The grace of God expresses itself in so many different ways when we seek Him first and follow His directives. Grace is His unmerited favor towards us. We can’t and didn’t do anything to earn it. Through His grace, He’s given us salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ. Ephesians 1:3 tells us that He has also given us all spiritual blessings in heavenly places because of our union with Christ. God’s grace presses us to continually look back and remember what He has accomplished for us through the sacrifice and resurrection of His beloved and only begotten Son. You and I should also look at how far He has brought us in our own lives. Our hearts must swell with gratitude for what God has done for us throughout our years on this planet. This will develop wisdom and patience in us, two very necessary ingredients for going higher in His grace.
God’s grace and goodness lovingly persuades us to turn from sin. Acts 3:19(NLT) commands, “Now repent of your sins and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped away.” Sin sums up all the problems and issues in humanity, and Jesus Christ sums us our freedom from it. The deeper we dive into the depths of God’s love through Christ, the more we realize the risk and cost He paid to redeem us. We realize that God didn’t think any price too great to pay for our redemption, and Jesus paid this great price with his life because he loves us so much.
Every sane and capable person that has ever been born has had to make the choice of who they will serve. We don’t get to skip this choice or opt out of it. A choice for God through Jesus Christ is life to us, and the failure to choose God and His love is the exact opposite; it is darkness and death to us. It should be no surprise to any believer that life will continue to cycle this choice, and as it does, our circumstances intensify. Our circumstances and conditions will leave us less and less wiggle room to play with the seriousness of what is before us.
Corporately, we see this happening in the world today. Sin is an offense to God, and more and more people are choosing to ignore this. For believers, problems and tribulations seem to be intensifying as well. So much so that many are growing increasingly impatient in the faith and abandoning it altogether. They are forgetting how far God has brought them, and they will not remember the things He has done for them in the past. To make matters worse, they are not seeking God’s Word on a greater level, and this gives the mind too much leverage to shrink back to its old ways of thinking and believing. It gives the devil just the room he’s looking for to put a wedge between us and our relationship with God.
Life is dynamic. It can be very rigorous and defeating without the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We can become lost and remain that way without him leading us to and in God’s purpose. The new beginning that Jesus Christ gives us through the new birth requires diligent nurturing and attention, as would any priceless treasure. We need to stay on it and put the wisdom of God in our minds and hearts constantly. We also must make repentance of our sins a spiritual vocation to some degree. The temptations of our time are at a level no person could have imagined, and the enemy is throwing a lot at the sons and daughters of God. Heavenly Father has not left us defenseless. Quite the contrary. He’s given us failproof armor, and to deal with life and the darts that come our way successfully, all God’s armor must be worn.
The psalmist prayed in Psalm 51:10(KJV), “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.” This must be our continual attitude of humility and submission in the presence of our God. There are so many things that we’ve done unconsciously and subconsciously against His Will. There are sins we committed when we didn’t know any better, and the impulses of those things are still in us. We need to pray and ask God to reveal the stuff we’ve not yet surrendered and sought His forgiveness for. We need to acknowledge those things before Him and ask for His forgiveness, and that’s not all. We must change the way we think and act so that those sins are not on repeat.
2Timothy 2:1(NLT) tells us, “And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” God has given us eternal life through Jesus Christ, and this life is in us, for Christ is in us! It is from this fullness, this wholeness, this completeness, that we have received all spiritual blessings from the Father. His grace is compounded towards us, and therefore, our commitment to faith and obedience must be compounded towards Him. We can no longer be who we used to be. The time for change and spiritual growth is now. He has allowed us to move at a snail’s pace in the past, but a new season of growth and intimacy is required in our relationship with God. This current environment is teaching us that it’s time to increase our gratitude for His amazing grace so that we go higher in that grace. This is Heavenly Father’s Will for us, and our commitment to grow in the knowledge in His Word will take us from grace to more grace, as increased blessings are revealed. ■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
“From Grace to More Grace”, written by KLizzie, edited by Reverend Fran Mack, for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2021. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! SMS is dedicated to inspiring and encouraging Christian Women through the Word of God.