Grace that Sustains

Alright, we are in week three, which is our last week of our first half of this series on Grace. First half because next week we are going to slide over to the topic of Mercy. Grace and Mercy go hand in hand, so we’re looking at them together over these weeks.

So far we have looked at / / Grace that Saves! the fact that it is BY grace THROUGH faith, or believing in Jesus Christ, that we are saved. Not by our works, but by the work of Jesus Christ on the cross.

One of our main scriptures has been Ephesians 2:8-10, / / God saved you by his grace WHEN you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.

I love these verses. / / Saved by Grace. As a gift. Not by works.

But by HIS work that He did for me and IN me. I am a masterpiece of God.... I feel like we need to just grab that one for a second. Turn to the person next to you and say, “You know I’m a masterpiece, right?”

And turn back to the person and say, “Ya, you’re a real piece of work alright...”

We are, aren’t we? We are a work in progress. Last week we looked at Romans 12:2 that says, / / Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think… Or, by the renewal of your mind.

The renovation, the complete tearing down and rebuilding of what you believe and how you think.

Why? Because Grace is free, but we don’t always trust free, and the reason we don’t trust free is because, Ain’t nothing free, honey. We don’t trust the motives that are behind free.

So, we have to get rid of the way we’ve learned to think. This is all up and down the therapy and psychology world. We are shaped and formed in our early years and develop a whole system of beliefs that continue to shape our lives and determine the outcomes we experience. It’s just what it is. It’s how God created us. And it’s a good thing because it works to our advantage when we begin to believe the truth! but in our humanity, and in a fallen world, in a world where not everyone is perfect. Where some of us are a masterpiece and others of us are just a work in progress, we get hurt, we experience pain, we go through things that unfortunately define for us how the world works, and we adopt that as our truth.

And then hopefully at some point we meet Jesus. And Jesus is loving, and kind, and offers us grace, undeserved, unmerited, can’t do anything to get it, favor.... Remember how we defined Grace?

/ / Grace is being approved of, supported, loved, liked, looked after, accepted*, receiving the most outrageously generous treatment, beyond reason, and has nothing to do with anything I’ve done right or wrong, who my family is, where I came from, my financial status, my race or gender or any other thing.

And sometimes, accepting that grace is a hard thing to do, because like I said, we don’t always trust free. And sometimes we don’t even realize we need it.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve lived a lot of my life, in a lot of areas of my life, thinking I can handle things just fine on my own. My finances, I got this. My weight, clearly, I’ve got this. My relationships. My sanity. My children, family.. you name it, I got this.

Until I met Jesus in each of these areas of my life, I was just surviving, not really living. I’ve gone to church my whole life. I’ve probably missed less Sundays than I have fingers and toes in my entire 39 years on this earth. And I’m not exaggerating. When we were kids, I remember vacations where my parents found a church to go to. I grew up with a respect and reverence for what this all is. And sure, I’ve had my struggle with that over the years because it’s messy. As long as there’s humans involved church is gonna be messy. People are going to get things wrong. We’re going to have different points of view. Read things differently. Understand things differently. Each person, with their unique talents but also their unique struggles in positions of leadership or influence have the potential to bring us incredible insight and encouragement, while at the same time carry that same potential to hurt us, let us down, misrepresent the God we love and serve. I would love to say that will never happen here, but I’m bound at some point to hurt someone. Not intentionally, I can honestly tell you I have no desire to hurt anyone, but we all know life is like that, don’t we.

And in my life, from a very early age I was introduced to Jesus. And I think I was only 4 years old when I first prayed and said, “Jesus, would you come into my heart.” I didn’t know what that meant, but I prayed it. It sure wasn’t this willful self-denial that I’ve come to know in this year!

And through life I sort of picked and chose what I would let Jesus look after. Sure, eternal salvation, you can handle that. But a lot of things in my life I decided I was going to be the one to look after them. One of the biggest lies we push in this world is, / / “I got myself here, I need to get myself out.” And when we think about that statement, which I think we’ve probably all heard in our own heads, thought about it for others, probably said, or thought, “Ya, you did this to yourself, buddy.”… this whole idea completely negates the need for a savior.

