GRACE (for TikTok)

John 18:4 NLT

Jesus fully realized all that was going to happen to him, so he stepped forward to meet them. “Who are you looking for?” he asked.

Mercy and grace are two sides of a coin – and the coin is love. In the author’s own words, mercy is a compassionate love to the weak, and grace is a generous love to the unworthy. Humans are weak and unworthy – we all need God’s mercy and grace. Mercy takes us to the path of forgiveness, while grace leads us to reconciliation.

John 3:16 ““For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”

John 14:6 “Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.”

What does GRACE look like?

The Terminal Generation!

Bible prophecy: given by Jesus to prepare us, not scare us.

Grace is God‘s all sufficient and sustaining power and favor for the Christian on earth.

Grace is God’s unmerited favor—favor we don’t deserve and didn’t earn.

Acts 1:8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

The 23rd Psalm!

“This is the condition of God’s servant – always conflict, but always a [prepared] table.” (Maclaren)

Grace, like a trial, pulls something out of you - potentially.

Give relentlessly and create ease.

“Not all of us can do great things, but all of us can do small things with great love.”

~ Mother Teresa

Fear and unbelief are not intellectual responses, but emotional responses of the heart from a lack of faith in God. Meaning the root of unbelief isn’t in the mind, but in the heart.

Because: God has placed eternity in our hearts. Ecclesiastes 3:11. To deny eternity with God, to deny faith is an emotional response.

“By God’s grace and mighty power, I have been given the privilege of serving him by spreading this Good News.” Ephesians 3:7

I immediately made it about me. I moved on from the free gift of being made new and straight to prioritizing what I could do forGod instead of prioritizing being with God.

After a lot of burnout, identity issues, striving, and proving, I realized that, unfortunately, I had gotten it all wrong. I think I loved the idea of being used by God more than I liked being with God.

And then it dawned on me. In my weakness and humanity, I had failed to see what the Scripture really said:

He died for everyone so that those who receive His new life will no longer live for themselves.

2 Corinthians 5:15 NLT

It’s His new life! It’s not even my life to be concerned about anymore. I’m not supposed to live for myself. I had been chasing “my calling,” but the greatest calling had already been set before me at the moment of salvation: choosing to die to my own life and pick up the life of Christ. (Deny yourself, pick up your cross, and follow me!) It’s Christ in us that makes us new. It’s His life that we get to live from.

And man, did that take the pressure off! When we realize that we have to die to ourselves and our motives,

wants,

needs,

thoughts,

feelings,

and desires every day,

and pick up those of Jesus, we begin to see the world, ourselves,

and others in a completely different way. We get to bring a little piece of heaven to earth in the real life that can only be found in Christ. And it’s all free!

Pray:

God, forgive me when I try to take up my old life instead of the life of Jesus. Restore to me the joy and freedom that come with allowing Christ to live in me. Remind me daily to lay down my life and pick up the life of Christ, so that every morning is a chance to live out my purpose and destiny. In Jesus’ name, amen!

God is Mercy and Grace

Know God’s heart, a heart of mercy and grace.

In Jeremiah 9: 23 & 24, The Lord speaks through the prophet Jeremiah saying “Let not the wise man glory in His wisdom, let not the mighty man glory in His might, nor let the rich man glory in His riches; But let him who glories glory in this, that He understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, exercising loving kindness, judgement, and righteousness in the earth, for in these I delight,”.

One of the facets of God’s loving kindness is demonstrated to us through expressions of God’s mercy and grace. Scripture reveals to us various verses of God’s mercy and grace. When Moses expressed his innermost heart’s desire to know God intimately and to see His Glory in Exodus 34:6, God responded in the affirmative by proclaiming Himself as being ‘The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth’. David as well exclaims in Psalm 103:8 saying, ‘The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in mercy’. Hence, we decipher that our God delights in divulging the fact that He is a God of mercy and a God of grace.

Mercy keeps us from receiving the judgement we deserve. Grace gives us the good things we don’t deserve. We have received abundant benefits as a result of His mercy; forgiveness of sins, our justification, a new beginning and freedom from reaping the rewards of our wrong actions.

Jonah the prophet knew his God as being a God of grace and mercy. Therefore, when God decided to extend mercy to the people of Nineveh, Jonah exclaims in Jonah 4:2, ‘Lord, I knew you were a God so merciful and gracious, I knew you were a God who was slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness and one who turns back from doing harm’. Jonah had utmost confidence in who his God was. Let us make it our aim to make our boasting in God’s grace and mercy alone and let us aspire to be channels of dispensing His mercy and grace as we meet people in our daily walk of life.

Father, help us to know and understand that you are a God who delights in releasing mercy and grace to people and help us to expect that to happen as we reach out to people, that our God is a God who exercises loving kindness, demonstrates mercy and grace on earth. In Jesus name, Amen.

Jeremiah 9:23-24

Exodus 34:6 Psalms 103:8 Jonah 4:2

Go after a dream that’s destined to fail without divine intervention!

2 Samuel 23:20

Show me the size of your dream and I’ll show you the size of your God.

Holey, Holy, Wholly

We start out broken and full of holes. Then Jesus comes to us with His holiness and binds up our wounds and restores us and creates in us a wholeness.

When Moses threw the first set of tablets at the Israelites, because of their sin of idolatry, that was an example of when Jesus came the first time and died for our sins, especially the sin of idolatry. There is a feeling among the Jews, that the pieces of those Tablets were carried around along with the new tablets to indicate that from that which is broken comes that which is whole.

Legalism: the folly of Pharisaism

The Pharisees cared more about receiving honor than they did about being honorable. Jesus called them blind guides who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel. The law is holy and the commandments holy and just and good. Do we then make void the law through faith? Certainly not! On the contrary we establish the law. Romans 3: 31

Once Paul's spiritual eyes were opened, he became an ardent foe of every kind of legalism. I want that to be true of me.

Mercy and grace are the utmost attributes of love. The essence of the Bible is loving God and loving people through the lens of Jesus Christ. Two grand works of God have displayed His all-powerful, gracious, and merciful nature: creation and redemption. While God’s work of creation demonstrated His mighty power, God’s work of redemption revealed His marvelous love, shown through His mercy and grace. This very love of God is indispensable for the existence of life and the salvation of humanity. “The Lord is gracious and full of compassion; slow to anger, and of great mercy. The Lord is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works.” (Psalm 145:8-9) The Greek word used for mercy is most often eleos (pity, compassion) and for grace is charis (favor). Mercy and grace, as paraphrased from Willmington’s Guide to the Bible, can be differentiated as follows: mercy is the act of withholding deserved punishment, while grace is the act of endowing unmerited favor. In His mercy, God does not give us punishment we deserve, namely hell; while in His grace, God gives us the gift we do not deserve, namely heaven.