Amazed By Grace

 Recently, I started reading a book titled By Grace Alone: How The Grace of God Amazes Me by Sinclair Ferguson. In the preface, he points out that, while we as Christians talk and sing of "amazing grace," we are actually too accustomed to the idea of grace and have ceased to be amazed, captivated, and lost in it. Grace has become too common. Too un-amazing...

"...We frequently take the grace of God for granted," Ferguson writes, "We think: 'Of course God is gracious.' Or: 'Of course we deserve His grace. After all, are we not His people?' We may never say these things. But when we think like this, the grace of God ceases to be amazing. Sadly, it also ceases to be grace. A chief reason for the weakness of the Christian church in the West, for the poverty of our witness and any lack of vitality in our worship, probably lies here: we sing about 'amazing grace' and speak of 'amazing grace,' but far too often it has ceased to amaze us. Sadly, we might more truthfully sing of 'accustomed grace.' We have lost the joy and energy that are experienced when grace seems truly amazing."

This concept hit me hard. I write often about "living in grace," or of "accepting hard grace" when God's gifts seem difficult to understand and accept. After all, this blog is titled "Open To Grace: Where The Hurting Find Hope" because I've believed for a long time that opening yourself to the grace of God is where you find healing for a hurt soul and hope for a life of meaning and eternal significance when all else has failed you. But I had to be honest with myself as I read this statement by Ferguson - have I lost my awe of the grace of God? Just maybe I've fallen into this Christian societal trap that has grown too comfortable with the idea of grace and missed it altogether?

One of the greatest challenges in a believer's life is to maintain your wonder. Lose your sense of awe at the mercy, love, grace, and blessing of your God and you lose your appreciation for what you've been saved from. For what you're living for and WHO you're living for each and every day. You lose what inspires and drives belief and faith. Lose sight and become blind to the very thing, the very One who redeems you from everything hell-fire and judgement. Gives your one life purpose in this world. 

If you don't steep yourself endlessly in the Word of God, remind yourself of why you've been chosen,  that you've been bought with the holy price of Christ's blood...of why you continue to be kept by the boundless and never-failing grace of Jesus... if you fail to pray these things right into the very depths of your being, you become too used to your privileges as a believer, and you begin to treat them as your rights. You begin to cheapen grace because you think you're good enough to deserve all God has given because you belong to Him and forget that it is only Him alone that preserves you and you have nothing to do with your salvation except the sin that made His sacrifice and your saving necessary. 

Ferguson continues... 

"Being amazed by God's grace is a sign of spiritual vitality. It is a litmus test of how firm and real is our grasp of the Christian gospel and how close is our walk with Jesus Christ. The growing Christian finds that the grace of God astonishes and amazes." 

My heart is struck with shame at the thought that I have lost my wonder for the grace of God in recent months. Maybe this is why the well has run dry a bit. Maybe the message has dried up a bit because I lost sight of what it is that must drive my every day. Every part of me and every thing that I am put here on this earth to do must be wrapped in grace, motivated by grace, kept by grace. And just perhaps grace is running thin in me and I'm becoming driven by things other than the pure and simple Gospel and now grace is ceasing to flow out because it's not leaving me awe-struck in the first place. Perhaps I've lost my way and I need God to help me find it again.

My eyes fall on the pages of Scripture, and I read it with fresh view... 

"Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain..." (2 Cor. 6:1) and my eyes skim down to a few verses below where the Apostle Paul tells the mis-led Corinthian believers that they are not held back by the witness or teaching of the apostles in any way but are "restricted in your own affections," and encourages them to instead "widen your hearts." 

Yes...a widened and open heart is what I need. Because a closed heart is always forgetting that the fix for all its troubles is more grace. Because "we're all a little broken," as author Bob Goff puts it, and "we don't need more varnish; we need a Carpenter." And how often I am too quick to forget that I have an everlasting Friend who has agreed to graciously take on my case and mend me. 

And in my present confession and conviction at losing sight of what ought to be my all-consuming thought, I am led to an urging by Paul of what to do next: that "having therefore these promises... let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God" (2 Cor. 7:1). 

A "perfecting holiness" and a fear of God (an awe for who He is and what He has done and a desire not to offend Him but to obey Him reverently and willingly) - that is where my heart ought to rest. That is where my desire should find its motivation and purpose. Because being amazed by grace leads you to want to respond in holy worship and adoration for what has been given freely and without reserve. 

So I challenge you today with this thought as I myself have been challenged: if we are not amazed by God's grace, can we really be living in it? Can we really be tasting, and savoring, and delighting in it? Those willing to delve deeper in the depths of God's astonishing grandeur and grace will find themselves in a perpetual state of amazement that will change how they do and view everything. I've experienced it, and it's time I get back to it once again. 

God, forgive me for looking away and losing my way. Help me re-discover afresh the oceans of your love and the heights of your goodness so that I am captivated by You once more. Then, let me go tell of this grace in greater ways to a world that is dying to hear it.