What is a savior but someone who comes to save. Save us from what? From this cosmic idea of sin and eternal punishment, where we are evil and bad, and can’t measure up? Sure, there’s a reality in that, isn’t there. We read it a couple weeks ago, Romans 3:23, / / For EVERYONE has sinned; we ALL fall short of God’s glorious standard.

But I said this last week, if we trust God with our eternity, shouldn’t we also be able to trust him with our lives in the here and now? / / The grace that saves is also the grace that sets free!

Jesus didn’t come to introduce himself as the giver of life after death, but as the giver of life! John 10:10, / / The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy - what is that? Death.... and he says, My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life. And then in the very next chapter, John 11 we read the story of Lazarus, who was the friend of Jesus that dies, but Jesus calls him back to life. Before he raises Lazarus from the dead, while he’s talking to Martha, Lazarus’ sister, he tells her, “Your brother will rise again.”

And she response with, “Yes, he will rise when everyone else rises, at the last day.” She’s thinking eternity. But Jesus response and says, / / “I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying. Everyone who believes in me will never ever die. Do you believe this, Martha?”

Well, that was 2000 years ago, and there have been a whole LOT of people who have believed in Jesus, and died. So what did he mean by, “Everyone who believes in me will never ever die.” ?

Death for a person who believes is simply a doorway. Yes, WE mourn the loss of life here on earth because we don’t truly understand eternity, how could we, and we know that for a season of time we will be without the person, and that hurts. But if they believed in Jesus, and we believe in Jesus, life on earth is not the end. Jesus promises eternal life for everyone who believes. So he says two things. Anyone who believes in me will live, even AFTER dying. He’s not denying the fact that here on earth we will die. But emphasizes the fact that that is not the end when he says, Everyone who believes in me will never ever die.

So, Jesus Christ gives us grace, unmerited, undeserved favor, that saves us, that sets us free, and today we’re going to look at / / Grace That Sustains Us!

Again, we’ll be looking at the writings of Paul, and getting in to a story he tells about his experience with grace sustaining him. In 2 Corinthians 11-12 Paul writes about all the things he’s gone through during his time in ministry, and it’s a pretty crazy list.

Ya know how when someone says something about something they went through and you’re just kind of left saying, “Wow, and I thought I had problems...” or we have the saying, “First World Problems” because it’s like, “Ya, you need to stop complaining...” Well, this is kind of one of those moments.

2 Corinthians 11, Paul starts by saying, listen, only fools boast about their own achievements, but, because others are doing it, I’m going to indulge myself here for a moment, so, buckle up… And he starts by qualifying himself as worthy of being listened to as an apostle. Remember, Paul was NOT one of the disciples of Jesus, and during the beginning of the early church he was actually going around arresting and having Christians killed. I can’t imagine what that does to someone, first, that kind of transformation, but also the feeling of having to reassure everyone you have changed. To qualify yourself. So he gets into it here, giving some qualification as to why he’s worth listening to. But, he also admits in vs 17, Such boasting is not from the Lord, but I am acting like a fool.

Ok, at least he realizes it, right?

So, here he starts by just qualifying, listen, just like the other apostles, I deserve to be listened to. We’ll pick it up in 2 Corinthians 11:22, / / Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descendents of Abraham? So am I. Are they servants of Christ? I know I sound like a madman, but I have served him far more! I have worked harder...

Sometimes the way Paul talks is encouraging for me to realize that these guys who were the first of the first, the ones who literally laid the foundation of Christianity for the early church, the ones who were inspired by God to write the New Testament scriptures, were a work in progress as well. So, he’s qualified himself, maybe we should listen, and now he gets into it:

/ / I have worked harder, been put in prison more often, been whipped times without number, and faced death again and again. Five different times the Jewish leaders gave me thirty-nine lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. Once I spent a whole night and a day adrift at sea. I have traveled on many long journeys. I have faced danger from rivers and from robbers. I have faced danger from my own people, the Jews, as well as from the Gentiles. I have faced danger in the cities, in the deserts, and on the seas. And I have faced danger from men who claim to be believers but are not. I have worked hard and long, enduring many sleepless nights. I have been hungry and thirsty and have often gone without food. I have shivered in the cold, without enough clothing to keep me warm.

