Grace & Change

From time to time, we all see areas in our lives that we struggle with; areas that we wish could be different. It might be moral failures or habits that have us discouraged. How does God want us to approach those areas? Is there a way to find freedom and real change? Yes. What I have come to understand about God’s grace has made a powerful difference in my life. And I believe it can make a powerful difference in yours.

When you hear the word grace, what comes to mind? I think the best definition I’ve found is by author Joseph Cooke who wrote, “Grace is nothing more nor less than the face that love wears when it meets imperfection, weakness, failure, sin.”

It’s that quality in the heart of God that causes Him not to deal with us according to our sins, or to retaliate against us according to our iniquities. It is God’s faithfulness to us, even when we are not faithful. In fact, it is what love must always be when it meets the unlovely, the weak, the inadequate, the undeserving, and the despicable. God is willing to respond to need without reference to merit. It is unmerited favor.

God’s grace pours out love, kindness, favor to all who will trust Him. You don’t have to earn it. You just have to be in relationship with Him to receive His grace.

We most need God’s grace when we become aware of aspects in our lives we know are wrong—things like: poor decisions, habits, behavior that we are ashamed of, areas we want God to change, but where we may fear His condemnation. If we have received Christ into our hearts, we have been declared His own, forgiven, and now under His grace. It is His grace that frees us and changes us. This is why it is so important to know what Scripture says about God’s grace: “We stand in grace” Romans 5:2.

We are all aware that inside of us, we have a good part and we have a bad part. We have a part that we want the world to see—when we are on our best behavior. And then we have a part we would rather hide—things we are ashamed of.

We live in culture bent toward self-improvement. We spend a good deal of time and energy analyzing ourselves and trying to figure out how to make the bad part better. And the part we can’t improve, or we haven’t improved yet, we tend to hide.

Have you ever been in a situation where you are getting to know someone, and way down deep inside you say, “I hope they don’t find out this about me?” Or you may tell a good friend, “Please don’t tell anyone this about me.” When we enter our relationship with God, we may think that He is like we are. We think that we need to hide our bad part from Him. However, if we try to hide unacceptable portions of our personality, we can lose touch with our real selves and we can lose touch with God.

God is not like this. His ways are not our ways. He doesn’t accept our good part and reject our bad part. He sees us as a whole person. He doesn’t see us as a split personality. He says, “Don’t try to make your bad part better. It’s impossible on your own. No matter how much better you can make it, it will never be good enough, because I am perfect. Give me your good part and your bad part and let me make you whole.”

If we refuse to humble ourselves and receive His grace, then there is no relationship. As we come to the Lord and tell Him how we are falling short in those areas then He will meet us in that need with His grace. God is not demanding that we change ourselves. Instead He asks us to come to Him in honesty and faith, and cast all our cares on Him. (1 Peter 5:5-7)

The healthiest people are the people who are aware of where they fall short and instead of being defensive, they are able to say, “Lord be merciful to me, a sinner.”

Romans 5:20 says, “Where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more.” God’s grace is there but we must believe it to receive it. We have to respond to God with an answering trust. And He will act.

If I can know that God is absolutely trustworthy, if I can know that His love is absolutely real, that His kindness is utterly sincere, that His concern for me really does mean an abundant life, then He will do what is His very nature to do. He will reach me way down deep where I really live. His grace can transform me. It can touch the very deepest motivating drives of my heart and He can make me a new person.

He will be free to transform our hearts and minds. But it needs to be understood that this change does not happen all at once. It is a process.

How then do we experience God’s grace? We come to the Lord in our weakness, in our inability, in our sin and in our failure. We choose to believe His love and ability to change us, as we rest in His grace. The result is that we grow.

Under grace we have more than our own resources. We have God’s Holy Spirit enabling us to do His will. The Spirit filled life is moment-by-moment realizing His grace. The Spirit filled life is acknowledging it when I fail and keep bringing it back to God. It is when we take personal responsibility for our sin, and ask God to change us that brings the growth.

John Powell said this, “We think we have to change, grow and be good in order to be loved. But rather we are loved and we receive His grace so we can change, grow and be good.”

The only limit to healing in our lives is the degree to which we don’t reveal ourselves. To grow we must hold a commitment to what is true. God’s grace gives us the freedom to face God and face the truth about us in the light of God’s Word. Knowing we are fully loved and accepted by Him, He calls us to come to Him with everything so that He can help us experience freedom (John 8:32) and a more abundant life (John 10:10).

Think of your own area or areas where you feel condemned or you fear rejection…where you don’t feel like you are perfect. We need to come to Him in humility and truth where we are falling short of God’s law. There is no need to hide. There is no need to lie. There is no need to be condemned.