Caught up in the grace of God

On Sunday, Richard had practice, so I went to church by myself. We had a guest speaker who is the pastor of the Hillsong Church in New York. He came with a great message about being "Caught up in the grace of God". I definitely can't paraphrase what he said without completely botching it, but I thought I'd try to share some of his thoughts.

He talked about how us as believers must be good stewards of the grace God has given us. If the people in our world are ever going to meet Jesus, they have to experience grace in action. We have to extend grace to those around us. A little bit of grace goes a long way!

2 Corinthians 12:8-12: "Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 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. 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 don't have an excuse to not give grace to others or to not share the love of Christ with those around us. In our weakness - our lack of words, knowledge, confidence -Christ's power is made perfect.

Acts 20:24: "But my life is worth nothing to me unless I use it for finishing the work assigned me by the Lord Jesus—the work of telling others the Good News about the wonderful grace of God."

Our life is "worth nothing" if we are not using it to finish the work God has called us to - "the work of telling others the Good News about the wonderful grace of God". I want the my life to be worth something according to God's standard. This doesn't mean you have to be in full time ministry...it just means using your opportunities to tell others about the grace of God.

Hebrews 4:16: "So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most."

There are people we try to extend grace to who think they don't deserve it. They think they are too "bad" to come to church, to have good friends, to be loved, to have good things. But we have to remind them that though we all are undeserving of God's grace, we are all able to "come boldly to the throne of our gracious God." Boldly in our weakness and in our sin we can come to His throne and "we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most"...when we're in the depth of our sin. Praise God for His grace and mercy! Praise God that His power is made perfect in our weakness! Praise God for the calling to share His grace with those who need it most! We've got to get caught up in the grace of God so that others can experience it, too!

I want to know -understand, be certain of, grasp, experience- the grace of God. I want my life to be lived in such a way that I literally need the grace of God upon my life daily. But more than that, I want those who don't know the grace of God to experience it in the depth of their soul. To know that they have a loving, forgiving, merciful Father who is longing to give grace to them, regardless of how "bad" they are. The grace Christ extended on the cross was enough...people desperately need to know that.