Grace to Keep Trekking

Grace is to keep you trekking down the right trail. You are not going to become the image of Christ without bumps and bruises and falling. That's why we have grace. So God can catch us when we stumble. We have to have faith in that grace. That it will indeed catch us. And God knows our nature. He knows we like to test things. So grace is not a one time safety net, but it a renewable airbag to prevent us from plunging into the depths of sin. Notwithstanding, God wants us to move past that point of testing out His grace. He wants us to use it as buffer, not as a canal through which we drift along in life.

Grace keeps us following after God.

God understands our frailty. God understands we act on impulse to latch on to what we crave. God understands our tendencies to unquenchable thirsts. He understands and desires to turn that around. He wants to be what we crave. He wants to be our unquenchable thirst. But He wants more than an addictive mentality. He wants us to run to Him and be satisfied. He wants to quench our thirst with His Spirit. And not only that, He wants to make living by His Spirit so powerful and wonderful that we keep coming back to His goodness and mercy and love. Not just an oasis in our desert of life, but to become an ocean dotted with isles the moment we taste of His goodness so that when we journey through life we are surrounded by His love and righteousness, plunging into the depths of His holiness with each step closer to transformation into His holiness.

We know what our task is; we know God's will. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might."

Love- long after, desire.
All- a totality, completely
Heart- inner man, innermost core self
Soul- who you are, the essence of your being, what makes you you.
Might- force, your oomph.

So, we are to long after God with our complete innermost self, with everything that makes us who we are (our actions, our emotions, our passions), with every ounce of oomph we have. Not to passively "love" God, but to actively and passionately and personally love God.

But God knew we were going to mess up. He knew that when He said all, we would think some. He knew that when He said love, we would think appreciate. He knew that when He said our heart, we would think only what other people saw. He knew that when He said our soul, we would think who others think we are, not who we really are. When He said our oomph, He knew we would assume just enough to make it look convincing. So He gave us grace.

When we love sin more than holiness          |     We have grace.

When we love ourselves above God             |     We have grace.

When mediocrity triumphs within               |     We have grace.

When we are swept off our feet by sin        |     We have grace.

When we fear and sink in raging waters     |    We have grace.

When we run away from God's love            |     We have grace.

We were given grace not to abuse, but to embrace. We cannot live out holiness on our own. We will fall. We will fail. But grace is there to catch us and push us back onto our feet. God gives us grace to keep on trekking.

When we fall, we mustn't quit. When we fail, we mustn't deny grace. God longs for us to be closer to Him. He draws close when we draw nigh. He doesn't desire or wish for our failure, He wants for us to succeed in Him.

The Offender desires that I fear following God. That I come to the point of fearing that I might screw up too much because I follow after righteousness. When I fall, Satan wants me to remain slumped over in defeat. When I fail, Satan wants me to quit, fearing that my small stumbles in following Christ now is only a twitch of an eye when I'm further down the road of following Christ. That it is better for me to quit now than to be "fired" later.
But I will not quit because God does not quit on me.
I will praise HIS righteousness and HIS love.
I will embrace grace to keep me trekking on my journey to transformation into His Son.
I will not be dismayed by the giants before me. Because it wasn't that stone or that sling; it wasn't that hand or that David; it wasn't David's intellect or His might; not even was it his faith in God that brought down that giant. No; it was God alone who defeated David's giant. David simply decided to be the one through whom God channeled His own power.

Grace: God's design to keep us following Him. He keeps His hand ready to pull us out of our fears and failures. He won't quit on me. Why should I quit on Him?

Come.

We live in a world crazed by sin. We are like the disciples on that boat on the dangerous sea of Galilee. Like them, we are jettisoning our boats of useless things that just draw us deeper into the depths. We are getting pails out and sloshing the water out of the boat. Like them, we are racked by the waves and slammed by the winds.

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All too often we fear. We fear not physical death, but rather the death of our lives connected to the presence of our God. We fear being thrust into the oceans of sin; we fear being rejected by God for the sins of our hearts.  We look out into the darkness and see something that haunts us. Regret? Past failures? It just stands there, unnerved by the storm of sin. That something takes on a more lifelike figure and it begins walking closer to our soul, our boat in the middle of the sea. It looks like a Man of Hope, but it can't be. Hope is unheard of in our distress. But He calls out to turn away from fear. We test Him, and He calls us to walk out on the waves.

The same waves that made us lose our cargo. The same waves that crashed against the boat, threatening our lives. The same waves that crash against our faces, causing us to choke on sin and darkness.

"Come."

Christ is calling us to step out of the boat. To walk to Him and stop fearing drowning in sin. He is calling us out on the waters to faithfully overcome the sin around us. He wants us to supernaturally walk without sinking, live without fear, follow without holding back.

"Come."

When we follow Christ and walk in His Spirit, we will not have anything to fear in sin. We will not be overcome by sin. It is only when we stop loving God that we sin. It is only when we turn our eyes off of the power of Christ that fear has opportunity to jump in and we become afraid.

Maybe we will fear. Maybe we will sink in our sins. But Jesus Christ our Redeemer is right there with His hand outstretched to lift us up and walk on the water again. He doesn't desire our failings. He doesn't expect us to fall short. He wants us to experience His great power. He wants us to triumph over sin by the power of His love. He wants us to walk with life anew and never ever again sink in sink.

He is with us. May we follow Christ and not sink in sin any more.