2.RECEIVE GOD’S GRACE
How does God put up with us? How can he keep forgiving us over and over again?
The answer is grace- noting but grace! Paul said, God, for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you. God forgives us the ten thousandth time for exactly the same reason he forgave us the first time – because of the cross.
That’s the only account any of us can draw on!
Because we live in a performance based society, we tend to approach God hoping we’ve earned enough credit to offset our debits. The trouble with that is, we keep failing, and quickly reach the point where we feel like we’ve no credit left to draw on. Then we assume that God cant or wont forgive us- or that we’ll have to work harder to obtain what He once offered us freely and willingly. How sad.
What we need here is a new pair of spiritual glasses to see God as He is, and to understand how His grace works.
Shortly after a man’s 50th birthday, his wife suggested that he should get checked for eye glasses. (I believe it had something to do with his driving!) He thought “this is too much; first his hair, then his teeth, now his eyes.
Finally he gave in and went to see the optometrist.
You folks with glasses know the drill. The doctor put him on a chair, turned out the lights, and asked him to read several lies of black letters on a white background. At the top of the screen they were large, at the bottom they were small. So he decided he would show the doctor and his wife and anybody else who cared that whatever he may have needed, it wasn’t glasses.
In his most fluent, well modulated voice, he read across the bottom line- ‘A.G.C.P.I.W.Z’
The doctor burst out laughing. He said. What’s so funny doc? I just read the bottom line with the smallest letters and I never missed one. “she replied, sir, I think we have a problem here, those are not letters- they’re numbers- and you need glasses worse than anybody I have ever met.
When it comes to understanding God’s grace, most of us don’t know the difference between letters and numbers. Listen, “Saving is all His idea… it’s God’s gift from start to finish….We neither make nor save ourselves…God does both…” (Ephesians 2:8-9). Could language be any clearer?
Somewhere I heard about Sunday school teacher who tried to explain the following erase to her students;” he explain the thirsted, come ye to the waters and he that hath no money, come ye, buy and eat, come buy wine and milk without money and without price.
How do you explain such a statement to a class of six or seven year old?
The teacher decided to throw the question out to the kids, ‘what does it mean to buy without money? After a long pause, one boy’s hand shot up in the air and he said. I know, my mother does it all the time. It means charge it.
Forgiveness, yesterday, today and forever is available to you through grace, but only on credit. His credit. Charge it to Jesus!
Upon a life I did not live
Upon a death I did not die
Another’s life; another’s death
I stake my whole eternity
