If you have traveled to London, you have perhaps seen royalty. If so, you may have noticed sophistication, aloofness, distance. On occasion, royalty in England will make news because someone in the ranks of nobility will stop, kneel down, and touch or bless a commoner. That is grace. There is nothing in the commoner that deserves being noticed or touched or blessed by the royal family. But because of grace in the heart of the royal person, there is the desire at that moment to pause, to stoop, to touch, even to bless.
- Chuck Swindoll
For years I've yearned to understand grace, to know what it was like to experience true grace for myself. It was like this great big mystery that I knew was good, was good for me, and was freely given to me. Yeah, I knew all about the grace you learn about in Sunday school, but somehow that didn’t satisfy me. Maybe because deep down, I knew there was more to it. Some people I knew just really seemed to get it, to relish it, to live it! And so often I wondered what it would be like to experience grace like that, the grace that makes people sing and dance and clap, the grace that truly sets people free.
If I know anything, it’s that God so desperately wants his children to understand grace, to receive it for ourselves. Understanding grace means to cherish grace. To cherish grace is to cherish the giver of grace. True grace knows that it is wholly undeserved, yet lovingly given even if it may never be returned.
I know I love God. And I know that I believe that anything he has for me has to be good. So what is it about grace that makes it so hard for people to receive? It’s called the fall, people, our own stupid pride.
Isn't it amazing how, as Christians, we often fall to our knees in praise when the Lord answers our requests, the first thought being, "I don't deserve this!" Oh, but how different that story was even the very moment before we were touched by His grace. I'm the first in line to admit this. Even if I send up a half-hearted prayer, my attitude is whole-heartedly one of entitlement. I deserve this, Father. Why aren't you giving it me? And yet the moment the Lord chooses to stoop down, to bless me, I turn instantaneously into a blubbering mess. I don't even take time to enjoy the gift he's chosen to give! Often times, in that moment, I reject His grace, the same grace I so often long to embrace.
My friendships have taught me more about God’s grace- and about how good I am at rejecting it- more than most books I’ve read. 9 times out of 10, I am on the receiving end of friendship. I have been blessed with sweet friends that pursue me time and time again, calling me even though I rarely call them first. Yet they always seem just as eager to talk with me, to care about my life even when I don't care about my life. I have been given friends that sit with me as I battle my own demons over and over, talking circles around myself, yet they never give up on me, and never get tired of loving someone who never feels like she has her act together. (Side note: No one really does. Nor should anyone desire to. To desire this is to not to desire Christ.) I have friends that assure me that through thick and thin, they won't be going anywhere. So desperately I long to repay these precious people for their kinds words, their hours of encouragement, their prayers, their advice! I long for nothing more than to return to them ten-fold the love and grace they've shown me. This is a good desire. Yet on the flip-side, so often I wonder what delight my friendship could possibly bring to them. It’s disgusting how quickly the Enemy turns me from a grateful recipient of love to a self-loathing rejecter of grace. In this moment, I turn into what Chuck Swindoll would call a grace killer.
It is in that next moment, then, that I must choose for myself to accept grace. Not that I should ever take advantage of grace- of course I should love and cherish and serve well the people the Lord has placed in my path! But I should never believe that my sin is greater than God’s grace, nor should I ever reject the grace that is so freely given to me. To do so if not glorifying to the One I claim I seek to bring glory to.
Understanding grace means understanding that there is nothing in me that deserves to be noticed, or touched, or blessed by the Lord. But in His infinite love, he chooses to do so. His word says it brings him delight! The Lord is noble, but he is not British nobility. He is not aloof- far from it! He knows everything about me, the good, the bad, the ugly. And yet, he notices me. Before the creation of the world, He chose me in him to be holy and blameless before him (Ephesians 1, read it!). Before the foundation of the world, he saw me and said, “I. Want. Her.” The Lord takes the time to pause, to stoop, to touch and to lavishly bless me, despite the fact that I did nothing to earn his favor. Why? Because that’s what grace is. And that’s what love does.
* Quotations by Chuck Swindoll taken from his book, The Grace Awakening.
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