Then, besides all this, I have the daily burden of my concern for all the churches. Who is weak without my feeling that weakness? Who is led astray, and I do not burn with anger?

***Here’s where the turn around is, and where he begins to point HOW he got through all of these things…***

/ / If I must boast, I would rather boast about the things that show how weak I am....

He goes on a bit more about some things he could boast about, spiritually, and even says at one point, “This boasting will do no good, but I must go on.” And in 2 Corinthians 12:7 Paul, in my opinion, gives some of the hardest, yet most encouraging wisdom in all of his writings.

/ / So to keep me from becoming proud, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from becoming proud.

Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. Each time he said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weakness, so that the power of Christ can work through me. That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Grace that sustains, regardless of what we go through. weakness, insults, hardships, persecutions and troubles… Grace is there to sustain us.

In this passage of scripture Paul gives 5 steps to being Sustained by Grace. To be sustained we must...

/ / Identity with Weakness

Paul says he’s boasting about it. But you can look at all he says here in chapter 11 and into 12 and clearly hear him say, “I have issues... My life hasn’t been easy. I’m weak and can’t do it.” To the point where he says, It feels like satan himself is against me here.

We don’t know what this thorn is that Paul talks about. He says “I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me...”

thorn in the flesh, messenger from satan… oddly different things there, aren’t they?

It’s a bit odd, how we read the bible sometimes. People will read that and go, “Obviously thorn in the flesh is a metaphor for something..” and then they read, a messenger from Satan, and go, “oh, he had a demon...” But we need to look at these two things a bit more. The debate on this matter is as old as the writing itself.

Whatever a Messenger from Satan would be, NT Wright likens it to what Roman generals would do coming back from a great battle. As they rode through the streets, parading their success in war in front of all the people, and the crowds cheered their name, they would keep a servant next to them in the chariot that would whisper in their ear, Memento mori, which is latin for “Remember that you must die.” or “Remember, you too are mortal.”

Paul has already given us the purpose of this in vs 7, So to keep me from becoming proud… And that’s exactly what this person beside the general was there for, to remind you that even in your glory and your triumph, you’re still human.

And the beginning of 2 Corinthians 12, Paul says, Guys, I know I’m boasting here, and I know it does no good, but I’ve had the most amazing revelations from God, you couldn’t even imagine… Rightfully, like all of us, Paul needs to be reminded of his humanity.

Thorn in the Flesh is a bit different. There are two words here, Thorn & Flesh, and they give us some insight into what he’s talking about here.

First of all, the word for / / Flesh can mean both our physical flesh, our body, or it can mean being carnal, or carnally minded, which is to say consumed with our life, consumed with earthly, physical things, or impacted by them mentally.

Then the word / / Thorn also has a bit of a deeper meaning as well. When we think of thorn, it’s like getting a splinter, but this could also mean a sharp stake. And it’s actually the same word that was used in the Greek Old Testament to describe neighboring nations of Israel that had become a temptation and a snare to the Israelites. So, again, this could be a physical thing, or a very mental, emotional, psychological thing like temptation.

The other word that gives us some insight is / / Weakness. Paul takes all of this and throws it at the word weakness. And this is the reason I personally believe that both “thorn in my flesh” and “Messenger of Satan” are both just expressions of what is going on in Paul’s life. He’s not giving us the full explanation, he doesn’t tell us what is really going on with those words.

You could think, messenger of satan, is he saying a demon was tormenting him? I don’t think so, because of this word weakness. He doesn’t externalize what is going on, he actually internalizes it. First he says, a thorn in my flesh was GIVEN to me. It means exactly that. Given, granted, delivered to me.. Is he saying in some way this is a gift? Because when he begins to look at it, and break it down for us, he really talks about it like it’s benefited him in a great way.

