Guest Post: "Rhythms of Grace"

by Katie Bernier

Originally posted on http://notunredeemed.com/

Grace. It’s so much more than just undeserved favor or merit and pardon from sin.  Grace is the ability to abide in Christ. It’s the strength to walk through painful circumstances.

Grace is the promise of humility. “God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Pride says “I’ve got this, I can do this, or I’m in control.” Humility is having God’s view of the situation, and with His perspective comes grace, and freedom. Freedom from expectations of others, freedom from sin and freedom from ourselves.

“Grace isn’t leniency when we have sinned.  Grace is the enabling gift of God, not to sin.  Grace is power, not just pardon.” -John Piper

Grace is power. Power to live 1 John, and be “in Christ”.

I need grace. I need lots of grace. When I began to pray to understand grace I had no idea the road the Lord would take me down to understand ‘grace in it’s various forms’. I assumed I would mess up and sin, and I would come to understand grace. But grace is oh so much more! Grace grows from humility, so God went for the root – pride.

The circumstances that are teaching me grace are also humbling me in their simplicity. I’m tripping over health issues and changes in several significant relationships in my life. Things I thought I could handle, things that aren’t a big deal to anyone else. Simple things are leaving me begging for grace and desolate for His presence.

It’s not the size of the issue that brings you to your knees, but that fact that you get to your knees that matters. That humbles me. And there is where the grace begins. 

When life is spinning out of control, grace is what keeps us sane, what gives us something to hold on to. 

When the fluff of life and our comfort is stripped away, we recognize grace through humble lenses; sunshine, a prayer, a smile, sleep, peace, His whispers in the dark – these are evidence of grace all around us.

The more I need grace, the more I see others around me need it too. You don’t know others need grace till you need it yourself, and you can’t give grace until you have received it. 

C.J. Mahaney says grace is remembering that every “Individual has been previously acted upon by God. That’s the divine perspective we must begin with or else we will be tempted to look for others deficiencies rather than for evidence of grace in their lives.” – Humility – True Greatness

We can encourage others by pointing out the grace of God in their lives, as we recognize it in our own.

Grace has many, many, forms. And we are told to administer them to each other. “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms.” 1 Peter 4:10 ESV

In order to administer God’s grace (and receive it) we must first recognize what grace is. I’m still learning that, but I encourage you to look for the rhythms of grace in your life. They are there – they just go undetected in our frazzled rushing about. Grace is God getting the glory. 

Is He getting the glory in your life?

Nancy Wilson: From Shattered Pieces to Stained Glass

The sun was shining through the stained glass window, bringing to life the scene of Jesus with the little children gathered around him. The sound of small voices filled the room as the Sunday school kids learned to sing “Jesus Loves Me.”

“Yes, Jesus loves me, yes Jesus loves me, yes Jesus loves me, the Bible tells me so,” went the chorus.

Three-year-old Nancy believed these words as she sang them, but didn’t fully realize their meaning until later in life. Meanwhile, she continued to attend Sunday school and sang in the choir throughout her childhood and high school. 

Now 65, Nancy Wilson said what she had to learn 30 years ago, through grace, is that “it’s one thing to believe, another to accept Christ into your heart.”

“It is only when I had spent my life in sin,” she said, “and realized that this world offered me no peace, no hope and no future, that I finally asked Jesus to be Lord of my life.”

She can recall several times in her life when God tried to get her attention, but she said the most vivid of these memories is of the moment she was “a bottle of pills away” from ending her life. A televangelist was on TV at that time inviting people to come to God, and she decided to accept and pray with him. 

Shortly after she prayed, she said she got a phone call from a Christian friend, and told her what she’d just done and had planned on doing. They then prayed together. 

“Only weeks before, I had been in her home cursing God for my life,” she said. “Divorced, two teenage sons who wanted to live with their father instead of me, soon to be unemployed, I certainly did not feel like God was in charge of my life.”

But from then on, she said God was in full control of her life. 

She found a job and moved to New York, started attending church, and made many new Christian friends. 

