How I Reshaped My Thinking
Using the Grace of God
When I first became a Christian, I didn’t want to read the Bible at all. I had a friend who asked me to go through the purple book with her, which is a good way for new Christians to start on getting to know what scripture is about. We both got sidetracked with life and eventually, I just gave up.
Fast forward a few years later, I had finished university and was facing the first crisis in my life. I turned to the Bible, in a search for hope, a hope of the supernatural kind.
For anyone that has read the Bible, you understand how confusing it is in the first few chapters of the Old Testament, which in the past, is what put me off reading it.
So this time, I turned to a Bible reading plan. Which was a combination of the old and new testament, psalms, and proverbs. This made it easier for me to digest.
I tried to make sense of everything with the Bible at the beginning, hoping that God would give me His grace. I needed a favour from the heavens that would allow my life to turn around or get back on track again. A favour which I often bargained with God.
But as all Christians know, grace is the undeserved, unmerited, and unearned favour of God.
This idea took me a while to understand. Coming from a culture that believes in karma, which means if you do good; you will receive good. Often people will do good for the family or surrounding community, because it is seen as “good” or pleasing culturally and socially. Therefore, it would also please the gods that live in a higher dimension above us.
Sacrificing yourself for the betterment of the people around you, constantly, as I have learned, can lead to passive-aggressiveness, lack of ownership, and disempowerment to your life.
What I have learned from living and thinking in grace, however, is no matter what you do, whether it is good or bad, you will receive the favour of God. That is not to say that you should do evil all the time, nor is it saying you won’t suffer if you do good. Suffering in itself is another aspect of living that we need in life.
This leads me to the two points I want to focus on, empowerment, and ownership. Both of these things reshapes the way we see our lives, it gives us perspective on our current actions, and how they can be different in the future. This allows us to become more mindful of ourselves on a daily basis.
I believe by being aware of these two principals, you can see your life change incrementally on a daily basis. The change will also enable you to live with peace of mind.
Empowerment
God gives us grace every moment of our lives. To some of you reading this, it might mean nothing, just Christian positive talk. Allow me to explain it in a more practical way.
Usually, when we give gifts to people, we ask for nothing in return. This often empowers the receiver to do things in their lives. Take, for example, buying a child a toy. It allows him or her to share the gift with others, to explore and to learn the functions of the object.
The grace of God is the same. We receive this favor from Him daily. Which empowers us to live out our best every day. We can also focus on the present because we are grateful for the abundance He provides for us.
For me, I see this grace as a substance that allows us to all be on equal playing fields. No one has it more or less than anyone else, it is how we choose to use this favour from God that shapes our lives.
Ownership
To whom much is provided, much is required. — Luke 12:48
As mentioned in the ownership secction, we are given much of God’s grace daily, and this favour provided required much responsibility.
To help me illustrate what I mean, we only need to look to the parable of the three servants in Matthew 25:14-30.
As you can see from the parable, we are called to invest what is given to us, according to our abilities. Meaning, what is given onto us will never be too much that we can not handle. We only need to focus on how we invest.
To extend on that a bit more, the parable is also talking about the word, stewardship, which means to take care or supervise an organisation or property.
I see this as a call to aim for the highest good possible in your life, every day. If you are able of doing this actively, then not only will you be able to your life around, but the lives of others around you, and maybe the greater community.
Initially, this article was about my understanding of the Bible, how it empowers us, enables us to live a life of abundance, and taking ownership of our lives.
What I realised, as I started writing, is it all comes from grace. As written above, grace gives us an equal playing field, albeit we have favours from God in different ways. It does not make one person inherently better than others.
What matters at the end of the day is how you live it out. You can either complain about what you don’t have in life, and blame society for it, or you can appreciate what you possess, and use it to the benefit of yourself, your family, and your community.
