Ladies, do you know how to walk with grace?

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There is a high probability you don’t. If you are like me no one ever offered you a course entitled “Now you are a Christian this is how you walk with grace.”

Philip Yancy says, “The two major causes of most emotional problems among evangelical Christians are these: the failure to understand, receive, and live out God’s unconditional grace: and the failure to give out that unconditional grace – the good news of the Gospel of grace has not penetrated the level of our emotions.”
In other words, most Christians are not walking with grace. They are crawling … childish in their spiritual development.
You say, “I’ve heard of walking by faith. I just haven’t heard of walking with grace. Isn’t it the same?”
Yes and NO! Here is the problem. Many of us walk by faith “in ourselves” so that we can be gracious to ourselves. Most diets, business plans, and educational aspirations encourage this.
“You can do it! Have faith in yourself.” The assumption being that you have the power within – the grace – to award yourself … a thin body, a successful portfolio, and educational achievements.
When we do this we can only “grace ourselves” from the bank of our own resources. In this case many Christians are not walking with God’s grace but with God’s disgrace — fallen man — ourselves.
Take Egypt’s army – they were walking by faith just as the Hebrews, faith that they would be able to cross the Red Sea.
 “By an act of faith, Israel walked through the Red Sea on dry ground. The Egyptians tried it and drowned.” Hebrews 11:29 Msg Bible
To walk by faith with God’s grace requires that we transfer our confidence in ourselves to God: God’s strength, God’s ability, and God’s wisdom. When we do, we will experience God’s goodness, his inexhaustible grace.
You say, “Am I supposed to think I am worthless, inept, and incapable?”
No, you are to think that you are fallen, limited, and needy, dependent on God who is holy, limitless, and sufficient.
“How does this work in the real world of dieting, business, and education?”
Next: How to walk by faith with God’s grace as you try to lose weight.

Traveling the path of God’s grace

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Did you know as a Christian, you are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for you to do? (Eph 2:10) If God has prepared in advance good works for you to do, then obviously he has prepared in advance the place to encounter those good works.

But how do you get from where you are to the place where you encounter those good works? Or another way to say it is: how do you travel the path of God’s grace that is uniquely designed for you?

I want to suggest that there are three identifiable points that we continually travel between, labeled “identification”, “love”, and “grace”. Spiritually I see them like ascending up and down a mountain.

First, as you travel up the mountain:
Identification is the place where you identify with Christ. You feel his desire. You agree with his truth. You accept his will. As you identify with him, his identity becomes your own. It is very difficult to identify with Christ Jesus if you don’t know what he thinks or says. That is why reading the Bible is so important. However, it is not reading the Bible for the sake of just reading the Bible, but for the sake of identifying with Christ so as to allow his identity to become your own. (John 5:38-40)

You may be born again with his nature but do you share his identity?

Imagine two identical twins who share the same DNA. But, as each has free will, they will make different life choices. They have the same nature but not the same identity.

Identification leads to love and love leads to identification. It was God’s love that led him to identify with man by sending his Son to earth (John 3:16). And it was the Son’s identification with man’s sin on the cross that demonstrated his love. Authentic love can never be absent of identification. To the degree you can identify will be to the degree you can love.

Love is measured by selfless sacrifice. It is more than a feeling, though feelings certainly accompany love. Love is active, requiring expression. Love always births, it is inexhaustible creation. Love is God who is continually expressing or working. (John 5:17)

Has your love for Jesus grown cold?

Don’t try to conjure up false emotions, simply seek Jesus in an identifiable position as your own. The reason Jesus lived thirty-three years was to be able to identify with our human experience. He knows what it is like to be poor, hurt, lonely, hungry, threatened, misunderstood, abandoned, abused, and much more. He knows experientially the situation you are in and he can identify. This is an important step you must take, allowing the Scriptures to reveal Jesus in a situation similar to your own, because love always flows to and from identification.

Grace, God’s grace, always flows from love and seeks to identify us more and more with the object of identification. Grace is a gift from God that is based on his goodness not ours. That gift can take so many expressions. After God first graces us with a salvation by depositing Christ’s nature in us, he continues to grace us with everything we need, step by step, for life and godliness. It may be wisdom, strength, courage, health, financial resources, friends, etc. Just like his love, God’s grace is inexhaustible and multifaceted. And it is always received by faith — believing in his love for us — rather than ourselves.

God’s grace is about his goodness, a commentary on his character, not yours … so what are you waiting for? Receive it and let him show himself as good.

If we will believe (which is not characterized belief until it is whole-hearted) then we will be in a place of grace – which is an embrace of the person Grace – Christ nature alive in us, Oneness with God.

Today, take a step to seek Jesus in the Bible so as to identify with him, welcome his love wholeheartedly at work in your circumstances, and experience his grace.

Next, we will descend down the mountain …

and discover the unique good works God has prearranged made ready for you.

Does your life add up?

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So often “I” am number one in my plans. I ask myself what “I” want to do today. I follow that question up with what do “I” want to accomplish today. Then I add what “I” want to eat, what“I” want to wear, where do “I” want to go, and where do “I” begin. And all the while wondering how “I” feel.

Yet “I” call myself a Christ-one or Christian, as if Christ’s nature is to be number one in my life: his will, his desires, and his plans are to take precedence over mine. If you were to quote Galatians 2:20 “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God.” I would nod in whole hearted agreement.

Yet all day, with a myriad of my decisions, “I” is adding my life to his, +1, +1, +1… The sum total of my day equally something far different than he might have wanted. How do I know? Because he said he wanted my day to add up to abundant life, to be an experience of eternal life: “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” (John 17:3).

What! He wants me to know him? “I” has been busy all day plugging in “I” as number one. “I” didn’t know his plans, nor did “I” seek to know what he might have wanted me to eat, drink, wear, go, do, accomplish. And, “I” doesn’t know how he feels about such things, because “I” didn’t ask.

Does your day add up to the sum that Jesus said he came to deliver: abundant life? Or are you like me, struggling in spiritual math? Grade today’s equation and see how many times you added your number one to his equation.