Are A New Creation

2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”

In the NASB it says “…a new creature…”

2 Corinthians 5:17 in the Amplified Bible says, “Therefore if any person is [engrafted] in Christ (the Messiah) he is a new creation (a new creature altogether); the old [previous moral and spiritual condition] has passed away. Behold, the fresh and new has come!”

There has never been anyone like us before Jesus’ coming!  We are different from any Old Testament saint and every unbeliever.  We are a totally new creation of God, a new creature altogether!  We are a supernatural creation of God!  We are born of the Spirit, having the very presence of the Holy Spirit residing in us. The Bible says we are temples of the Most High God!  We have to realize and believe this, and believing in it, revel in it!

Ponder it!  The same Holy Spirit who hovered over the waters and brought forth creation is within us!  The same Holy Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead is now residing within us!  The same Holy Spirit that enabled Jesus’ ministry and birthed the church with miracles, signs and wonders is now at work in our lives!  It is wondrous; it is powerful; and we should take full advantage of it!  He is truly our way of escape!

We Have Been Born Of God

“But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, [13] who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. ” John 1:12-13

Being born of God, we are now children of God.  We are not just born of blood or of the will of a man and woman expressed in the flesh, but we have been born-again by the very working and will of God.  In the process of being born-again, we have become a totally new creature that has supernatural potential!

Old Things Have Passed Away

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” 2 Corinthians 5:17

The argument could be made that the old things have not passed away!  As we have said earlier, we know, as Paul the Apostle knew, that there is something at work within us; this law of sin that seems to war against our very souls!  So Satan, the world’s system that is anti-God, our ingrained practices and tendencies toward sin, and ‘temptation’ have not gone away!  Yet, admittedly something has changed in our lives; but often our reality is that there are still some things that need to change!

However, despite those things that need to change, we are still a new creation and some very important things have changed.

As was said above, we have been born-again and therefore, we are a new creation in that regard.  Along with that, the curse of sin and death that was against me has been removed from my life.  We now have a totally different standing before God.  We are no longer aliens and strangers to the people of God, but have righteousness credited to us through Jesus.  We no longer stand condemned, but are blessed of God. We are part of the New Covenant, and a recipient of the covenant blessings that are in Christ!

Yes, powerful new things have come our way!  We have been snatched from Satan’s dominion and been brought into the Kingdom of the Son of God!  According to Romans, “sin” is no longer our master!  Satan has no claim to us!  We have received the Spirit of Sonship and the Spirit marks us as His!

By the Spirit of Grace, we are being influenced and empowered to live for God in a way that glorifies God!

Is Jell-O A Liquid Or A Solid?

We were at a family gathering a couple of years ago and Jell-O was served for dessert.  As we began to eat our dessert my son-in-law, Dan, brought up the question, “Is Jell-O a solid or a liquid?”  We all bantered at the table for a few seconds, but Dan, predictably, reached for his iPhone to Google the question!

The answer surprised us!  It actually is neither!  It was one of those smartphone moments, when curiosity became a science lesson!

Jell-O is something that is called a colloidal suspension.

The gelatin in Jell-O is made of long solid chains of protein molecules.  When you mix the gelatin with hot water, these protein molecules break apart and become suspended in the water.  However, the individual molecules remain solid.  So this is not a solution.  When the mixture is hot, the gelatin solid is suspended in the liquid water.  In other words, it is a solid suspended in a liquid!

As the mixture cools, the protein molecules come back together to form long chains again.  These chains go in random directions and form a lattice that traps the water molecules within its structure.  As this mixture cools in our refrigerator, it changes to liquid water that is now suspended in the gelatin solid!  We now have a liquid suspended in a solid!

So, when Jell-O is hot it is a solid suspended in a liquid; it is gelatin suspended in the water.  When Jell-O is cold, it's a liquid suspended in a solid; water suspended in the gelatin.  Thus it is classified as a colloidal suspension rather than being either solid or liquid.

Now, you are likely asking what in the world this has to do with anything we are talking about!

When you mix man with the Holy Spirit, something supernatural happens.  We become a spiritual colloidal suspension!   Man is the solid, because we are flesh and of this world.  The Spirit is the liquid, the Living Water of supernatural, everlasting life!

When we are hot, when we are spiritually on fire or zealous, our flesh is suspended in the liquid of the Living Water of the Holy Spirit; the stream of Living Water that bubbles up within us!  Our flesh is carried along and enabled by the Spirit. We move, we flow, we have life and life abundantly!  We are freed from temptations, we are conquerors, we are victorious, and we can endure through trials, troubles, tribulations and temptations, to the glory of our God!

So stay hot!  Daily ask for grace through the Holy Spirit’s presence to move and enable you to live as you should!  Stay intimate with God, abiding in a relationship with the Father and Jesus.  Pray!  Read the Word!  Spend time worshipping and adoring God each day!  The hotter you stay spiritually, the more your flesh will be carried along by the Holy Spirit, and enabled to live right and glorify God!

But when we cool down, when we are carnal, our flesh solidifies and the Holy Spirit is suspended in us!  We become hard, un-moveable and stiff.  We are complacent and resistant to the Lord; in our minds we are hostile to God!  We allow the evil desires that corrupt the world to be our master, and we give in to the temptations that the enemy draws us into.

Cooling down comes not only from ignoring our intimate relationship with God, but from entertaining our flesh with the world and things of the world that feed the sinful nature instead of the spirit!  The flesh and the Spirit are always in opposition to each other!

We should stay hot and on fire for God, with a zeal for God burning in us!  Romans 12:11 says, “Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.”

We should stoke our zeal and be fervent in spirit.  Let us not quench the Spirit’s fire in us!  We must be flowing in and with the Spirit because we are a spiritual colloidal suspension, a new creature, a new creation altogether!  We must remain intimate with Christ, grafted into the Vine while abiding and remaining in Him!  Feeding and benefiting from the very Word of God; drinking in the Living Water of God, and being enabled to live!

