Can ya relate?
You guys, this is a lame cycle that we need to pick our butt kickin' selves out of RIGHT now, like TO-DAY! Yes, we want to be our best. If you know me at all you know that I am so much for living the best life we possibly can. I am so anti-settling for second best I'm probably annoying with how often I mention it. Because I've done it. A million times. Man my butt's bruised.
But even with our striving to do our best, there has to be a moment we allow ourselves a break. Just a break. A break from the personal beat downs we so often give ourselves. A break from the negative chatter in our mind; the words of disappointment we speak over our soul.
I read a verse in the Bible that I can't stop thinking about. It's simplistic yet complex so I've been studying it out to gain the best understanding that I can. It's in John 1 and it says simply and so beautifully these words:
John 1:16 "And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace."
This verse is scripture is talking about Jesus and all that He represents to the life of a person once we become a believer in Him. We are privy to all that He is. We receive His fullness. My goodness, can you even wrap your head around that? His fullness. So every bit of health that He is, I receive it. Every blast of joy that my God is, I receive it. Every dose of prosperity that He has, yep, that too I receive. The list goes on and on and on. His fullness. But there is one thing that He is full of also, and this one thing is what we don't accept for ourselves, hence our bruised buns. It's grace. GRACE.
The scripture says, "and grace for grace."
When God created the world, He did it with a beautiful grace. He hung the moon and the stars and spoke the Earth and all of it's beauty into existence. And He did it all with such a powerful and magnificent grace. Then He formed man, with graceful detail. Then He created us women, with just a touch more detail of course. Then Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit and God had to send them out of the perfect grace filled environment they were enjoying. Why? Grace. It was God's grace that drove them out of the Garden. Had Adam and Even been able to stay, they would have forever known the wrong they did. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil would have reminded them of it, day after day. Night after pain-staking night. So God's grace drove them out of the Garden and a new grace was on the way. A grace that would come in the form of a sweet baby, born in a manger, amongst filth and debris. That baby would grow into the most wonderful person this Earth has ever known. And He would heal people, and He would love people, and He would feed people, and He would redeem people.
And then He would die. For grace. And then He would rise. For grace.
Grace has been God's story all along. Even when He gave the law to Moses for the Israelites to live by, that was grace. The law was grace? Sure it was. People need boundaries. Life is so much better when we live right, when we live according to the Bible.
But God, in His grace, sent His Son Jesus, to take us to a deeper place of grace. A grace that offers forgiveness and an eternity in Heaven. This grace enables us to do what we are destined to do. This grace strengthens us to live by the Word of God, even when it's difficult or perhaps undesirable. And this grace picks us up when we fall. This grace causes us to try again. This grace fills us day after day with the fullness of God. This grace gives us permission to rest. To stop kicking our butts. To quit living in the boneyards of yesterday's bad decisions. To change.
Oh my goodness. What a grace. Thank You Jesus, thank You for grace. Thank You for a grace that forgives me. Thank You for a grace that restores me. Thank You for a grace that is so personal to me, that in all my flaws, in all my setbacks and in all my failures, Your grace never changes. It never runs out. I can't exhaust Your grace. So it's with that grace that I thank you for the fullness that's living in me. And today, I choose to wear it well. In Your precious name, Amen.
