I try to understand God’s love for me, amidst circumstances that trouble and perplex me and make me stretch to find His goodness and grace in the difficulty of it all.
I try to live like I fully get His love – with it’s forgiveness and grace, but at times it shows that I’m not fully comfortable living in His grace just yet.
This is because I have God’s truth all muddled. More often than not, I’m still striving to live a life of righteousness and perfection, (not grace). This wearies my soul and steals my joy. And it looks pathetic – like struggling to put on a shirt that’s gone horribly wrong.
In this sinful world and broken state that I live in I get it all backwards. I usually try to put the righteousness on first, and then His love and grace, instead of the other way around.
Every so often I get a glimpse of God’s truth as it is meant to be received and lived in. Every so often I see it truly as it is.
This week reading Building Faith in Bible Pathway, and then my passages in Romans, I get it! I see it! I see that it is exactly in my fallen state and unworthiness, and in my limping gait, that God loves me, lifts me up, and steadies me. And it is exactly in this, that His glory and grace shine forth best and brightest – in these very moments.
It is in my troubling un-perfect state that He loves me and looks tenderly on me, having provided forgiveness and all that I need in Christ. It is against the dark backdrop of sin and hopelessness that His glory, goodness, and hope is revealed as all the more blessed and glorious. Then, as I live for Him in loving, faith-filled trust, I bring Him glory and reflect His glory.
I get to live for Christ in this grace of His! Another day I get to live for Christ! Another day, another chance to know Him more fully, exactly in this broken, darkened world in which He desires to call each person unto Himself, sharing and revealing Himself in glory and righteousness as well as overflowing love, mercy, and grace.
This is the tricky part. There is not one without the other. With this God of ours there is not righteousness – without love and mercy; there is not love and mercy – without also – His righteousness right with it. But it’s about His righteousness, not mine. It is about His righteousness that He gives to me. As I come to know it and receive it, it then flows beautifully out of me.
Oh God, if you could instill in me this glimpse of your truth so that it doesn’t waver and burn out, if you could help brand this truth once and for all into my mind, soul, and spirit, if you could ignite this truth in me so that it grows ever brighter and more glorious, then I could daily sing in joy and praise and be most blessed. Thank you for the times when the clouds part and I do see your truth shining ever so brightly. Help me to see it, enjoy it, grow with it, and share it.
Instead of trying to put it on externally, help me to grasp it first within me (poured out from You) – so that it then shines forth.
And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. John 1:16 ESV
(See Ephesians 1 and 2 for more on grace!)