We Must Submit Ourselves To God

God has made a way out from every temptation.  We are a new creation and grace is available to move and flow through us all the time, in every situation, in all of our weaknesses, in our very time of need!  When we are walking in intimacy with God and abiding in Jesus as we should, we will be spiritually “hot,” moving with the Spirit and enabled to live as we should.

It is vital that we submit ourselves, then, to God.

James 4:4-10 says, “You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. [5] Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? [6] But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” [7] Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. [8] Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. [9] Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. [10] Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.”

Verse seven starts out by saying, “Submit yourselves therefore to God.”  The word “therefore” demands we look at what was just said before.  Reread the verses leading up to verse seven.  Friendship with the world is hatred toward God. We don’t want to be living in a way that is expressing hatred toward God rather than love toward Him.  Being a friend with the world makes us an enemy of God.  We don’t want to be living in such a way that we are making ourselves an enemy of God!  He yearns jealously for the spirit that He has placed within us.  He wants His rightful place and does not want to compete with the devil or anything in this world for our affections!  He gives more grace and is willing to give more grace to those who are humble; but He will resist those who are proud and living for themselves.  We need to consider and ponder all these things and choose, therefore, to submit ourselves to God.

The word “submit” here means “to place or rank under, to subject, to subordinate.”  It is primarily a military term meaning, “to rank under.”  It means “to place in order, or to place under in an orderly fashion.”

We are in error when we think that ’submit’ only means to obey a command.

The LORD wants us to subordinate ourselves to Him and to His Word.  He wants us to place ourselves in an orderly fashion under His Lordship!  It does not mean to simply obey a command, but to order our lives and relationship with God, in all of its nuances, in an appropriate way.  When we do that, we will be enabled and able to resist!

When I was in the Marine Corps, I was in submission to many things.  There was a complete rank structure, from the Commander in Chief (President), to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to the Commandant of the Marine Corps and continuing all the way down to the Corporal or Sergeant, and Lieutenant or Captains that had direct oversight of my day-to-day activities.  I was in submission to the Uniform Code of Military Justice.  I had to wear certain uniforms, depending on the uniform of the day and the activities that were on the schedule.  My uniforms had to be maintained in an appropriate manner; from the positioning of rank insignias, to being pressed or ironed, to boots or shoes being shined.  My hair had to be cut a certain way, as did my mustache, which was the only facial hair we were allowed.  We were in submission to where we were stationed throughout the world and what our job was.  I could go on and on, but I think you get it.  It was not just being in submission to a particular order given to me in a moment by someone of greater rank, but having my whole life in proper order, considering the commitment I had made in taking my oath when I was sworn in to the military.

Submitting ourselves to God is not just attempting to obey God in a given moment.  Certainly that is part of it, but so much more goes into it!  It is by working with the Holy Spirit daily, that I am clothed in the Fruit of the Spirit.  It is daily being strong in the Lord and in His mighty power, putting on my Full Armor of God, my fighting man’s body armor, so I can take my stand against the enemy and his schemes!  It is going to the Word each and every day for spiritual bread to feed on and daily drinking of the Spirit, the Living Water, so I am refreshed and strong in my spirit, and empowered in my soul!  When I am “submitting” like this throughout the day, weeks, and months, I am more ready to submit in the moment, because I have been “trained” to do it!

In the steps leading up to a moment of temptation that the devil is trying to lead us into, have we been intimately fellowshipping with Jesus, abiding with Him, and letting His Word abide with us?  Have we had intimate fellowship with our Father?  Are we responding to His love and discipline?  Have we had fellowship with the Spirit?  Have we been stirring up the fire, our zeal, and are we flowing in the Spirit?  Have we been seeking God’s mercy and finding the grace we need?  Have we been reading the Word?  Are we having devotions?  Do we have a consistent prayer life, or have we simply been entertaining ourselves with the world and the flesh, provoking the Spirit to jealousy over us?

Sometimes I ponder, “How can we be ready to call on the name of Jesus in a moment of temptation, when we have not called on Him all day, all week…or for weeks?”

Have we submitted ourselves completely to God, setting ourselves up in an orderly fashion under Him?  Have we done what He has said, and taken full advantage of everything He has provided in the moments, the hours, the days, the weeks, the months, and possibly the years leading up to this moment of enticement by the devil?  Or to this trial we are now facing?

In any given moment, we are tempted by the devil to give way to sin.  We are tempted to do something we should not (commission), or tempted to not do something we should (omission).  While we well might struggle in the moment to submit to what we know is right, the reality is that this moment could and should be dramatically different, if we are submitted to God in an orderly fashion over time, doing what is necessary, and taking hold of what is offered to us as our way of escape.

Can we imagine an athlete attempting to perform at an extremely high level, yet has not bothered to train in any manner for the past two years?  Don’t we have a much higher expectation for them when we know they have eaten right, run, done weight training, and practiced their chosen sport over and over with the very best of coaches?

Allow me another military analogy.  The Father is the Commanding Officer.  The Son is our Lieutenant or Captain, in charge of our unit (the Body of Christ.)  The Spirit is our Corporal or Sergeant, directing our day-to-day and moment-by-moment decisions.  All that we need for the day is supplied by the Commanding Officer through the Captain, and by the Sergeant!  He will give us everything we need to accomplish the mission and it will be their pleasure to do so.  It is good on our part if we submit by being where we are supposed to be, in uniform (Fruit of the Spirit) with our body armor on (Armor of God), and with the weapons of our warfare, being attentive for the momentary command, but having prepared well ahead of time so that in the moment, we can perform exactly as the Chain of Command would expect, and for their benefit and the Kingdom’s benefit.

Submission is necessary in an ongoing way, and in the moment, if we are going to be able to resist sin and act appropriately. Whether it be a momentary thing or an ongoing situation and struggle we are dealing with, remember, as we elaborated on in Chapter 6, if we are being strengthened from within by the Spirit in our spirit in a given moment (and we are), and if He is desiring to influence our mind, emotions, and our will, but we will not respond to Him appropriately, submitting and giving way in our will, then we stymie the flowing of grace that will enable us in our actions, and we will fail once again.  We will miss the way out, the way of escape, that has been provided for us.

