Amazing Grace

When I was a teen there was a big push for us to know how to witness to our peers. Of course we didn’t call it witnessing at the time because we didn’t do that. We had formulas to memorize and scriptures to learn. I still remember those scriptures and God’s word in your heart is a very good thing. We didn’t do grace well in those days. I distinctly remember a youth rally at my home congregation where the speaker was illustrating for us what grace was. He said grace was “what made up the difference between what I did and what God required”. It made up the difference. For far too many years that was the impression I had of grace.

The problem is, it just ain’t so. How many years I have lost struggling with guilt, living in fear, trying desperately hard to get the ledger balanced so that my good deeds outweighed my bad deeds. That environment sets you up to become anything but the joy-filled Christian God calls us to be. It encourages you to become a judge. After all, I don’t have to be perfect, just better than you. There was a litany of things that were the most important to get right. If I got them right and you didn't I somehow felt better. I was going to make the cut and you probably weren't. The focus was always on what I did – did I worship right, believe right, sing right, pray right – if I could check yes on all of it then I would be okay. Did you get that? The focus was on what I did. Grace is all about what God did.

When my life fell totally apart, in spite of all those years of doing it right, I learned what grace was. I learned that I didn’t have it all right and I would never have it all right but it was absolutely okay. The only one who could ever get it right had paid my way in and all I needed to do was accept it and say thank you. Nothing I do, absolutely nothing I do is going to get me into heaven except accepting that gift. I’ll spend a lifetime doing as a response to that gift but it’s not the doing that got me the gift in the first place. In gratitude I serve him, in humility I love him, in awe I praise him.

I don’t know which grieves the heart of God more – someone who won’t accept the gift he gives or someone who insists on trying to pay for it.