gifts given and gifts waiting

     We are continuing to talk about grace, faith, and forgiveness in Christian Life. Today we focused on what grace and faith mean. I asked this question on my facebook status this morning, "What do you believe God's grace is?" Here were three good answers: 

"He's the God of second chances! You'll be floored at how His love for your life enhances! You can be restored from your darkest circumstances! Our God is a God of second chances!"

"God's grace is never ending. God's grace is bigger than the biggest love in the world. You cannot do ONE thing to make him hate you. Love him."

"God's grace is a gift we can never earn. It is the only way to be saved. By grace alone through faith alone through Christ alone."

     The last comment is closer to what we were discussing in class today. (Of course, all three comments are spot on and correct!) 

Grace is being spared of what we deserve to receive what we do not deserve.

     God has given us the gift of grace. We are all completely spiritually dead. There's no getting around that. We are alive through Christ, yes...but we are all dead spiritually without God. Even if we were 100% willing to be saved, we could do absolutely nothing about it. Why? Because without God's grace, we aren't able to do ANYTHING. We are helpless and hopeless. We are objects of wrath (Ephesians 2:3). We cannot do anything with our spiritual lives on our own. Like a dead corpse can't raise himself or choose to live again. God chooses to intervene and give us the ability to believe. If God chose to not intervene, we would be cut off from Him forever. God enables us with the capacity to accept Christ and to believe. He gives us the gift of grace so that we may be saved. 

     Faith. To be sure of what we hope for and certain of things we do not see (Hebrews 11:1). That's pretty plain and simple.

Faith is complete trust.

     God has given us this gift, as well. How good He is. Without faith...well, we wouldn't believe in anything, would we? We wouldn't believe the sun would come up the next day. We wouldn't believe that we would wake up the next day. Ever think about how much faith goes into each and every day? We do have faith that the sun will come up and that we will wake up with the sun. We have faith that the ground is solid. We have faith that our chairs will hold us. We have faith that the seasons will change. It's such a strong part of life that we don't even realize it. I think faith is incredible and only God could have granted us with this treasure of thinking. 

We are saved by grace through faith. And it is not by our works that we have the ability to have grace and to have faith. It is the grand gift of God (Ephesians 2:8-9).

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     In Acts, we've obviously been going through the book of Acts. I'm still trying to understand it all myself, but something my professor kept saying was this, "Waiting on God is the hardest thing in the world to do." Yes, it is. This is mainly a reminder to myself. I need to trust that God knows exactly what He's doing, because He does, and to just let Him take control. What I'm waiting for may not come this year or the next or maybe even the next...which is hard to digest, but it's not really up to me, is it? Nope. So then why worry over it? God will deliver precisely when He means to whether I worry and stress about it or not. I can't seek it out.

-jrw