We must be humble before God, submitting ourselves to God in an ongoing fashion and in the moment in order to activate the power of the Spirit in us!  We are enabled to resist so powerfully when we submit to God!

Activating that Spirit in us, the grace of God, is what we will deal with next as we continue to discover God’s grace!

Chapter 10 - Grace: Activated

What do we do in regard to all of this?  Do we have anything to do with causing grace to come flowing down through the Spirit into our lives, and having the intended effect we have discovered so far?  Do we have any part to play in how or when the Holy Spirit is released into our lives, when the grace of God will flow in and enable and empower us?   What do we do?

If the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Grace, is truly enabling us to resist the devil and temptations, then we must discover how we activate grace in our lives, and do it more effectively.

Part of this answer has already been presented.  Intimacy and abiding in Christ is vital.  That intimate relationship with Christ and growing in our knowledge and understanding of God and His Word is critical!  Understanding grace, the presence and power of the Spirit in our lives, and trusting and walking in it is absolutely essential!  Going to God at the beginning of a day, and throughout the day, to His very Throne of Grace, to receive mercy and find grace in our time of need is so crucial!

Having faith…believing, understanding, and receiving what the Word says about grace and His divine power enabling me to participate in the divine nature, and overcome the evil thoughts and desires so prevalent in this world is important!  If we don’t believe He is empowering us, will we be empowered?  If we do not believe we are a new creation, will we act like a new creation?  If we do not stay acutely aware of the way of escape, grace, through the Holy Spirit, will we take it?

Ponder this: If we do not change in a given moment, or in our life overall, is it ever God’s fault?

Maybe we have heard someone say that they know they have messed up pretty bad (sinned again), or that their unhealed hurts of the past and the hang-ups they manifest (unforgiveness, bitterness, anger, etc.), or their habits or addictions will only change by God’s grace. So we are to just keep putting up with them and all they do and the hurt they create until finally, God, by His grace, changes them.  Until then, apparently, they are just powerless to do anything!

When we hear either them or ourselves, say things like that, aren’t we saying that it is God’s fault?  That apparently He is just not ready to pour out that grace into our lives yet, so we are sort of stuck like this and everyone else will just have to grin and bear it?  In saying that, isn’t God being blamed?  If He had just or would just put His grace into effect in them then they would be different. To some degree, they are looking for a puppet master.

No, it is never God’s fault!  He has made a way of escape and it is our choice to take it or not.  Grace is available; we must activate it in the moment!

We have very likely wanted, for a long time perhaps, to be different and live different. We have wanted to resist, and be able to cause the devil to flee from us, but have failed so often in some areas of our lives.  The Spirit has been with us the whole time.  If all of what we have discovered about grace so far is true, then how do we more regularly and more effectively activate this grace in our lives?

A dear friend used to say to me that grace comes flowing down to us from God through a pipeline of faith, and it is our obedience (submission) that opens up the valve and causes it to flow.  That is not a bad way of portraying it!  We will elaborate on that analogy.

James 4:4-10 says, “You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. [5] Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? [6] But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” [7] Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. [8] Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. [9] Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. [10] Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.”

There it is!  We can have more grace in our lives.  The Word of God is clear!  God gives more grace!  Grace is not stagnant, nor given once in a measured amount and never given again or added to!  God does give more grace, and is willing to do so.  Now, just because we have not experienced receiving more of God’s grace when we think we should have, or are not experiencing it on a regular basis, does not mean that it is not true!

Some versions of the Bible say, “greater grace.”  Imagine!  There is a greater grace available to us from the Lord!  Grace is an expression of His love and kindness, coupled with mercy finding its very source in God and His glorious riches!  The agent of grace is the Spirit, moving upon our soul and heart to affect our “want-tos” and enabling the actions of our life!  It is the very life of Jesus being lived out through us, enabled by the Holy Spirit that God might be glorified in our lives!  He desires to give us even more grace, a greater grace, in our time of need! How many of us could say that we could use, that we need, more grace?

God gives us more grace!

The key to releasing a greater grace into our lives lies before us in verse six.  It says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

It is one thing to have a greater understanding of what grace is, but it is far more important and profound that we truly realize how a greater grace is released into our lives in a moment-by-moment basis.  It is within our time of need that we need that grace!  We must know how to release it!  Perhaps it is better said that we have to be aware of stopping or intervening in grace as it has its effect on our lives, and learn to cooperate and yield to it.

Yes, the truth is, we could use more of the Holy Spirit working in us to influence our hearts the right way, God's way!  We could use more of the moving of the Holy Spirit to influence the way we think, the way we feel, and the way we execute our wills!  Certainly, we could use more of the power of the Holy Spirit to enable us to actually act differently, and in a way that truly resembles Jesus and glorifies our Father!

This will give us great hope when we stop and think about it!  We can be different!  If grace is the key to us being different, and God offers more grace, a greater grace, then we should want it!  Don't we?  We need it!  Don’t we?

We all have to understand that we are a work in progress!  None of us were a finished product at the moment of our salvation!  Yes, in regard to our position before God, in our standing before Him, it is surely finished in Christ!  But the transformation God is bringing about in us into the likeness of Christ is not ended in that moment, but just beginning.  God has gone to work on us with a predetermined process in mind and a predestined outcome as the goal!  We will address this more later.

Every day is a new day, every experience a potentially new experience.  Every day and every experience opens the door for challenges, trials and times of testing, and yes, even temptations (though not from God).  God is a loving Father who disciplines us.  Some of the difficult things we go through are for our shaping, our molding, and our transformation process!  It develops our faith, and dependence on God, and it develops our relationship with God!

Some of the situations that come our way are from the enemy of our soul, desiring to take advantage of the weaknesses of our sinful nature, and draw us off into temptation and into sin.  We have many battles that are going to come our way in whatever time we have left on this earth.

