The Gift of Grace

GRACE: The love and mercy given to us by God because God desires us to have it, not because of anything we have done to earn it.

If you looked back over your life is there one sin that sticks out the most in your mind?  We all sin and fall short of the glory of God.  God can take our sins, however large or small, and bring good out of them. The following is a story of sin and the gift of God’s grace.

There was a woman who was a prostitute and she lived in a town with her family.  There was a man who was in charge of many people.  He died and his assistant was given the task of finishing the work that the first had started.  A great property had been prepared for the people and they needed a leader to lead them to the land that was promised to them.

This leader sent out two spies to scope out the land. They came to the prostitute’s house and she took them in.  The ruler of the land heard about the spies and he sent a messenger to the prostitute’s house to ask her to release the men she was hiding.  She told the messenger that she did take the men in but when it got dark the men had left.  She told them if they hurried they might catch up with them.  In reality, she hid the men on the roof of her house until those searching for them had left.

This woman understood who the real King was over the land.  So she requests a favor from the spies whom she hid.  She asked them to spare her and her family.  She gave them instructions to go to the nearest mountain and hide for three days then they could return to the land promised to them.  The spies told her to gather her family together in her house and if she hung a red cord in the window of her home her family would be spared. 

  

If you had to think of the worst sin in your life what would it be?  What about the things in your life you are most ashamed of. If anyone had shame it was Rahab.  The difference in Rahab and many others was she had faith in who God was and what He could do.  If we are ever to understand grace; we must first understand what it means by God’s definition.   Grace is saving us when we don’t deserve it.  When we commit the worst sins this life has to offer, God still offers us His grace and mercy.  Grace equals love. 

    

Prayer for the Day: Heavenly Father, I praise You for the grace you have shown me in my life.  I have done nothing to earn it and it is amazing to me that You still want to give it to me in the midst of my sin.  The greatest gift You have ever given to us is grace and through the death of Jesus on the cross we can live again. “Amazing grace how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost and now I’m found, was blind but now I see.”   

        

Scripture: By Grace Through Faith

And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.

But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Ephesians 2:1-10