I get to meet people every day and many of them are Christians struggling with daily living. Many of them struggle with the basic truths of the faith and some struggle in applying those truths. I think some of the issues that people have are because the enemy is good at using the culture to cloud God’s truth from the minds of people and create ambiguity as it pertains to what to believe and then, as a result, how to live. But then, there is another group of people that are strong in the truth and whether they are new Christians, young Christians or people still seeking they share one common issue. The issue is believing that grace exists and the extent of it. I think that it is easy to intellectually ponder and even accept the thought of unconditional love, the forgiveness of sins and eternal destiny determined by the atoning act of Jesus, our savior, but then to have difficulty actually letting the heart embrace it.

Grace is an endless well of unmerited favor that all people have access to and that can create peace, but there is a level of interaction with it that is required to truly accept it and have it make a difference. Some people say they accept it, but all they really are doing is understanding the idea of grace, but not truly engaging in it. The apostle Paul talked about working out our grace daily and a lot of people have given their opinion of what that means, but I am saying that this is what it means. It’s not at all about an intellectual understanding of it, but a deep impression that gets deeper like the pounding of a die on the casting of our heart. It’s not new information just old information that is proven to be true over and over and over again.

The question at hand is how do we do it? How do we let go of what we want and what we are doing now and embrace grace? The answer to that is simple, but not easy. We have to surrender our will and then embrace the heart and will of God. Again, simple in concept, but extremely hard sometimes in practice. I think about the concept of surrender and I think about the thought of a general who gets to that place where they are not going to win and the only option is to surrender or perish. I think that this is the crux of accepting grace. We must surrender or perish. Funny thing is, some generals would rather perish than surrender and they profess some level of honor in doing that. I think that Christians can sometimes do the same thing and  would rather perish at some level than surrender.

I know this analogy is not perfect when it comes to grace, but I hope it gets the point across because it would be ridiculous to compare the loving God of the universe who has only the best interest at heart of all humanity to a general who is engaging in battle with an enemy who only wants to destroy them. But, is it a bad analogy? I think that sometimes we see the hand of God as somehow being a tyrant who just wants to control and take over the turf of our heart and we rebel with some warped sense of honor and fall on our own sword rather than surrender. I am finding more and more this issue to be an issue of the will and I get that it’s hard and our sin nature and maybe our experience tells us to never give up total control. Some people give up some, some people give up a lot, but I think we all have those strongholds in our life that we are not giving up. Again, this is what Paul was talking about when he said to work out our grace daily.

I don’t think that God is unreasonable in this area either. I think God would love for all of us to surrender one hundred percent of our souls and our will at one time and merge our life with His will. Reality is that is probably not going to happen. We all embrace God’s grace at different rates and at different times. The issue is not how fast and how much, but whether it is going on. Are we on the path of grace and growing in it? Sometimes, we are for a while and sometimes we struggle and sometimes we even stop or regress. The wonderful part about grace is that God is just waiting for surrender, any surrender at any time. Surrender means that He has our attention and that is the cornerstone of grace. More to come.