God wants so much to shape us into what He wants us to be, no matter what that is.  For some, He wants to shape us into a father or mother, or perhaps into a husband or wife.  We can think that being shaped for the ministry is the greatest calling of our lives, when in fact, just being the person that God wants us to be in our day-by-day relationships can be the most challenging work of God in our life.

Some have major issues from the past to work on.  The past can cripple our ability to live out our lives today as we should, and keep us from being prepared and able to live out our future purpose for God.  Grace is the answer for this as well!  People with all kinds of issues of the past need to activate the grace of God, even the greater grace of God in their lives; to heal, to be made whole, and to live life in the freedom that Jesus purchased and God intended.

So, no matter the situation, no matter the change, no matter the adjustments, no matter what the Lord is working on in your life, no matter what the Lord has called you to do in life, no matter what your current situation is, we are all in need of His grace to see us through.  Let’s discover how we get more grace and activate that greater grace!

Humble Yourself Under God’s Mighty Hand

James 4:6 says, “…But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, ‘God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’”

Before we get to what will enable more grace in our lives, let’s first talk about what will hinder the flowing of God’s greater grace in our lives.  Verse six says that God opposes the proud!  One thing that will certainly stop us from receiving God’s grace and being lifted up by God is pride!

God Hates Pride (and Arrogance!)

Proverbs 8:13 says, "The fear of the LORD is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate."

Pride means pride!  Arrogance means pride!  Pride and arrogance in the Hebrew are essentially the same word!  God hates pride, and He opposes those who are proud!  Pride is by definition a self-sufficiency.  It is to declare our independence.  It is to say that we do not need anyone or anything, and worse, to declare that we do not need God.  It is not something that is necessarily done with our mouth, but is often done by our attitudes and actions!  All pride is repulsive and stinks in the nostrils of God.  It is very much the opposite of a true worship of God!

It is very difficult to receive the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives to affect our “want-tos” and enable a different way of living, when in pride, we will not even pursue or seek God.  It is prideful to not seek an ongoing, intimate, growing relationship with God in which we are growing in our knowledge of Him and are purposing to learn and apply His Word, and adjust our lives to Him and His ways!  It is pride, in a moment-by-moment situation, to not know what to do or simply not do it, but rather go on in our own strength, or not even bother to fight for what is right!  In fact, it is pride when we do seek Him, but then do not receive or accept His answer or His proposition when He does answer us.

pride (prìd) noun

1.                  A sense of one's own proper dignity or value; self-respect.

2.                  Arrogant or disdainful conduct or treatment; haughtiness.

3.                  An excessively high opinion of oneself; conceit.

arrogant (àr¹e-gent) adjective

1.                  Making or disposed to make claims to unwarranted importance or consideration out of overbearing pride.

God hates it when we have an unwarranted importance or an excessively high opinion about ourselves.  In this condition, it is not likely that we will seek God’s help or anyone else’s, or if we do we will probably reject what is offered.

Sometimes, we present a mannerism that appears to be humble to others.  Oh yes, we are humbled by life and all of its circumstances, and we are broken by life and the situations that have been going on, but are we truly humble before God and broken before Him?  Are we giving up totally on ourselves and turning to God?  Understand, we can be broken, beat down and humbled by life, yet not be broken and humbled before the LORD!  This is a very dangerous condition and situation to be in.

James 4:6 says, “But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

God opposes the proud!  This is not a good place to find ourselves in!  Situations, circumstances, troubles, trials and temptations are hard enough in this life, without our having God Himself opposing us!  Sometimes God has to oppose us in order to bring us to the end of ourselves, so we can finally get our perspective correct and begin to focus on God and what He has for us.

How many times are we struggling, and even praying, yet we seem to be going nowhere?  The truth be told, the reason we are getting nowhere and nothing is changing, the reason that we feel so very frustrated, is because we are ultimately fighting against God, and He will not let us move on from where we are, until we truly humble ourselves before Him.

Picture a small boy with his father’s hand on his forehead.  The father is opposing him.  That boy can flail away with his arms and hands and legs and feet; but he is going nowhere.  He is not gaining any ground or winning any battles.  He is frustrated and expending quite a bit of energy, but accomplishing little.  His father is opposing him.

“Oppose” in the Greek means, to range in battle against, to set oneself against.  It means to set an army in array against, to arrange in battle order.  It is used metaphorically to set oneself in opposition to or in array against, to resist.  If we are proud and are not willing to seek God, if we are not willing to humble ourselves and listen to God, then He will ‘range in battle’ against us!  We will find Him setting Himself in opposition to us and resisting us.  When we move to the left, we will find Him there.  When we move to the right, in an attempt to outflank Him, we will find Him there!  When we press forward, trying to go on in our own way, we will feel His hand on our forehead.

How many times do we go through difficult things and we blame them on the devil, when in fact, we are being opposed by God?

We are broken by life but not yet broken before God.  Humbled by life, our choices and our failings, our consequences humbling us, but not yet humbled before God.  We are still determined to do things our way, in our timing, in our abilities and strengths.

“Toward the scorners he is scornful, but to the humble he gives favor." Proverbs 3:34

“For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." Luke 14:11

We should be careful not to be scornful toward God and not to exalt ourselves in a prideful and arrogant manner, but rather humble ourselves before the LORD.  For those who do, He gives favor!  He will exalt us, He will lift us up, He will bless and enable us with more of His grace!

“Humble” in the New Testament is defined as to make oneself meek or modest in attitude, behavior or spirit.  It is to make low, as if we are bowed down before Him.  It is to submit oneself.

Practicing humility before the LORD is so very vital in our relationship with God and in receiving His grace.  Isn’t it true that God wants us to humble ourselves, to make ourselves humble in spirit or manner; that He wants us to destroy the power, independence, or prestige of ourselves?