Charles Spurgeon seems to think so, he wrote, / / “[Paul] says, ‘there was given to me.’ He reckoned his great trial to be a gift. It is well put. He does not say, ‘There was inflicted upon me a thorn in the flesh,’ but ‘There was given to me.’” - Spurgeon

Jump ahead a few verses and he says, / / So now I am glad to boast about MY weaknesses. It’s like he’s come to terms with the fact that this is something personal to him, someone isn’t jabbing him in the side with a stick, the devil isn’t sitting by his bed at night calling him names. He has a personal, human, natural, flaw. OK, so that last word, / / Weakness, when we look at that word, it means infirmity, and infirmity is defined as physical OR mental weakness.

This is interesting. Some commentators on the bible suggest that Paul himself gave an indication in another of his writings as to what this weakness might have been. In Galatians 4:14-15 Paul says, / / But even though my condition tempted you to reject me, you did not despise me or turn me away. No, you took me in and cared for me as though I were an angel from God or even Christ Jesus himself. Where is that joyful and grateful spirit you felt then? I am sure you would have taken out your own eyes and given them to me if it had been possible.

Did Paul have an eye problem? Glasses weren’t invented until probably the late 13th century, so, if you had poor eyesight that was it. Glasses are something we just take for granted now, but back then you didn’t have this option.

The whole point here is that this thorn in the flesh, this messenger of satan, this weakness, and actually, look at how he says it when he truly identifies he’s got problems, he says, / / So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses. Plural. So, we don’t know what it is or they are. And I wear glasses, but if I were to write about the thorn in my flesh, that truly keeps me humble, it certainly wouldn’t be my eyesight. It would be my addiction. Or maybe my years of struggle with insecurity and rejection.

Either way, whatever it is, Paul identifies with the fact that he is weak. That he can’t fix this part of his life. So, what does he do, once he’s identified with his weakness...

/ / Go to God

Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. // ESV - Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this...

The word pleaded is / / parakaleo, which is these two words, kaleo, which means to call aloud, utter in a loud voice, and para, which means near, or beside. So, Paul is saying, / / Three times I loudly called out for God to come to my side, to be near me.

I am making note of that because this is interestingly the very promise Jesus gives us. In John 14:16 Jesus says, / / “…I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you. He is the Holy Spirit...”

/ / Advocate, or as some translations say, Helper, is the word parakletos… it means called to one’s side

/ / parakaleo, the act of calling someone to your side

parakletos, the one who has been called to your side

Paul is literally saying, “Jesus, what you promised, I NEED!” Come to my side!

Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 11:1, / / …follow my example as I follow the example of Christ, or some translations say, imitate me as I imitate Christ.

I think this response to weakness is such a great example of Paul practicing what he preaches.

Jesus, in Matthew 6 tells us, / / “do not be anxious about your life…but seek first the kingdom of God...”

Paul reiterates that thought in Philippians 4:6, / / Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for what he has done.

He’s doing what he’s preaching. He’s pleading with God, begging him to come to his side in the midst of his weakness, in the moment of his struggle.

And not just once. Three different times…

Who else prayed three times about something they were suffering? Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, before he was betrayed and arrested. He prays three times, If there’s any other way, if there’s a way for this cup of suffering to pass from me, BUT, not my will, but yours be done.

And we’re right back to willful self-denial, right?

So, Paul, imitating Christ prays three times, and makes note of that for us in his writing.

I want to encourage you this morning, don’t give up in prayer. Don’t pray once and walk away and think, “oh well, maybe God won’t do it.”

Luke 11 says, Then, teaching them more about prayer, and then Jesus tells them a story about going to your neighbors house in the middle of the night because you have a friend that just came into town and you don’t have any food. But your neighbor says, “go away, I’m sleeping.” And Jesus says in Luke 11:8, / / But I tell you this - though he won’t do it for friendship’s sake, if you keep knocking long enough, he will get up and give you whatever you need because of your shameless persistence.

Don’t give up so easily. The bible tells us to pray without ceasing. Don’t stop.

