Grace can pardon our ungodliness and justify us with Christ’s righteousness; it can put the Spirit of Jesus Christ within us; it can help us when we are down; it can heal us when we are wounded; it can multiply pardons, as we through frailty multiply transgressions.
~John Bunyan (1628-1688)
Grace binds you with far stronger cords than the cords of duty or obligation can bind you. Grace Is free, but when once you take it, you are bound forever to the Giver and bound to catch the spirit of the Giver. Like produces like. Grace makes you gracious, the Giver makes you give.
~E. Stanley Jones (1884-1973)
But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn,
That shines brighter and brighter until the full day.
~ Proverbs 4:18
Most of us have heard the phrase: “There but for the grace of God, go I.” Surely, this statement is true. Left to ourselves, we are desperate, wretched beings. Nothing good dwells in us. Sorry to burst our “self-esteem bubble” beloved, but as a wise chaplain i know said, “Christianity is not a self-help program, it is about death-to-self.”
But, once we fully surrender our lives to Him, everything starts to make sense. The full counsel and manifold wisdom of G_d gets imparted to us – by grace – through marinating in His Word and through the kind of prayer that is both speaking and listening to Him in the inner man. It takes time. But, actually, it takes less time than we might expect. The flow of His grace into our lives can be an overwhelming flood if we but allow Him to move in and through us.
A man is never so truly and intensely himself as when he is most possessed by God. It is impossible to say where, in the spiritual life, the human will leaves off and divine grace begins.
~William Ralph Inge (1860-1954)
Yeah, on our own, we are as shaky as an autumn leaf in the wind. But, in Him, we can shine like the sun. And the sun simply shines even if it is behind clouds, or on the other side of our planet.
Yet, the temptation is to take the phrase “There but for the grace of God, go I,” and impart the fickleness implied in the quote to how G_d acts in our lives. But the truth (and we know it) is that G_d does not change – ever. It is us. So, when things are going wrong in our lives, it is very often because we have stepped out of the flow of His power into our lives and tried to start doing our own good under our own power.
So, the bible makes it abundantly clear that the righteousness that true believers have is not from themselves. It is Christ’s righteousness imparted to us, through faith, by His work on the cross. But, this righteousness is unchanging, and is imparted to us by an unchanging G_d.
And so, the righteousness He gives is, by no means, some fickle or waxing/waning kind of thing. It is, rather, just like the verse in proverbs. By grace, He is ever-growing us into ever-brighter creations who can live lives that allow the world to have the proper opinion of who He is.
We cannot do it on our own. Not a chance. But, through His grace, failure fails to stay an option in our lives!
Abounding sin is the terror of the world, but abounding grace is the hope of mankind.
~A. W. Tozer (1897-1963)
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