Amazing Times Ten

Ephesians 2:5
Even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (By grace you have been saved)

Ephesians 2:8
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.

Years ago, Vicki and I were given a set of teaching tapes that changed our lives.
A young pastor named James Ryles taught on "Grace."
As we listened to each one, our hearts were quickened and we looked at each other wondering, "Why haven't we heard this before?"
All my life, I heard the definition of grace as "The unmerited favor of God given to me."
In other words, God giving to me something that I didn't deserve.

James Ryles taught that this could not possibly be the definition of Grace.
He used Galatians 5:4 as his text to show us what he meant.
You have become estranged from Christ. You who attempt to be justified by law: you have fallen from GRACE.
James' point was that if Grace was God giving me something I didn't deserve, then how could I fall from it?
He then took us to Luke 2:40: "And the Child (Jesus) grew and became strong in spirit, filled with wisdom and the GRACE of God was upon Him"
If anyone deserved Grace, would it not have been Jesus?
So Grace was more than the unmerited favor of God.

Grace is much more.
It is not only the prayer we say over our meals....
It is not a sweet, flowery word used to close our prayers...
It is not a religious symbol of what we believer....
Grace is a force...
Grace is a power....
Grace is "The empowering presence of God in my life, that enables me to be who God created me to be and to do what God has called me to do."

Grace was God in me, working His will and His good pleasure to conform me to the image of Christ.
Not just my outward behavior, but my very nature and character.
Just as God had to take Israel out of Egypt into the wilderness, so He could take Egypt out of them...
God takes me out of my sin so He can take the sin out of me.
It is the Grace of God at work in me.

"Amazing Grace....How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me."
"I once was lost, but now am found...Was blind, but now I see."

God on you....
mb