By the Grace of God

It was crystal clear to me that Christians were slightly delusional because even a superficial glance at the world around quickly reveals that there are inescapable laws of cause and effect that cannot be broken: what goes up must come down and people who sin must somehow pay: gluttons get fat, murderers go to jail, adulterers have crummy marriages-the list goes on. How can grace help in these circumstances? What’s the Point of it? Why would it be made available so freely? (Eph 2:8-9) I just didn’t “get” how people could believe in “grace” or any form of unconditional forgiveness because of something that someone else did.

So what changed? What brought me to the other side? How did I go from being the girl who scoffed at believers to being a proud Christian who doesn’t care if people think that my beliefs sound a bit crazy?
Well, to be honest, I am not sure what happened. All I know is that I got to a point in my life where I was forced to recon with the fact that I was just not satisfied with my life. I wasn’t miserable or anything like that but I felt a sort of emptiness gnawing at me.

While I lived my life by what made sense to me, and things generally turned out okay, no amount of precautions managed to make me immune from disasters that seemed to be a part of life. Despite my efforts to do things “right” I found myself making mistakes or doing things wrong. In addition to suffering those related consequences, I dealt with things that occurred through no fault of my own. Life just seemed so frustratingly unfair.
I won’t go into detailed specifics about what was going on at that point in my life because I don’t think it’s necessary. I know we have all been there. We all know what it feels like to be in that place where things just don’t seem to make sense.  And, it feels like life is just part of some cruel set-up by a deity who likes to watch his creation struggle to avoid getting bored.

My lack of faith satisfied my intellect, yet I found my rational approach to life disconcerting. I was approaching life as if it was a rubix cube to be solved and as much as I wanted to believe in my own ways, they would continue to fail me. I think this is when it happened. This was where I was humbled enough by reality, in all its fullness.
I got to a point where I admitted to myself that something big was missing in my neat account of how life was supposed to be.  I threw up my hands (figuratively-speaking) and cried out to God. I mean, I didn’t exactly make an audible sound; rather I surrendered to a sort of knowing inside me that there was a greater being who had more power than I could ever hope to have who was in me. (Phil 4:13)

After this sort of surrendering of my will, I began to see life differently and I considered what the missing factor in my life was: Love. That’s right. The song that says “All you need is love” is right on. God is love and love was the missing piece I needed to unravel the mystery of grace and of my life.

You see grace, forgiveness and the death of Jesus on the cross are all expressions of God’s love. As such, they are not contradictory to his nature as the God who sets expectations. Grace is more like His way of telling us that if we do our best and trust in Him and His good intentions, He will do the rest. Sins and failures are freely forgiven by the Grace of God, through faith. (Eze 18:30)

In other words, Grace is a form of unconditional forgiveness that can only occur after a ready heart has chosen to accept that God is love and that this force is cause enough to change ones ways. When we receive this truth about God, it becomes easier to avoid sin and the power to resist sin is another gift that comes with grace. Love can drive us to do things we never thought we could. We have all experienced this within some relationship in our lives that has led us to press toward higher standards. For some, it’s our parents, for others it’s a best friend or significant other. People we love become our reason for achieving.

The best comparison I can make to this divine phenomenon of grace is by looking at my relationship with my earthly father. My dad is a strict man and he expects me to follow his rules. But he loves me enough to let some things slide because he knows that I love him and will be appreciative enough of his forgiveness not to want to mess up again. 
Imagine what happens when you fall in love with God? When I accepted God’s love and forgiveness, I was naturally compelled to resist sin and avoid mistakes.  So far, I have succeeded in turning my life around beyond anything I could have ever dreamed of. This has happened less through my discipline and more through my desire to just focus on God and letting Him direct me and show me how to abide by His rules on a planet that He made. This exchange of love and trust between us makes us friends and this is a beautiful thing.

I spent so many years of my life toiling around, trying to make sense of life and criticizing those who surrendered their rational minds to faith in salvation and Grace. When all along the Christians that I ridiculed, had what I needed, they had a relationship with God centered on love. Not only that, but they had so much love in them that they could forgive themselves for the worst offenses, knowing that God had forgiven them, and be filled with the hope of becoming better every day, by the power of God’s love, not their own strength. I am so lucky that I was able to discover these truths, despite my incessant resistance to them. I am indeed blessed, despite so much….and this will always be, for me, the most awesome thing about Grace.