The Grace Exchange
Let’s talk about grace…….
Justice is getting what you deserve.
Grace is getting what you don’t deserve.
Grace is help. It is empowerment. It is favor from God that moves within your life privately that people see outwardly. Grace changes the way you view things and it aligns your life with the will of God. You do NOTHING to get grace the same way you do nothing to get salvation, except receive it.
Grace is a secret work inside you, yet it can be seen to others.
Falling. Sinning. Missing the mark. A lifestyle of sin. We all will at some point fit one of these categories. We were born into sin. We cannot opt out of that. We all fall and miss God and sin and fail but God never leaves us to ourselves to be in sin alone.
GIFT OF GRACE
Grace saves us.
Romans 3:23 says that we all have sinned and fallen short of glory of God and we are justified FREELY by his grace…
This means we cannot can not earn the grace. It is freely given to us and makes us justified in Gods eyes without any qualifications whatsoever. Our salvation is free yet it cost Jesus everything, His very life. We enter it freely and we must choose him freely. We enter into sin because we say
“I need to work something, I need to do something different than what God wants, I need to fix this mess I made, I need to work a plan”.
Jesus said keep your eyes on him and we fall when we don’t. If you keep missing the mark and “falling” into sin, it is because you keep your eye on your sin and your weakness. We keep trying and trying and doing it by effort instead of relating to God when we fail or fall the same way we did when we received salvation. The way we come into a relationship with God is the same way we maintain it when we fall.
Just be in Him as He said in
Acts 17:28 – in Him we live in Him we move in Him we have our BEING not doing!!! It really is a finished work!
This is an impossible life to live without Christ living through us yet many of us try to do just that. He must live through us. The hard stuff is possible with His grace. You can never do it if you ‘try’. You will fail every time.
I forgot where I heard this analogy about grace but I want to share it here with you.
Someone said that all the enemy gives us is sin, temptation, difficulties, trouble pain, rejection, adultery, lying, success he sends, empty dreams, etc…and he sends these things your way and you fall for them. It’s sort of like a baseball game. The trials and problems are the balls and the enemy is the pitcher and you are the batter. Satan pitches the ball (sin) and you think you are ready and you miss. You sin. Strike 1. You didn’t even see the ball coming and miss. Then he pitches again and you know you are going to hit it this time. Nope. Strike 2. Sin again. He pitches another problem and sin and you miss it again. You fail miserably. Strike 3. Your out.
Oh the crushing guilt and shame you feel. The weight of sin and consequences you know you are going to bear.
Then here comes Jesus. He says “let me bat for you. You stand right here next to me. I said I would never leave you nor forsake you.”
Satan pitches again and on the first try Jesus, with one hand, hits it out the park and says now you run run all around all the bases and slide into home.
But you say “I didn’t bat.” But Jesus says “Yes you did. I did it through you!!!!”
This is grace at work.
He does the work through us but we run the bases and get to score!!!! But in between bases you fall you sin. You keep running to home because grace did it for you. You are not stopped by the sin problem in your life. The lifestyle of sin is not a problem anymore. It can’t touch you.
Grace helps you and gives you strength to do what you could not do. It gives you the ability to live for Him when you think you can’t.
You will never win at Satan’s game. Yet, many of us keep playing on his field and trying to win without Jesus. We won’t fully trust Jesus to live His life through us. The more you fail and can’t do it, the better position you are in for grace. Paul says that he boasts in his weaknesses because it is not him but Christ in him living.
Many of us keep saying, “I won’t do it again. I won’t do it again. I won’t do it again. I won’t see her again. I wont sin again. I won’t lie again. I won’t hate myself again. I wont use my body this way again. Oh no I DID IT AGAIN!!”
Why? Because you keep looking at you and not at Him and making the grace exchange.
HERE IS ANOTHER STORY
Take a man on a skyscraper up 80 stories and walking on the ledge and then he slips and falls. We say why, why did he take that risk. Why did he put himself in that position and sin like that. What was he thinking? He is falling to his death right? Yes. But what if he is a man falling with a hang glider on his back. You get a totally different picture now.
He is now falling and catching the wind and gliding across the sky. The law of gravity was in effect when he was falling and then when he put on the hang glider the law of gravity was still in effect but it was now SUPERCEEDED by the law of aerodynamics. The law of gravity was still there. It did not go anywhere. The law of sin and death is still in our lives but grace overrides it.
Sin is still in your life it didn’t go anywhere. Temptations are still there, enticements are still there. Choice is still there. They are still in operation, but grace. The ability to fall and live in God’s grace makes you strong and you live differently. Grace makes the Law of Sin and Death of no effect in your life.
To live by grace you must do as Romans 6 says and
“you count yourself dead to sin and alive to God”.
He is not going to do it for you. You have to decided I don’t want this life of sin anymore and be eternally separated from God.
But we say, “I messed up God look what I did.” Then we try to fix it. When we do that we are hopeless and the situation will never be fixed. You can’t fall out of God’s hand. Grace keeps you from being utterly destroyed.
If you keep having the same failure over and over and over and running back to sin and shame and guilt it is because your FOCUS is on the wrong thing. You think about the wrong things.
Make the grace exchange and live.
