Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Where Grace Abounds.



Some notes.
Some of my own thoughts.
A whole lot of God and his gifts and presents to us :).

GRACE- a gift for you completely undeserved, regardless of whether you are in the wrong or in the right.


Grace as tied to pain.
Those pains and experiences as the means to grace.

Grace as tied to strengths.
Our strengths as the means to grace.

Take into consideration Paul's journey-the way that he writes about grace and how one needs it to live parallels our need for food as sustenance. Grace is something that he carried with him, constantly. Though they manifested in Paul's life in various ways, Paul's thorn was a means of great grace in his life.

1 Corinthians 15:10
But by the grace of God I am what I am,
and his grace to me was not without effect.
No, I worked harder than all of them—
yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.

The MSG:
1 Corinthians 15:10
But because God was so gracious, so very generous, here I am. And I'm not about to let his grace go to waste.

2 Corinthians 6:1
As God's fellow workers we urge you not to receive God's grace in vain.

To APPROPRIATE grace:
To take all that is given to you,
take it and weave it into the fabric of your life so
that it becomes the way that you live.
Your life as a result of your acknowledgment of all that God bestows upon you.

What a process, what a beautiful process it is to become aware of God in all things. Through the gift and reception of grace, we are freed people, freed people that can come to know to know His will and cooperate with it.

Monday, June 16, 2008

You.

Lord, help me surrender all.
i cannot change another's heart, another's soul, another's mind.
what i can do is to trust that Your heart is being sought after,
that in the process of striving to know truth,
they would hear your voice as clear as day.
I pray for sensitivity in areas that need to feel to know
I pray for discernment to hear what your Spirit is speaking
I pray for grace and patience as this whole process is one of learning and growing,
And ultimately, knowing you as Maker, as Savior, as Lord, as Abba, as Almighty You.