Thoughts on Grace
I believe in grace and I am exceptionally thankful for it, if it weren’t for grace I don’t know what my life would look like now. But you see, grace is a funny thing… It is this incredible gift given to us by Christ at no cost. But this is where it gets interesting…
I want to love my life as a response to the grace that has been given me. I have so much life to give because I have been given so much of it. I have so much grace to give because I have been given it all. Grace may look a little different from person to person but the grace I’m talking about here is the means by which we are saved, it’s the salvation and rescue of Christ for us.
Grace doesn’t change how I behave. My behavior doesn’t change because of the act of grace but rather I change out of a response to grace. You can have all the grace in the world, you have grace for every single situation you have been in and will be in, but you will never change until you respond to it. Your response to grace is a deliberate choice, an act of your will.
Christ has given you all the grace you need. He paid for your sins. You have free access to the Father and to Heaven at any given time, 24/7. But essentially basically it is ineffective in your life, it doesn’t help you unless you respond to the grace. That is REPENTANCE. Repentance is to return to the penthouse, return to the father. Repentance and confession are two very different things. To confess is to make known your sin to another but to repent is to acknowledge what you are doing, going to do or have done is wrong, then turn around and return to where you were or belong.
So responding to grace is a choice and an act of your free will. Our lives should be a response to it. Everyday we respond to grace by partnering with the Holy Spirit. When we see we are not producing the right fruits we need to repent and ask the Holy Spirit to empower us. Our cry should be one of — Holy Spirit… HELP! You absolutely can not do this thing on your own, we need to live life by the Spirit. When we are living life by the Spirit we will produce fruits of the Spirit. What are the fruits of the Spirit? Remember, fruits are by-products of a life source.
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and self control.
The beauty of fruit, of the flesh or the Spirit, is that it should be effortless, out of the abundance of the life source you live from will determine which fruits will be produced. Flesh or Holy Spirit, either way. So if you want more of the one fruit, starve the other life.
You are responsible and powerful enough as a free person to make a decision to respond to grace. What is your response?
