Grace shaped life

Grace

A Grace shaped Life

Week 1, The Grace shaped Life.

Week 2, Jesus stooped low to take our place

Week 3, you can rest now.

Something I want us to get from this to understand is:

God’s Grace is not limited by our understanding of it.

Grace is available to everyone

A changed heart is evidence of God’s Grace on the move

27 To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

&

20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

When did Grace come into your life, when did it become a reality for you, I want us to think on this, if you can write it down then do so, so you can look at it later.

I remember when I let Christ into my heart, when Grace came into my life.

Short testimony.

Changing me, taking out the impurities, making me new.

I am more tolerant of people, anger is not a problem, I still get angry but it is dealt with, it subsides I don’t need to hit someone to get rid of it.

Ego was another thing that got me, how I felt, how it affected me, but God has taken that away. It’s all about me and the part I play God helps me to see the bigger picture.

He helps me take me out of the equation, the way I used to be angry, argue for the sake of it, I would always be looking for someone to take it out on, revenge was on my mind, hurt me and I’ll hurt you, it occasionally wants to come out but when it does I have to remember what Christ has done for me,

It doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes get it wrong, but God’s grace reels me back in.

Only God can do this, only God can change hearts and that’s the business he is in

We would be wrong to think that this change in us happens overnight. But we would be equally wrong to assume change never happens at all. It may come in fits and spurts an A ha! Here, a breakthrough there but it comes, ‘The grace of God that brings salvation has appeared’

The floodgates are open the water is out you just never know when grace will seep in.

Could you use some?

We are going to look at 4 things today that will help us understand these 3.

1) The Grace shaped life begins with receiving God’s Grace.

2) A wimpy Grace doesn’t change you.

3) Marked by a changed heart.

4) Is your life shaped by Grace?

1. The Grace shaped life begins with receiving God’s grace.

a. So what is the definition of Grace, quite simply it is God’s unmerited favour, we deserve hell but because of God’s grace we receive eternity with God Not hell without him.

Courtroom bit

The fact that God decides to overlook our sin is amazing.

b) Everyone needs Grace regardless of circumstances, there will be some people who go through life doing all manner of things, good and bad, helping the poor, the widows, the lame, but cheating on their tax returns. There are murderers, there are good people, people who help others, who give all their money away but do not know Jesus.

23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,

We all fall short of the glory of God none of us are perfect, none deserve heaven but the greatest rescue mission started when Jesus was born, freely given to us from God by His grace we can find redemption through Christ.

The free dictionary says this about redemption:

1. The act of redeeming or the condition of having been redeemed

2. Recovery or something pawned or mortgaged

3. The payment of an obligation

4. Deliverance upon payment of ransom, rescue

5. Christianity, salvation from sin through Jesus sacrifice.

Buying back

We have been bought and paid for when we live under grace when we accept Jesus we are free because the price has been paid.

Everyone needs grace wherever you are from, rich poor, young or old, whatever creed, whatever colour.

2 A wimpy grace doesn’t change you

a. Question : have we settled for a goldfish grace? It sits on the shelf and looks pretty but it doesn’t do anything.

We talk as though we understand the term. The bank gives us a grace period. The seedy politician falls from grace. Musicians speak of a grace note. We describe an actress as gracious, a dancer as graceful. We use the word for hospitals, baby girls, kings, and premeal prayers. We talk as though we know what grace means.

Especially at church. Grace Graces the songs we sing and the Bible verses we read. Grace shares the church parsonage with its cousins: forgiveness, faith, and fellowship. Preachers explain it. Hymns proclaim it. Seminaries teach it. But do we really understand it?

Here’s my hunch: we’ve settled for wimpy grace. It politely occupies a phrase in a hymn, fits nicely on a church sign. Never causes trouble or demands a response. When asked, “Do you believe in grace?” who could say no?

This book asks a deeper question: Have you been changed by grace? Shaped by grace? Strengthened by grace? Emboldened by grace? Softened by grace? Snatched by the nape of your neck and shaken to your senses by grace? God’s grace has a drenching about it. A wildness about it. A white-water, riptide, turn-you-upside down ness about it. Grace comes after you. It rewires you. From insecure to God secure. From regret-riddled to better-because-of it. From afraid-to-die to ready-to-fly. Grace is the voice that calls us to change and then gives us the power to pull it off.1

When grace happens, we receive not a nice compliment from God but a new heart. Give your heart to Christ, and he returns the favour. “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you” ().2

You might call it a spiritual heart transplant.