When we humble ourselves, we attempt to destroy the power, independence or prestige of ourselves, and instead, put ourselves under God’s mighty hand.  It is to be meek; to put all of our strength in submission to one in a higher authority.  To be humble is to be in a place where we do not depend on or trust in ourselves, our abilities, our efforts or strengths.  We truly do not see ourselves higher than we should!  Instead, we see God as higher, as what we truly need!

We seek His presence in the very moment of our need, and in His mercy, His very desire and ability to meet our need!

Humility is not just lamenting before God about how awful we are or how much we are failures!  It is meekly admitting our weaknesses and condition, and confessing His wonderful love, kindness, goodness, and desire to help us in the weaknesses that He is so very aware of, and receiving what He has for us…more grace in our time of need!

Humbling Is Done Under God’s Mighty Hand

“…Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” [6] Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you…” 1 Peter 5:5-6

It is God that does the humbling of a man, just as it is going to be God who elevates or lifts up any man.  If we are looking to be lifted in any situation, if we are looking for God’s grace in whatever circumstances come our way, we had better be seeking to humble ourselves under God’s mighty hand!  Coming meekly to Him, we now let Him reveal what He wants us to see, accept it and confess it, and then receive what He gives in exchange!

God’s hand, just as a potter’s hand, has wrought a change in us.  No one can speak a change into your lives; only the Spirit of God.  Only God’s mighty hand can drill into our spirits and into our souls and make changes.  But the changes God can bring about are profound as we humble ourselves before Him.

As we come submitting ourselves to the LORD in humility, meekly coming in weakness to the one who can empower us, we take hold of the handle of the pipeline of faith that has grace flowing in it from Him to us, and as we submit to His will and His ways, in the moment and in a general way in our lives, we open that valve, and grace comes flowing in!

In our weakness, as we admit it in humility before the LORD, we are strengthened with power!  He brings about the change, molding and shaping us as a potter does until we resemble the likeness of Jesus!  All of this to the glory of God!

Fasting Enforces Humility, Empowers Prayer

“But I, when they were sick— I wore sackcloth; I afflicted myself with fasting; I prayed with head bowed on my chest.” Psalm 35:13

The NIV says “I put on sackcloth and humbled myself with fasting.”

The NASB says “I humbled my soul with fasting.’

If prayer is humbling, in that it is a turning to God, and if prayer is a way of expressing that God is our answer, and is a manner of bowing before our God and meekly declaring that He is greater than us, or our needs or problems, and if prayer is a way of declaring our dependency on God, then fasting is a way of fortifying our prayer with a greater humbling still, and a willingness to say, “This much Lord, I need you!”

Fasting is a pathway to humbling ourselves, and humbling ourselves before God is the trigger to receiving a greater grace, and grace is the pathway to being exalted or lifted up in God, enabled by God to live as we should!  Fasting must be a regular practice of our Christian life and fellowship with God.

Fasting breaks and bends us toward God, getting us focused on spiritual things.  Fasting highlights our weaknesses and causes us to be made small in our eyes, compared to our holy, loving God.  Fasting makes us much more sensitive to the influence of the Spirit and better positioned to move in His power, to receive grace!

Fasting is going without food, and drinking only water, or perhaps juices.  It is humbling our body and soul, causing us to focus more purposefully on Him and on spiritual things!  Fasting can also be done in varied ways, like a “Daniel” fast, etc.  Sometimes, the LORD has us fast from other things, like TV, Internet, or Facebook.  Regardless, the important thing is that we fast, humbling ourselves, and seeking intimacy with the LORD, and in that intimacy, praying.

When we are fasting and praying, we are submitting ourselves to the LORD.  We are abiding in the Lord and letting His Word abide in us, and we are positioning ourselves well to receive grace, and a greater grace.  It is in this manner that we can receive one blessing after another from the LORD!  When this happens, we will be changed from glory to glory, into the very likeness of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and bring glory to the Father!

Isaiah 66:2 says, “…But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.”

When we are humble and contrite in spirit, we will get God’s attention.  He will look, and He will respond; and we will receive grace for our time of need!

When we do these kind of things, we are understanding and applying grace to our lives in a way that begins to truly transform our lives, enabling us to live in the freedom Christ purchased for us!  We can be promoting and provoking a greater grace to be at work in us!  A grace that is so necessary for me live in a way that is pleasing to God!

Chapter 11 - Grace: Training for a Different Life

We are discovering the wonder of God’s grace!  We are realizing that we have a power at work within us as we boast in our weaknesses.  Truly, we have been given everything we need for life and godliness!  We have been enabled by the grace of God to resist temptation and resist our enemy, and we are realizing that it is effectively activated as we humble ourselves before the LORD, under His mighty hand.

As we discover these powerful truths about grace and learn the keys to activating that grace into the moments of our lives, then we will begin to become more profoundly aware of the riches of our God’s love for us!  He had a plan and a purpose to save and sanctify us, and He is at work in every moment!

As we begin to recognize grace at work in our lives more and more and properly respond to it, humbling ourselves before the LORD and receiving that grace in our time of need, we will also realize that grace teaches and trains us to say, “No!” to the ungodly passions and pleasures all around us.

“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, [12] training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, [13] waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, [14] who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.” Titus 2:11-14

Stop for a second and consider what these verses are saying!  First, the grace of God appeared, bringing salvation for all people!  Second, the grace of God appeared, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions!  Third, the grace of God trains us to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age!

Now, consider what Titus 2:14 says, and how it parallels Titus 2:11-12.  First, our great God and Savior Jesus Christ gave Himself to redeem us from all lawlessness.  Second, Jesus gave Himself to purify for Himself a people for His own possession!  Finally, He is purifying a people who are zealous for good works!

Remember, Jesus came full of grace and truth!  Jesus is the DELIVERER of grace!  So when He came, when grace appeared, He redeemed us, bringing salvation for all people!  When He came and grace appeared, He set in motion our training that would cause us to renounce ungodly and worldly passions as He purified for Himself a people for His own possession.  When He came, when grace appeared, He was training us to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, so we might be a people zealous for good works!

