Tag: grace

Grace – This is Not From Yourselves

a-Eph 2-8 imageThe YouTruth in Ephesians 2: 8

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.”

There are so many areas of life that are tied to performance. Your job or career is certainly that way. If you perform well, you are compensated well. If you don’t, you may not be compensated at all. If you have children, you can face a lot of performance-related feedback as a parent. If your kids behave well, you may get praises. If they don’t, you may face judgment. Just about every area of life in the world can be pressure-packed by the need to perform well. Much of the stress you may face in life can flow from this phenomenon.

There is great news. Your relationship with God is in no way based on your performance. Let me restate that: You do not have to perform for God in order to secure a personal, eternal relationship with Him. The measure of God’s love that flows to you through your relationship Him is always turned on full strength. If you make mistakes, it still flows full strength.  If you fail Him at times, it still flows full strength. Even in moments when you are acting purely in His will, it flows just the same. Nothing you can do can affect His love for you. It is a gift. All you have to do is receive it through faith in Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Nothing else is required.

There is more great news. You can carry this gift into every corner of your life in the world. This gift has great power to dissolve away the performance-related stresses you will face. If you have a bad day at work, God is still pouring out His love, full strength. If you lose your temper with someone close to you, God is still pouring. If your child acts out at the grocery store, you guessed it, God’s gift is unaffected.

Blessing, Keeping and Face Turning – The Lord’s Grace and Peace

a-Numbers imageThe YouTruth in Numbers 6:24-26

“The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace.”

What a powerful prayer this is! It is filled with so many good things, it’s hard to know where to begin!

You may recognize this as a benediction prayer used in many worship services to send the congregation forth after worship. It has been used in this way for thousands of years!

The imagery of God’s face in this prayer is powerful and is key to understanding how you can harness the stated blessings of grace and peace. In Old Testament times, the quality of your relationship with God was illustrated by whether God’s face was turned toward you or away from you. “Why have You turned Your face from me?” is a common cry in the Psalms. It is important to understand God’s perfect, unchanging nature in order to properly understand what was really happening. God would be right to  respond to such a psalmist’s lament with the same question, “No, why have you turned away from Me?”

This illustration can work for you today, too. When you seek after a closeness with God, He promises that you will find yourself in His light, face-to-face with Him. And when you do, you will be in prime position to receive the grace and peace He so longs to give you.

Seek His face today and receive the grace and peace He promises for doing so. (Don’t forget to pass on His bright-shining grace and peace to others, too!)

Use The Gift You Have Received

1 Peter 4-10 imageThe YouTruth in 1 Peter 4:10

Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.

What are your gifts? Are you good at working with young children? Are you musically inclined? Are you good with tools and building projects? Do you feel like you don’t have any true gifts? I can assure you, that in God’s economy, everyone has gifts and in those gifts, however small or insignificant they may seem at times, there is a great and glorious purpose.

There are some important things to remember about your gifts: you did not earn them and they do not belong to you! They are gifts, entrusted to you, and they belong to God. Adopting this understanding about your gifts goes a long way to understanding how to use them. Their use should be directed towards others and not just used for self-serving purposes.

Another thing to remember is that your gifts, and the countless gifts of others, are all various expressions of God’s grace. God’s grace and your gifts are wrapped up together in a great, big care package He has freely given to you. When you use your “grace gifts” to share God’s love with others, you become part of God’s wonderful grace delivery system.

So, be a grace gift deliverer today! Use whatever gift you have received to serve others.

For God So Loves You

The world is a mighty big place, and it is easy to get lost in it. You might feel anonymous among the masses and unnoticed amidst the noise. But God cuts through it all, reaching out to each one of us individually. You see, to God, the world is not a huge mass of humanity, but a glorious collection of unique and treasured individuals—and that includes you!

“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

John 3:16 (NIV)

John 3:16 is probably the most familiar passage in the entire Bible. Familiarity can cause us to take something for granted. But since this passage expresses the fundamental truth about God’s plan for salvation, we certainly don’t want to take it for granted! So let’s explore the concepts of love and life and how they relate to God’s Son. Let’s renew the power of this oft-quoted passage.

The Bible tells us that God is love (1 John 4:8). He is the wellspring from which love flows. Love never ends (1 Corinthians 13: 7,8). Like God, it is eternal. So God’s love of the world isn’t reduced to a kind act performed a long time ago. No, He continually pours Himself out for us.

The Bible also tells us to accept God’s love and to love Him in return (1 John 4:19). In other words, since God loves you, love Him back! It works much like an electric circuit. When the circuit is broken, electricity will not flow. It’s the same with love. When we love God in return, the circuit is complete, and there is an endless flow of love between God and us (John 14:21). The Bible says we return God’s love in two ways—directly, by loving God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and indirectly, by loving others (Matthew 22:36-40). When we return God’s love, we become the embodiment and expression of His very nature. It sounds like an amazing place to be, doesn’t it? It is!

It’s called life. God invites us to have it!

But, alas, our circuit is broken. Sin causes the break in our circuit. And sin and death go hand in hand (Romans 6:23a). That’s the bad news. But there’s good news! God has made a way to complete the circuit! If we believe in God’s Son, Jesus, we can complete the circuit (Romans 6:23b). Believing in Jesus is more than just acknowledging that He exists. Believing in Him looks like this:

  • We admit that we sin.
  • We ask God to forgive our sins.
  • We turn away from our sins and seek to stop sinning.
  • We completely trust that Jesus came to earth to restore love and life to us—to repair the break in the circuit.
  • We completely trust and openly proclaim Jesus as the Lord of our life.
  • Repeat steps 1-5 over and over again, every day!

That’s the truth. And that’s good news!  But there’s more! Inside every truth is the YouTruth. God personally invites you to repair the break in the circuit and become part of His true love, His true life, in Jesus.

For God pours out His endless loving nature upon you by giving His one and only Son for you, that if you believe in Him, you shall no longer be dead, but you shall be truly alive, an active part of the embodiment and expression of God’s loving nature now and for all eternity.

That’s the YouTruth—for God so loves you.