God’s Kind of Grace

I was pondering this verse the other day. Then again, last night. Then just now, I checked my facebook newsfeed, and up it popped again – this time from my church’s website.

God is with me ~ and He  is trying to make a big point. He is trying to help me absorb this verse in a deeper way right now. He’s trying to help me see something new about His grace.

God’s kind of grace.

See, God’s grace isn’t a “kinda”-kind of grace. It’s full. It’s beyond adequate. God’s grace is unending.

God’s grace is the only of it’s kind.

Here is something that I have concluded over the past couple of days: I have not been allowing His grace to be sufficient for me. I’ve been standing in the way of the fullness of it all.

Yes, I have been meditating on the second part of this verse much, but forgetting about the first part. The very important, soul changing, utterly awesome first part. The grace part, friends.

“My grace is sufficient for you.” It is sufficient.

Sufficient: Enough, Substantial, Competent, Adequate.

I don’t need the grace that others do or don’t offer me when I am having a hard time – it’s nice when it happens, but I don’t need it.

I shouldn’t need their understanding, or their compassion, or even their acceptance or bare tolerance.

His grace should be sufficient for me. In fact, He says that it IS. I just haven’t been accepting that. Not fully. And I am in a situation right now regarding my health and how it’s affecting me that intermittently requires that I know this – it requires that I live this – requires that I stand firmly upon His promise to me regarding his beautiful and unending grace and believe this. Fully.

I haven’t been allowing His grace alone to sustain me. I have been wanting others in my life to understand me, to help and support me, to be there for me when I really need it or feel alone. Not too many have been necessary in my little mind, but at least a few felt….”crucial.” Mind you, sometimes they do understand me, offer up grace to me, show me compassion, love and mercy. Way more often than I deserve. But there’s been this nagging feeling inside. And now, I know what that is. He’s been trying to tell me something and I haven’t heard it until today.

It’s that it needs to be okay even if or when others do NOT understand. It needs to be “well within my soul” because it is truly only HIS grace that I need.

• It needs to be okay to allow others to think what they may if I can’t bring myself to smile through the pain when I’m having a bad day with this arthritis/fibro stuff.
• It needs to be okay with me that maybe it “looks bad” if I can’t make it to church, or run around and do all of the fun things that everyone else seems to look forward to with glee.
• It needs to be okay even if I get a little cranky and don’t handle it perfectly, but see the err of my ways and make it right with whomever was in my path in that moment.
• It needs to be more than okay with me, because it is covered by His grace. He’s got it ALL covered.

Is there something that you are walking through right now in your life in which you think you have grasped His grace, but see you haven’t allowed it to be suffiicent? Maybe you’ve accepted part of it, or most of it, but not the full of it, like me. We tend to think we are only selling short the impact his grace really has in our lives when we are coveting a better situation. But sometimes, even when accepting (as much as we can) that situation, we aren’t allowing His grace to sustain us.

I have been angry with myself when I screw up because of having bad days filled with pain. I have been upset that I can’t always do the things I’d like to do to serve others, lift their mood, or build them up and edify them the way that I can when I don’t have to focus on getting through the next hour without wincing. I’ve been worried that if I do rub off on someone else that they won’t forgive me. Most of the time, I receive grace from others anyway, but what if I didn’t once or twice? Why is that so earth shattering to me?

There’s a fine line between making things right when you rub someone the wrong way and stepping into territory where you need things to be right or your well being becomes rocky. That’s the place I can no longer allow myself to be in all the time. That’s the place where man becomes more important than God. That’s the place where we find that grace, human grace is NOT enough. No grace I can give to another is enough and no grace they can provide to me is either. It’s important to give it, there’s no question about it.

But only HIS is really sufficient.

I think sometimes God allows us to feel alone in something (or alone in a part of that something, at least) so that we can really soak this truth into our hearts…let it seep into our souls. We tend to need such reminders – reminders such as “my grace is sufficient for you.”

Is it? Are we truly allowing it to be sufficient?

And isn’t the paradox in that just beautiful? “sufficient” means adequate, not abundant. But God’s grace, on the other hand ~ God’s kind of grace is abounding and goes way beyond “enough.”

That’s a pretty big dose of something pretty magnificent, if you ask me. It almost seems to be an understatement in it’s own powerful, divine, and beautiful way, doesn’t it? Leave it to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to continually surprise us in these glorious ways.

I know I will remain challenged in this area throughout my life, amongst a multitude of other things. But today I am moving out of condemnation and into conviction regarding the fact that His truth ~ the truth about Him, His grace, His mercy, His love, and His Compassion, is enough for me.

I just need to be reminded. I need to be reminded a lot.

Thanks be to Him that He reminds me in the good, the bad, and the very, very ugly. His grace transcends every mood, every situation, every reaction or non-reaction.

His grace is sufficient. It is enough.

Know it.  Live it.  Believe it.

 

 

 

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