Grace

To be completely honest with you, I've been dealing with some pretty big inadequacy issues lately. There are a few things in my life right now that I don't feel like I'm good enough to handle. All of this is leading me to think that I just don't have a full handle on grace and what it actually means to me.

The thing is, I get it. If you were to ask me what grace is, I could give you a pretty good explanation of it. But I just don't feel like I have a firm grasp of it if you catch the difference.

I was reading Romans 6 the other day and some verses really popped out at me and it was like God was actually showing me how incredibly logical His grace actually is.

Paul explains later in this letter that the wages of sin are death. So if the payment I owe to sin is my own death, and I died with Christ upon His calling of me to Himself, then sin's payment has been met. It is a debt that is no longer owed. It's not that God wiped it away like I never owed anything. I completely owed it. The only difference is that He paid it for me. That's what grace is!

Yet for some reason, I'm having such a hard time feeling like I could actually be worth God's time. And when you actually look at grace, one of the things that God shows through having His Son die for me is that I'm not good enough. I can't earn anything other than hell.

But, looking at the gift God has given me, I'm reminded that there are two kinds of generosity that I've been able to partake in. There's the kind of generosity that you might show to an older lady when you hold the door for her or when you buy a homeless person a meal. When I do these kinds of things, it's because it's just a nice thing to do for someone.

But I remember a little while back, I had a friend who was having some issues in his life. He had and still has so much potential. I really believe in this guy and think that amazing things are coming and are going to come out of his life. But he had a major hindrance come his way that was impeding his ability to minister to others. I saw that need, was prompted by the Holy Spirit and met it. Not because it was the right thing to do, but because I believed in him. This wasn't something I would probably do for some random homeless person. I was willing to make a sacrifice and really invest in him.

I think that every person God calls to Him, He calls because He believes that they can be used to enlarge His Kingdom in some way. There is no mediocrity in the Kingdom. Everyone was made for greatness. Perhaps not greatness by this world's standards, but greatness nonetheless. So I think that God's gift falls under the later category. God called me because He has a use for me. And no, I'm not good enough on my own. I am inadequate. But God makes up for those inadequacies.

One more cool thing happened today. I randomly read through 2 Corinthians 12. Verses 9-10 popped out to me and I guess you can see why. I don't need strengths. I have grace. I just need to learn to let God take over and not to worry about my weaknesses. I need to learn how to believe that when I'm weak, that's when I'm really strong.