Are you someone who has got saved and then just comes to church or do you do something about it. Having grace doesn’t mean I’m in now I’ll sit back and enjoy it.

We need to tell others, whether through action or deed or both because you can have grace and be dead, you’ve been rescued it’s time to rescue some others. We are supposed to do something.

b. God’s grace does something, it changes lives Max Lucado says ‘Our God is in the business of changing hearts’

msg

I’ll give you a new heart, put a new spirit in you. I’ll remove the stone heart from your body and replace it with a heart that’s God-willed, not self-willed. I’ll put my Spirit in you and make it possible for you to do what I tell you and live by my commands. You’ll once again live in the land I gave your ancestors. You’ll be my people! I’ll be your God!

Our hearts are changed from the start, God puts a new heart in us one where Jesus can dwell, one that isn’t cold and uncaring, full of malice, I’ll get even, I’ll slander, I’ll gossip, but our old nature does want to take control, we have to remember who we are, that we are bought and paid for with a hefty price and therefor God putting a new heart in us should change our lives, we can still be in the same circumstances facing the same outcome but our outlook, how we see it is different.

3 Marked by a changed heart

a. God as a heart surgeon. msg

I’ll give you a new heart. I’ll put a new spirit in you. I’ll cut out your stone heart and replace it with a red-blooded, firm-muscled heart.

This is a story about max lucado when he had a heart op.

Some years ago I underwent a heart procedure. My heartbeat had the regularity of a telegraph operator sending Morse code. Fast, fast fast. Slooooow. After several failed attempts to restore healthy rhythm with medication, my doctor decided I should have a catheter ablation. The plan went like this: a cardiologist would insert two cables in my heart via a blood vessel. One was a camera; the other was an ablation tool. To ablate is to burn. Yes, burn, cauterize, singe, brand. If all went well, the doctor, to use his coinage, would destroy the “misbehaving” parts of my heart.

As I was being wheeled into surgery, he asked if I had any final questions. (Not the best choice of words.) I tried to be witty.

“You’re burning the interior of my heart, right?” “Correct.” “You intend to kill the misbehaving cells, yes?” “That is my plan.” “As long as you are in there, could you take your little blow- torch to some of my greed, selfishness, superiority, and guilt?” He smiled and answered, “Sorry, that’s out of my pay grade.”

Thankfully we have a God who is above any pay grade and whose blade is sharper than any surgeon’s blade.

Christ creates the change, grace is God as a heart surgeon, cracking open your chest, removing your heart, poisoned as it is with pride and pain and replacing it with His own rather than to tell you to change, He creates the change. Do you clean up so He can accept you? No He accepts you and begins cleaning you up.

Max Lucado ‘His dream isn’t just to get you into heaven but to get heaven into you’.

What a difference this makes can’t forgive your enemy? Can’t face tomorrow? Can’t forgive your past? Christ can and He is on the move, aggressively budging you from graceless to grace shaped living. Max Lucado ‘the gift given, giving gifts forgiven people, forgiving people, deep sighs of relief, stumbles a plenty but despair seldom.

Conclusion is your life shaped by Grace

A question for us to reflect on, Have you received God’s Grace? Can the marks of a God lived life be seen in your life, are you living the life or are you like everybody else, are you here knowing that you need God’s Grace, now, today, maybe the evidence of a Grace filled life are not on show anymore and you need to stand before god, or be on your knees and ask forgiveness, maybe you have never known a life under Grace, underserved favour from God, maybe you need to get to the front and be prayed for, I would love to pray for you.

Grace is everything Jesus, Grace lives because He does, works because He works and matters because He matters. He places a term limit on sin and danced a victory jig in a graveyard.

To be saved by grace is to be saved by Him not by an idea, doctrine, creed or church membership but by Jesus Himself who will sweep into heaven anyone who so much as gives Him the nod, not in a response or a finger snap, religious chant or a secret handshake. Grace won’t be stage managed.

You see we don’t get Grace, it gets us. Grace hugged the stink out of the prodigal son, and scared the hate out of Paul, and promises to do the same to us.

Maybe you’ve been playing a game with God, never quite giving Him your all or dragging regrets around like the bumper of a car, huffing and puffing more than finding yourself in delight and rest, maybe you have been carrying a scowl around to keep people away, being a hard man or woman or young person.

Maybe you wonder if God can do anything with the mess of your life, then Grace is what you need, let it happen now.