“Today, I am so thankful for His loving kindness to me, His Grace, His forgiveness and the knowledge that His work is not complete. I look forward to Heaven, but I am learning to live in the joy of knowing Jesus as my Lord and Savior.”

She said if she was speaking with someone who does not know this joy, the one message she would want to leave with them is this: “Christ died for you and wants you to know He loves you. He wants you to accept His sacrifice as a gift so that you might spend eternity with Him.”

Roy Bunger: A Story of God's Grace and Faithfulness

Roy Bunger, 54, grew up with parents who believed in God, brought him to church on a regular basis and read to him stories from the Bible. But he said as a young child, he didn’t like church at all. His spiritual life as a teenager was somewhat of a rollercoaster ride, going from diligently reading the Bible and praying at 14 years of age, to rebelling and drifting away from his faith as an older teen. 

What he describes as his “wake-up call” came when he was a young man in the military returning home for his father’s funeral after a sudden death. He said during that time, he remembered in great detail what he’d learned about God as a child and young teenager.

“It was at that point, with Mom’s help,” he said, “that I first openly committed my life to Christ. It’s been a long road since then. I have strayed, backslid, sinned, repented, and through it all God has been wonderfully faithful and abounding in mercy.” 

Bunger enjoys poetry and song, and often relates it to his life. “For me,” he said, “it so aptly and preciously communicates meaning and beauty.”

One such work is one of John Newton’s “Ol­ney Hymns,” first published in 1779:

Strange and mysterious is my life.
What opposites I feel within!
A stable peace, a constant strife;
The rule of grace, the power of sin:
Too often I am captive led,
Yet daily triumph in my Head,
Yet daily triumph in my Head.

I prize the privilege of prayer,
But oh! what backwardness to pray!
Though on the Lord I cast my care,
I feel its burden every day;
I seek His will in all I do,
Yet find my own is working too,
Yet find my own is working too.

I call the promises my own,
And prize them more than mines of gold;
Yet though their sweetness I have known,
They leave me unimpressed and cold
One hour upon the truth I feed,
The next I know not what I read,
The next I know not what I read.

I love the holy day of rest,
When Jesus meets His gathered saints;
Sweet day, of all the week the best!
For its return my spirit pants:
Yet often, through my unbelief,
It proves a day of guilt and grief,
It proves a day of guilt and grief.

While on my Savior I rely,
I know my foes shall lose their aim,
And therefore dare their power defy,
Assured of conquest through His Name,
But soon my confidence is slain,
And all my fears return again,
And all my fears return again.

Thus different powers within me strive,
And grace and sin by turns prevail;
I grieve, rejoice, decline, revive,
And victory hangs in doubtful scale:
But Jesus has His promise passed,
That grace shall overcome at last,
That grace shall overcome at last.

Bunger said over the past few years, God has taught him many valuable lessons, three of which specifically relate to each other. The first, he said, is that “selflessness is the key.” He pointed out there are many “self-sins” that can drag people down and make them miserable, such as self-pity, self-love and self-seeking.

The second lesson, he said, is to “have no agenda of my own.” He said he realized he’s spent the majority of his life trying to get the things he wants, and pursuing things that aren’t necessarily sinful, but in a way that became sinful.

“I would choose a course of action that appealed to me,” he said, “without much reference to [or even thinking about] God’s will and His claims on my life. Then, if I prayed at all, I would ask His blessings on plans which I’d already made. No wonder I was often frustrated and empty, and even if I managed to get what I wanted, it was hollow.”

But through some hard times and trials the past few years, he said he realized his need to put God first, and seek Him and His will for his life, putting aside distractions. 

The third lesson, he said, is in the privilege of serving others and representing God as he strives, through grace, to pour out his life for His glory.  

He said what God’s grace means to him is the “wonderful heart of love which He has, to reach out to the filthy, the downtrodden, the utterly broken, and begin to heal them and make them His children. He makes us, the undeserving, like His Son, Jesus, and is in the process of making us shine in His very image. He pours His goodness and joy into us, slowly at first since we are so broken and fragile that we can hardly bear it without falling to pieces.”

As Jesus said in Bunger’s favorite Bible passage, Matthew 9:12-13, “…It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but the sinners.”