Grace in the Raw and Real...

I’ve wrestled with writing this blog for the past 24 hours. Not because of the topic itself, which happens to be my favorite thing to write/speak on. But rather the extent that such a topic can undoubtedly unnerve people in light of recent events. Grace.

I read a quote recently that said something along the lines of, “God can not bless a believer beyond their current disobedience.” Unfortunately, the logic behind such a statement is believable to many outside, and inside the Christian circle. Thankfully, that is not the type of God, or the type of grace that I have experienced in my own life.

Grace from God is too big, too wild, too unimaginable, and too free to be restrained by disobedience! I can think of many times in my life (more than I would like to admit) that God took my disobedience and out-graced it beyond all imagination. His grace didn’t end where my disobedience began. When we start putting limits on God’s grace, it posits a God who is powerless to save sinners like me.

God’s grace is for the woman who sells her body for her nights drug money, and for the man who relentlessly takes advantage of her and pays her. His grace is for the girl who sat by me in college who is trashing her life with nights of cheap vodka and its false pretense of freedom. God’s grace is for women desperately in love with other women, and men in love with other men, and for those who throw hate in their faces. His grace is for the men and women who destroy the sanctity of marriage with infidelity, and for the men and women who are tightly held by the clutches of pornography. Gods grace is for abusive fathers and the grief stricken mothers addicted to painkillers. Gods grace is for messed up people who kill innocent children.

Grace, as I have come to know it, is for those of you who have caught a glimpse of yourself in that paragraph, and for those of you whom have no grace to extend to one or more of those people. His grace is for those of you who feel angry with me for writing such a blog, and those of you who find freedom in such a blog. God is NOT, and WILL NOT be limited by human failure, disobedience, and shame.

Grace as I have come to know it, can turn disobedient sin, into life.

Ephesians 2:4-9 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.