Go back and reread all of what we discovered in Chapter 1 regarding grace and how it is an expression of God’s love.  Reread Ephesians 2:1-10 in light of what we have just discovered about grace from Titus 2:11-14.  It is easy enough to say God sent Jesus to save us, to sanctify us, and to put us into service for the Kingdom.  This is all accomplished by the grace of God, the powerful working of the Holy Spirit, as it is described all over the New Testament.

“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, [9] not a result of works, so that no one may boast. [10] For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Ephesians 2:8-10

We have already looked at verses 1-9 extensively in previous chapters, but let’s consider what verse ten says.  First, we are God’s workmanship, and have been created in Christ Jesus!  Amen!  We are those new creations, those new creatures, those who God has made anew in our salvation; we are born again.  We are now able to live a new life for God!  It has come about through grace, through salvation in Christ!  He has redeemed us!

Created in Christ also means that He is working to purify us, to transform our heart and lives, to change our “want-tos,” so that we want to do what is right, what is pure and pleasing to God.  Holiness is not just some outward performance, but the adjusting and refining of the thoughts, the motives, and the purposes within the heart that are behind the actions of our lives.

Without this holiness in us, we will not see the LORD.  We will not fully comprehend or enjoy the deep intimacy and fellowship with God that is available to us, if we are not allowing the grace of God to work upon our hearts and lives in such a way that it brings about the intended effect that the LORD purposed.

We are created in Christ to do good works, works that God prepared beforehand for us to do!  He is now training us to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age, and to be a people zealous for good works!  We are now in training to be of service to God, doing the things He has for us to do, and doing them enabled by His Spirit!  This is what we are being trained for.

God wants us to learn, to be enabled and to love as He loves.  He wants us to be able to forgive and release others from what they have done to us, just as God has forgiven us.  These, and things like it, are some of the good works God wants us to do; He has planned in advance that we should walk in them!

He wants to repair marriages and to right relationships!  He longs for us to be excellent parents, loving and raising our children in the ways of God.  He desires to set us free from every habit, every addiction.  He yearns for us to be free from hang-ups, to learn to yield our rights and demands on others, and stop being controlling.  It goes on and on.  He wants us to walk in the works of God, following in the steps of Jesus.

If our Master, Jesus, who has appeared, the very DELIVERER of grace, is now, through grace, purposing to train us to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, zealous for good works, shouldn’t we cooperate?  If the SOURCE of grace, the Holy Spirit, has been deposited into us to divinely influence and enable us to live differently, shouldn’t we embrace the training?

1 Timothy 4:7-8 says, “Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; [8] for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.”

We should voluntarily choose to train ourselves for godliness.  We should prayerfully invite our Master, our God and Savior Jesus Christ, to train us in godliness!  Grace, at work in our lives through the SOURCE of Grace, the Spirit of Grace, will train us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age.

It takes time and it takes training to renew these minds of ours!  Renovations take time and effort!  Shouldn’t it be part of our spiritual worship to our God?

“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. [2] Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Romans 12:1-2

The LORD wants us to offer our bodies to Him, the whole of our human being.  He wants us to no longer be conformed to this world and it’s patterns of living, but to renounce them all.  He wants us trained so that we can test and discern God’s very will, what is good and acceptable and perfect, and do it!  Surely, these are the good works He has prepared in advance for us to do!

“About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. [12] For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, [13] for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. [14] But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.” Hebrews 5:11-14

We need our “powers of discernment trained by constant practice,” through the training that grace brings about so we can distinguish good from evil, and test and discern what God’s will is!  The Holy Spirit, through grace, will divinely influence our hearts regarding what is right, what is good, what is God’s will; and as we agree and submit, He will enable the doing of those good works!  All to God’s glory!

There is not a situation we are currently in, nor a trial or circumstance we will enter into tomorrow, that the grace of God cannot affect us in the midst of it.  The works we perform then, and the way we live, the way we love, applying the Word and walking in the Spirit, can be performed in a way that is “good” and pleasing to our God!  From our motives, to our thoughts, our words, and to our actions!

Our Father is a disciplinarian.  He is a part of this training we are going through to live a different life.  By this, I do not mean that God only punishes us for things we do wrong; although that certainly does happen!  We do reap what we sow at times.  No, our Father is a loving Father Who properly disciplines His children, training them up in the proper way to live.  This is wonderfully described in the twelfth chapter of Hebrews.

“It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? [8] If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. [9] Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? [10] For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. [11] For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” Hebrews 12:7-11

Our loving Heavenly Father is treating us like His children!  He is disciplining us for our own good, training us!  Part of humbling ourselves before God, is to have an attitude of gratitude to our God for the discipline He is bringing about in our lives, and for the change and transformation He is working into us!  It is only with this humble, grateful attitude that we can receive the full benefit of what He is doing.  It is the only way that we “count it full joy when we face trails of many kinds.”  We must realize that in the end, His purpose is for our good.  Be humble and grateful, and receive the full benefit from that which He intends.  Submit yourself to the training!

Primarily, the overall benefit He is bringing about is that we share in His holiness!  Without holiness, no one will see the LORD.

No one will fully experience and fellowship with the LORD unless we are becoming holy!

Shouldn’t we be subject to the Father of our spirit, and live?  This is the life He has intended for us!  Abundant life!  A life that ends up bringing about a “peaceful fruit of righteousness” in us!  How awesome it is, that as we humble ourselves before God, choosing to submit to Him, that He provides a greater grace, a grace that influences and enables us to live with Christ’s power resting on us. We live right before God, have a peace in our hearts, and are at peace with God!

Just as we need to submit to God in a general way throughout our lives, and in a given moment as we face temptation; so, too, we need to humble ourselves before God throughout our lives, so that we will receive the grace we need!

The school of the Holy Spirit is necessary.  The training that grace brings about that teaches us to say, “No!” to passions and pleasures of life, is vital to us.  The training of our Father is to be embraced, even requested!

The transformed life we are after, and He is after, is the benefit!  The abundant life Jesus promised is the goal!  Living in the freedom that Jesus purchased and granted us is the target!

