Grace

“For by grace you have been saved through faith: and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God: not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.  For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:8-10, NASB)

God knows me and understands me perfectly and also accepts me and forgives me continually.  God’s love is absolute toward me and his acceptance of me and forgiveness of me is immutable in Christ.  These truths gave me much hope during the darkest times in my life.  When I felt unlovable and far from God because of my sin, I knew that God still loved me despite His full knowledge and understanding of me, and that He accepted and forgave me in Christ.

When I was in the throes of sexual sin, not a single day passed that I was not engaged in some sort of physical acting out (and sometimes several times a day).  It is an amazing thing to realize that none of that was hidden from God’s knowledge and yet His grace through Christ forgave me and His acceptance of me never wavered.  I was learning the lessons of grace.  I don’t think I will ever fully comprehend the breadth and enormity of the love of God.  I get a better understanding of His love though, as I better understand how much He hates sin (He cannot even have it in His presence) and yet He was willing to suffer humiliation, ridicule, rejection, pain, and ultimately death, to open up the Way to restore my relationship to Him. 

I often think of the death of Christ with much love and appreciation for what He was willing to endure on my behalf, for my good.  However, I am beginning to realize that His death had implications far beyond my initial understanding.  His death meant complete and utter separation from God in every way!  What he must have endured during that separation is unimaginable!  God did what it took as a holy God to be able to have a relationship with me.  I can scarcely wrap my mind around it!   It inspires me to continue to seek more of Him daily and to surrender more and more of my life to Him in love. 

So far in my journey of discovery in God’s Word, there has been only one passage of Scripture that moved me to tears when I read it and the Holy Spirit gave me a deeper understanding of it.  That passage is Ephesians 3:16-19 which reads “…that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.”