Saturday, October 11, 2014

What is Grace? Is it merely enough or is it more?

People love quoting, "God's grace is sufficient." Sufficient means "enough; adequate." The Old Testament word that closest resembles grace is lovingkindness. God introduced himself to Moses by saying, "The Lord God is abounding in lovingkindness." Abounding means overflowing, so great it is more than we need. So yeah His grace is enough but it is at the same time far more than enough. It is "beyond all we could ask for or imagine."

So when I hear God's grace is "enough" or His grace is "sufficient" it makes me think "Life sure sucks & is brutally hard but God will help me barely squeeze by." In my mind, in today's word, to the common man, saying God's grace is "enough" or is "sufficient" doesn't picture the abundant life Jesus said we'd have.

So I don't care if it is a "quote from scripture." In today's language it makes grace sound like living paycheck to paycheck instead of basking in the abundant riches in Christ Jesus. For some of us that is the grace we've bought into, the kind that makes life barely tolerable, the kind that is at least better than what we believed in before, the kind that still leaves us feeling poor & broken. Grace is far more than "just getting by."

"Grace" comes off as some over spewed empty & vague religious word. It also comes off as some disconnected impersonal power of God. But grace.. what grace really is.. Grace is God's fatherhood. Grace is your Father's endless & perfect love for you.

Jesus never said the word grace. Jesus said in John 17:26 that His mission, the reason He came to earth was to "make My Father's character known so that people can have the same love My Father has for Me in them." Jesus came so that YOU could experience our Father's love to the same extent that He does.

Grace is your Father's love for you. There is nothing more & it is nothing less.

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