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. [11] Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. [12] For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. [13] Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. [14] Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, [15] and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. [16] In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; [17] and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, [18] praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.” Ephesians 6:10-18

Verse one of this passage can be broken down into two important steps.  First, we are to be strong in the LORD.  We must be strong in our intimate relationship with the LORD.  We must abide and remain, as we dwell in intimacy with Him.  We must be dependent on Him, desiring to be grafted into the Vine, letting His Word abide in us, and us abiding in Him.  We must be strong in the LORD!  We can do NOTHING without Him and we ARE nothing without Him.

Second, as we are strong in the LORD and our relationship with Him, we will be strong in His mighty power!  Jesus’ power will rest upon us.  The grace of God through the presence of the Spirit of God will infuse our spirit with power, and enable our soul to live as an imitator of God!

We will be able to take our stand against the enemy of our souls, and the schemes he has set against us.  We will have the full armor on as a result of that, and we will be able to battle on and battle through, and when the momentary battle is done, we will still be standing!  By the grace of God, and to the glory of our King!

Again, Titus 2:11-14 says, “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, [12] training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, [13] waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, [14] who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.”

The grace of God appeared, our great God and Savior Jesus Christ bringing salvation for all people by redeeming us!  He is purifying for Himself a people who are being trained to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions!  He is working through the Holy Spirit and through grace to enable us to be zealous for good works, and live self-controlled, upright lives in this present age!  All of this is by grace, all of this is for His glory!

2 Corinthians 9:8 says, “And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.”  No matter what situation we are facing, no matter what God is doing in us, or what He is trying to do through us in the lives of those around us, through Him and through grace, we can have all sufficiency and everything we need, all the time in everything, so that we can abound in every good work He sets before us!  It truly is an amazing grace from God that saves, sanctifies, and enables us to live a life that truly glorifies and pleases Him in every way!

Chapter 12 - Grace: Enabled For Ministry

Out of the riches of His love, God has expressed and is expressing grace to us, coupled with mercy and in the richness of His kindness.  Grace appeared to us in the form of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, and brought about a salvation we never could have purchased.  Grace was at work, drawing us to God, even working to enable us to believe and receive by faith what was being offered to us.  Grace has gone to work to train us to walk in the life God has hoped and planned for us!

Grace is transforming us from the inside out!  We are becoming aware of a power from within, a power that enables us in our weaknesses!  We are being empowered by grace, through the Spirit who now resides within, to resist temptations and to endure in the midst of trials!  We are realizing that grace is the divine power by which we participate in the divine nature, and escape corruption!  We have discovered that grace is the Power of Christ resting on us!  We have learned that grace is most readily activated as we humble ourselves before God, and in a moment-by-moment way, submit to our God and His ways.  Grace is preparing us for and enabling us to do the works of God He has prepared in advance for us to do, to walk in them and walk them out!  It is all by grace, through faith, to the glory of our God!  We are discovering that “…God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.” (2 Corinthians 9:8)

But it does not end there!

Each one of us is so unique!  Psalm 139:13-14 says, “For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother's womb. [14] I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well.”

We were woven together in our mother’s wombs!  We were fearfully and wonderfully made by God and our souls are so unique!  We have skills and giftings from God, from abilities to sing, to play instruments, to write and to speak.  We each have different ways that we think, feel, perceive and see things, ways that we seem to be gifted in right from birth.  Some are administrators while others are very practical doers, servants.  Some are teachers, some are seemingly so natural at loving and caring for others.

It is vital that we understand that even the very makeup of our being, our soul, is out of God’s grace, and is a gifting and working of God in our lives.  God accomplished the knitting together of our soul and body.  He had intentions and a plan for us from the very foundations of the earth.  He made us to move and have our being in Him in a certain way and in a certain expression. He had intent and purpose for us from the very beginning, not just when we finally come to him in salvation.

“For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. [4] For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, [5] so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. [6] Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; [7] if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; [8] the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.” Romans 12:3-8

According to verse 6, we have gifts that are ours according to the grace given us, and they are different from others around us.  We are to know, understand, command and utilize what God has given us, according to the proportion of our faith!

We will not go into any detailed teaching about these giftings in particular.  It is sufficient for this study to say that we each have them!  The important part for us is to realize is that these giftings are the very expression once again of grace in our life!  God has given them, and God, through grace, through the presence and influence and enabling of the Spirit, wants to use our unique giftings, the unique makeup of our souls, for the work of His Kingdom, expressed within the Church.

Many of the good works we are going to be led into doing, we will do with the unique makeup and design of our soul.  God will seek to express the very life of Jesus, by grace, through the giftings of our soul that His grace has provided and designed in.

The reality is that each of us can and should find our place within the Body of Christ, the Church.  We are all members of it, and we all have a unique gifting to bring to the Body.  We do not all have the same function, but each function is critical to the balance, diversity and ability of the Body to accomplish all that Christ would have the Church accomplish!

To that end, an eye cannot say it is an ear; nor can an ear say it is an eye.  They are unique, with each having their own vital function.  Each function is required for the Body to operate correctly and functionally.

When someone finds Christ and is saved, then allows the transformation process to occur, they may well find themselves discovering and rediscovering who they truly are and what they were truly meant to be and do.  God, in His redeeming and renovating process, often brings us back to the intents He had for us in our earliest memories and thoughts.  It is God’s grace that brings this about.

In rediscovering who they truly are and what God has designed and desired them to be, they will discover where they truly belong in the Body and what part they are to play!  Their “ministry,” their “service” to the Body, most of the time falls right in line with what God intended for them.  Whether from their giftings or their abilities, all has come by the grace of God, and are intended for His purposes.  As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:10, “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.”

