By Michael Young
Grace is such a difficult concept for me to embrace. Intellectually, I can easily define it, put in a box my neat theology, and bring it out when the conversation strikes. But in reality, when life happens, grace is not my go-to reaction. In all honesty, it may not even be my second or third.
What is more peculiar is that I usually have no problem extending grace to other people, but when it comes to myself the bar is set much higher.
I should know better. I should be better.
I am much more inclined to deal with my failures or even my hidden motivations to “right” actions by trying harder, hustling harder, but either way still taking on every aspect of my life by myself.
But grace should force me to come to grips with the fact that I’m insufficient in and of myself. Grace clearly lines out that I can’t do this alone and I have a need for another to not make me better, but transform me.
Maybe this isn’t my go-to reaction because there were too many times when I needed someone else and they didn’t show up. Or times when I was vulnerable and I wasn’t met with grace, but ridicule and judgment. So, it has been safer to go it alone.
But refusing to embrace the grace offered in and through the life of Jesus is to confine ourselves to a life that also will be void of experiencing the fullness of God’s love. Without experiencing God’s love in our lives, we will struggle to demonstrate his love as his image-bearers in a broken world.
The Apostle Paul, the theologian of grace in the New Testament, experienced this in practical ways. Not only did grace define his life as a former murderer of the church, but his daily life was in need of God’s grace while he experienced persecution. When crying out to God to take away a “thorn in his flesh,” Paul tells us how God responds and how he responds to God:
“‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (2 Corinthians 12:9).
To embrace grace for ourselves requires trust in the one who extends the grace. As we seek God for true satisfaction, can we trust Him in ways that sink us deeper into our recognition that we have a desperate need for God in all that we are and do?
Jesus didn’t call us to the safer route, but to a radical life that is in contradiction to the culture around us.
It is radical to live a life of dependence on God, knowing that we can’t live the greatest adventure of all time without Him, in the midst of a culture and generation that says you alone are all-sufficient.
May we embrace our deep need for the grace of God, and may it lead us to lives filled with God’s love, forgiveness, and direction as members of God’s chosen family.