Campbell Morgan, in his commentary on this scripture says about Paul praying three times, / / “That does not mean three times. It is the Hebrew figure for ceaselessly, continuously, over and over again.”

Paul does what we should do. Seeks God, calls him to his side, asks for God to come to him and help him. He tells God what he needs.

Then what? What’s the next step in Paul’s process to being sustained in the midst of trial?

/ / Listen to God’s Response... No Matter What It Is!

Each time he said...

There’s a response, each time. God gives a response to Paul’s prayer, to his request. And it’s the same answer every time.

Here’s the thing about answered prayer. / / Answered prayer doesn’t always mean answered our way.

When we teach our children that they need to ask permission, it’s not because we intend to say yes every time they ask, is it? Of course not. That would be terrible parenting.

Asking God to come to our side is absolutely critical, but what is even MORE important than Asking, is Listening to His response, / / because It is in the response we find what we need. It’s not always what we want, but it IS what we need.

Whatever the issue is, the thorn, the weakness, Paul is asking for it to be taken away, removed, so that he no longer has to deal with it. But listen to God’s response.

2 Corinthians 12:9, Each time he said, / / “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.”

ESV, / / “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

God says NO. Each time, God says no. Why???

Because there’s something better to be found than just removing this thing.

First of all, Paul says earlier that this was given to him. That begs the question, did he truly see this as a gift?

Second, God doesn’t say no, deal with it on your own, he says, no, and here is HOW you deal with it. Indicating that dealing with it is better than being without it.

Third, it’s passive, not active. / / God’s grace, God’s power, Our weakness.

Remember last week, in looking at the original Serenity prayer, / / “God give us GRACE to accept WITH Serenity the things that cannot be changed.”

/ / God’s grace produces serenity, or the state of being calm, peaceful and untroubled.

So, God in his answer to Paul’s prayer, “take it away” he says, “No, but i’m going to teach you how to rely on me so that in the midst of it you will find strength, and peace, and be untroubled by it.”

It’s an odd thing to think of affliction as a gift, isn’t it? But this was literally my process this year as I identified with being weak and having an addiction. A disease I cannot change. An infirmity of the mind and body that is beyond my power and strength to fix. And in learning to trust in God, which I am still doing and will likely be doing for the rest of my life, I have experienced a measure of grace and strength that I did not understand before because I was simply asking for God to take it away and getting frustrated when He didn’t.

I think we have a problem in the church today that we get frustrated with God at what we perceive to be unanswered prayer, when what He really wants to do is meet us IN our weakness and produce in us something that would not have been possible had he just taken it away.

Jesus said, in John 16:33, / / "Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”

You WILL experience trial. And the remedy? Cling to Jesus.

Does everyone have something like this? I don’t know. I can’t say what you are experiencing in your life is something that God wants to heal, or God wants to meet you in. For me, I really struggled being in recovery meetings hearing people introduce themselves as addicts after being sober for 30+ years. It didn’t make sense to me. Clearly you aren’t an addict, you aren’t exhibiting the addiction.

But then I started to realize there are two different victories. / / There is the victory of being rescued and pulled OUT of the fight. And there is the victory of daily grace and strength IN the fight.

And I realized that these men and women were courageous warriors who learned that they didn’t need to fight, but that the grace of God would sustain them and they would find God’s strength as they identified with their weakness and turned to Him.

Is the disease going anywhere? I don’t know. I said last week that my approach to freedom is to keep walking forward to the best of my ability, asking and believing for a miracle to bring me to where I want to go, but living in the miracle of being sustained on the journey. One is no less a miracle than the other and we can’t allow our definition of a miracle to be defined by our own experience, or someone else’s alone. / / God wants to work in YOUR life and in YOUR situation in a way that produces in YOU the strength you need by HIS grace.

/ / Engage With His Grace, Experience His Power

My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.

Grace, it’s the undeserved, unmerited favor of God. We don’t deserve healing. We don’t deserve Him walking beside us.

If you really think about it, God DID answer Paul’s prayer. If we look at the words He used. He asked God to come to his side, right? parakletos, come to my side, come to my rescue. He just did that in a different way. Paul said, / / “I asked God three times for him to TAKE IT AWAY...” instead God responded, “I will meet you in it EVERY time.”