It is by the grace of God I am what I am.  He made me, He designed my body and soul even as I was being knit together in my mother’s womb.  He drew me.  He convicted me.  By grace He saved me!  His grace toward me has not been in vain, as He has changed me and transformed me.  He trained me to live right by His grace that was at work within me, and has made me zealous to live right and work for Him.  He has made me whole and fulfilled.  And He has made me a unique expression in the Body of Christ, a unique function, a piece of the whole!  I now work hard for Him, though ultimately I realize it is not I, but the grace of God that is with me!  And He deserves and receives all the glory!

Therefore, as part of our training and growth that leads to our transformation and change, we should discover and express our gifting and abilities given to us by His grace in the works we do for God.  With that, we must learn to not think of ourselves more highly that we ought!  We must humble ourselves and realize that there is nothing we have really done on our own, at least not of benefit or consequence to God and His Kingdom.  Paul says it well at the end of 1 Corinthians 15:10, when he says, “…I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.”

Some may speak, and speak well and profoundly, but their ability has come from God.  The anointing on their words has come from God.  The one who speaks is not greater or more profound then the one who consistently and diligently serves in the kitchen week after week, doing practical service and ministry rarely seen or mentioned publicly!  Yes, by grace, through faith, they are expressing to God the works of God brought about by grace!

There are some in the Body who are natural administrators, organizers, and leaders.  Because God has made them this way, they should offer this back to God, through His grace, to be used for the benefit of His Kingdom, the Church, and those around Him.  Some are driven by righteousness, by things being as God has determined and commanded.  They are strong voices in the Body, exhorting, even demanding, that things be done a certain way, God’s way!

No matter the gifting, we all must accept what Paul says in Romans 12:3, “For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.”

Breath itself has come from God.  A new day to live and to serve God and our fellow man is a gift from God.  Any gifting, any resource we have been allowed to have has come from God and ultimately belongs to God, and has been given to us from God’s grace.  We then should see it as our duty to develop and use what God has afforded us to it’s fullest to bless the Church and to bless God’s Kingdom, and to bring glory to Him.

Truly, great musicians or singers recognize and testify that their talent is a gift.  A gift honed by practice, but a gift nonetheless!  Practice alone will not and cannot produce the gift.  But practice with the gift is necessary to get the highest results possible from the gift!  We must take what the LORD has given us as an expression of His grace, and through grace, express our giftings as God has purposed.

All the parts and every component is important and significant to the whole.  A $250,000 racecar can be undone by a $5 component or a disconnected wire.  A battle tank is of no consequence if there is no fuel to move it, or no rounds for the cannon.  A soldier is of no consequence in a battle if he has no ammunition, and he cannot be sustained for a continuous battle if he has no food and water.

It is the same with us and with the Body of Christ.  Individually, and in the Body of Christ we will either not function or function at our best if we are not walking, moving and having our being immersed and empowered by the grace of God.  It is through Him that we live, move, and have our being!  “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain.”  (1 Corinthians 15:10)

Likewise, we will operate best when we are functioning in the gifting grace has afforded us within our very being.  An eye cannot function as a hand, nor a hand as an eye!  In humility, we discover and take up that place that grace has prepared for us!

Many will have to walk in the discipline of God as He uncovers the wells that the enemy has filled with life’s junk and trash!  As we are being healed and made whole from pains, troubles, and hurts that have occurred in our lives, we will discover or rediscover who we really are, who we have always been intended to be by the LORD and His grace.  The “real” us is in there and the Master, the Potter, will shape and reshape us into what His intended purpose was for us.

“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, [9] not a result of works, so that no one may boast. [10] For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Ephesians 2:8-10

God knew before the foundations of the earth who we were to be, what we were to be like, and what things we were supposed to do.  He knew exactly how he would weave us together in our mother’s womb.  He has known everything and anything that has happened to us, and He is still resolved, by grace, to bring us to Him in salvation, to transform us, and to enable us to live it out before Him in the days we have left on this earth!  There are things He has prepared in advance for you to do, ways He has wanted us to live in.

We are significant and we matter.  As we better understand and apply the grace of God to our lives, it will transform our lives.  We will become the person God has always intended.  He will enable us to live in the freedom Christ purchased for us, and in the abundant life that has been promised!

Remember, 2 Corinthians 9:8 says, “And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.”

He is truly your all in all!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dan Peloquin is an author, publisher, speaker, church planter, and senior pastor of Our Father’s House Ministry Center in Chicopee, MA.  Dan has been married to his lovely wife Jacque for 32 years, and is a dedicated and loving father of eight children.  Dan is a former Marine, and was a logistics engineer and a program manager, before becoming a minister and church planter.  You can connect with Dan on Facebook at DiscoveringGodsGrace or on his website peloquinpublishing.com.

Other products by Dan Peloquin

Discovering God’s Grace: Study Guide

Consider what it says.  Ponder what it means.  Discover application for your own life!  The study guide for Discovering God’s Grace will lead you on an adventure of a deepening understanding of God and His grace.  Applying God’s grace into your own life will bring about the transformation and change that God has always purposed and planned for you, and perhaps has seemed to elude you!  Hope is renewed and realized as God’s Word brings revelation, refreshing and restoration to your soul!  The study guide enables you to seek God and learn from Him in a powerful and meaningful way.

Discovering God’s Grace: Devotional

Let the Lord speak directly into your heart of the realities of His grace being expressed to you.  This 30-day devotional reveals the heart of God towards us regarding His love, His mercy, and His grace.  Your heart will be uplifted and your faith stirred by the awe-inspiring whispers of God to your soul.  Revel in the reality of His grace expressed to you in the Word and in operation in your life.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 – Grace: An Expression Of God’s Love

Chapter 2 – Grace: Defined

Chapter 3 – Grace: Received

Chapter 4 – Grace: In Salvation

Chapter 5 – Grace: Empowered By The Spirit

Chapter 6 – Grace: Transformed From Within

Chapter 7 – Grace: Power In Weakness

Chapter 8 – Grace: Everything We Need

Chapter 9 – Grace: Enabled To Resist

Chapter 10 – Grace: Activated

Chapter 11 – Grace: Training For A Different Life

Chapter 12 – Grace: Enabled For Ministry