If you live in America, I hope you enjoyed celebrating the fourth of July. We had such a fun day going to the pool, playing a competitive game of pool volleyball with my family, cooking out, playing pickleball, and shooting fireworks.
Because of a short week due to July fourth, this week’s article is shorter than normal. Nevertheless, I do want to quickly summarize what I will be writing on for the next several weeks—God’s amazing, empowering, life-changing grace.
Below are 8 reasons why grace is so amazing.
1. Grace is unmerited.
No amount of obedience, good works, or religious discipline can earn more of God’s grace, for grace does not depend upon how long you pray, how often you fast, or how much of the Bible you read. Grace is absolutely free from human merit or obedience.
2. Grace is power.
Repeating what Jesus told Paul, He said, “My grace is . . . power” (2 Cor. 12:9). Living by grace is learning how to rely on the Lord’s resident, resurrection power for ability, so you might become like Jesus in motive, thought, and deed, and live as He lived, relying moment by moment on the Spirit for life, power, and assistance.
3. Grace enables you to overcome.
Contrary to many popular teachings today, grace doesn’t cover sin or excuse sin. Grace gives you the power to overcome sin. If you hear any teaching about grace that gives you liberty to compromise, flirt with the world, live selfishly, or sin, I assure you it’s not biblical grace. True grace gives you the power to overcome sin, not be overcome by sin.
4. Grace enables you to be who God calls you to be.
Many believers, when seeking to know God’s will, focus all their energy on what they are supposed to do instead of who they are supposed to be. Yet Paul said, “By the grace of God I am what I am” (1 Cor. 15:10). Your highest calling is to have Christ formed in your heart and soul, and this can only happen as you receive ample supplies of God’s grace daily.
5. Grace enables you to do what God calls you to do.
God wrote your biography before the foundation of the world, and He calls you to live according to His script. But here’s what you must realize about your God-given story: It is impossible to fulfill it in your own strength or power. Grace—and grace alone—is how you receive the ability to do what God has called you to do.
6. Grace operates when you are conscious of your need.
Though God loves you deeply, the flesh is worthless to God. Only Christ—Christ in you, Christ living in you, and Christ living through you to produce fruit from His indwelling life—has any value to God and is pleasing to Him. Until you see the flesh as God sees it, both the evil side expressed by lawlessness, depravity, and defiling sins, and the good side expressed by self-righteousness and good works from the soul, the operation of grace will be limited within you.
7. Grace gives you new desires.
Being under grace does not minimize the need for obedience. Rather, grace changes the way you obey and the depth at which you obey. Instead of external compliance, behavior modification, and bodily restraint produced by the law, grace transforms your spirit and heart, giving you the desire to obey God fully.
8. Grace gives you the ability to respond to God’s truth from the heart.
God’s work within you is always prior, but you still have a solemn responsibility to respond to the work He initiates with wholehearted obedience. Even though God is at work in you for His good pleasure, living by grace is all about respond-ability. You are responsible to respond to God’s ability. Grace motivates you to respond to God’s prior work in your heart with full and complete obedience.
I hope this summary of grace blessed you. If so, share this with a friend who needs God’s grace. Next week, I will explain grace in more detail.