When we hear God we need to hear what He is saying, not what we wanted him to say. Stop limiting God’s responses in your life by already deciding what you want him to say!

Because when we hear what He is saying, He is giving us a directive.

My grace is all you need. OK, God, give us the grace to accept with serenity the things we cannot change...

We do this with medication every day, don’t we? The Dr says, “here is the remedy to hold off the sickness, or to deal with the issue...” Sometimes they say, “There is no cure, but if you change your lifestyle and take this little pill it will mean you’ll live symptom free for the rest of your life. You will live with the disease, but the disease will not effect you, AS LONG AS you take this tiny little pill everyday.”

So what do we do? That pill becomes one of the most important thing in our lives. We set a schedule, we get a little pill carrier, we put reminders in our phones. Why? Because we’ve been given the answer to our infirmity, daily reliance on this pill.

What if God said to you, “Yes, you will have this in your life, for the rest of your life, but I have something for you that means you can live symptom free from this for the rest of your life… my grace is all you need.”

How important does relying on God’s grace then become?

How important does staying humble, recognizing that God is the answer to our deepest maladies.

We’re not just talking sickness. We’re not just talking addiction. Pain, hurt, mental issues. whatever it is that you are struggling with, here’s the deal, / / whether it goes away, or God wants to meet you daily in the journey, the answer is actually the same.

Grace, an undeserved, unmerited gift from God.

God’s grace is necessary whether we are healed or not. God’s grace is necessary whether we are pulled out, or sustained in. It’s the power to heal and set free, and it’s the power to encourage and build up. So, the answer is the same, rely on God for the grace we need.

/ / Stay Weak

My power works best in weakness. or My power is made perfect in weakness.

The moment we feel like WE are the strong ones is usually the moment we think we don’t need anyone’s help anymore. We live in a world where we constantly want to do it on our own, and sometimes we’re ok with getting help, but as soon as we think we can do it on our own we push that help away. “OK, OK, I got it now, let go, I can do it...”

And how often have we seen people, or experience ourselves, “Nope, didn’t quite have it...”

This limp that Paul had, he was so ok with it after hearing “My power is made perfect in weakness...” that God wanted to meet him IN his struggle, he says in 2 Corinthians 12:9, / / So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

We experience the continued strengthening of God because we learn to embrace the continued weakness of our humanity. God is God, we are not. And He wants to work IN you and THROUGH you....so that the power of Christ can work in you in spite of your weakness.

When I am weak, then I am strong.

The key to being sustained by the grace of God is not to receive the strength of God as a gift and then no longer need God because he gave us what we need. The grace of God to sustain us is found in the continued identifying of our NEED for HIS strength BECAUSE of our continued weakness.

I am frail and human and weak, and until I am perfected in heaven I will be frail and human and weak, and that’s ok. I had to come to grips with the reality that I may never be free of this addiction to sugar, that my struggle with food may be present in my life, for the rest of my life. JUST LIKE my body has adapted and changed and I am what is called a type 2 diabetic, that does NOT mean I have to live with the symptoms and pains of diabetes.

Do I believe God can heal me? Yes, of course.

Have I heard him say, “Yes I will” or “No, I won’t”. No, I haven’t. But with all certainty in my heart, over the course of this year, over and over and over again I have heard Him say, “My grace is sufficient, it’s all you need. My power is made perfect and works best in your weakness...”

Paul boasted about his weakness. I’m learning to do the same. Because / / it’s the weakness of humanity that grace meets so that we can experience the strength of Almighty God.

And I don’t want to get to a point where I turn to God and say, “Ok, I’m strong enough on my own now...” Because I remember what that struggle was like, and I failed time and time again, thinking I was strong enough.

The journey of Grace is simply this. I need it. And there’s nothing I can do to deserve it. But if I can humble myself and turn to God, believing He can sustain me, I receive what I need to continue on. And this has been our series on Grace. It is undeserved. It is unmerited. And yet, it is available to each and every one of us.