Lately, I’ve been thinking about God’s grace. I know we’ve been saved by grace through faith. Knowing the what and the how, I have been trying to find the why. I’ll be honest, that isn’t a great response to His grace. It’s self-deprecating and, ironically, at its root, fairly selfish. Searching for the answer to why He saved us, instead of gratefully resting in His grace, turns our response back on ourselves. However, the reality of God’s grace is that it has nothing to do with us except that we are lucky recipients.
Here is what the definition of ‘Amazing Grace’ is:
Amazing is an adjective defined as “Causing astonishment, great wonder, or surprise”
Grace is a noun defined as “Favor; good will; kindness; unmerited (undeserved) favor and love given by God”
That points me directly to the cross, which is the greatest example of amazing grace. When thinking about amazing grace, I also, of course, think of the song. I used to hear it as a kid, and now that I’ve grown up, I realize there actually aren’t words to do it justice. I think Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me, does an okay job. The reality is that the love of God and His grace should be described in sounds, colors, and imagery that hold a hugeness beyond human capacity.
Throughout Scripture, we see examples of His grace. For example, God’s grace led Israel out of Egypt, appointed Esther as queen, and led Ruth and Naomi to Boaz. It was God’s grace for us that sent His Son as atonement for our sins. And now, because of that, it’s God’s grace that we can look at life through the lens of ‘Thank You, Jesus’, and that makes everything on earth seem so much smaller.
I’m far from perfect at remembering that last part, though. I too often find myself in a funk or mood that I just cannot seem to shake off. I sometimes operate on a pretty elevated level of self-doubt and, honestly, just insecurity. It gets to a point where I’ll think about the love of God and feel a push from Him, not a pull toward Him, which obviously really bothers me.
I had been experiencing this recently, and I had zero idea why until we were taking communion at church on Sunday. I was staring at the wafer and the grape juice, completely missing the point. All I felt was guilt like: what on earth is so good about me that Jesus would bear my sin? Or who am I to deserve that kind of love? I was taking the fact that we don't deserve God's grace as a reason to struggle with receiving it, when the fact that we don't deserve it is precisely what makes it grace.
When pondering grace, I realized my sweet dog, Maple, has received a lot of mine. She didn’t do anything to earn it. I obviously think she’s the sweetest, smartest, and cutest girl, but my common sense tells me that’s subjective. She has done many things that frustrate me, but at the end of the day I look at her and have nothing but so much love for her.
The way that I see her can’t even compare to how God sees me and how God sees you. Every one of us is His sweetest, smartest, and cutest; we all bear His image, we were all formed by Him and given breath and a soul. If I can love my dog regardless of her flaws, how can it sometimes be difficult to grasp that God, the One who created us, could love us despite ours?
I’ll probably still see these moods in my life, but thankfully now that I’m aware of the cause, I can see that the goal isn’t to not feel those feelings, but it’s to redirect them with just loving Jesus above everything else. To really accept God’s grace, you have to surrender your need to feel worthy of it. I had never looked at it as a surrender before. I’m now realizing this is less about grace and more about self-doubt, so let’s go to Exodus Chapter 3.
In verse 9, God tells Moses,
“The Israelite cry for help has come to me, and I’ve seen for myself how cruelly they’re being treated by the Egyptians. It’s time for you to go back: I’m sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the People of Israel, out of Egypt.
Moses answered God, “But why me? What makes you think that I could ever go to Pharaoh and lead the children of Israel out of Egypt?”
“I’ll be with you,” God said. “And this will be the proof that I am the one who sent you: When you have brought my people out of Egypt, you will worship God right here at this very mountain.
God continues to tell Moses how things will go for the rest of chapter 3, then in chapter 4, verse one says:
“Moses objected, “They won’t trust me. They won’t listen to a word I say. They’re going to say, ‘God? Appear to him? Hardly!’”
And I love that instead of God affirming his trepidation, He shifts the focus to Himself. God tells Moses He’ll be with him. He spends the next couple of verses in chapter 4 showing Moses the way that God can move through him, yet in verse 10 it says:
“Moses raised another objection to God: “Master, please, I don’t talk well. I’ve never been good with words, neither before nor after you spoke to me. I stutter and stammer.”
God said, “And who do you think made the human mouth? And who makes some mute, some deaf, some sighted, some blind? Isn’t it I, God? So, get going. I’ll be right there with you—with your mouth! I’ll be right there to teach you what to say.”
Again, God doesn’t say, ‘Yeah, you’re right, you suck, Moses. He says, 'Look at what I can do.’ It was never about Moses; it was about God’s will to show grace to the enslaved Israelites. It was never about me; it’s about God’s will to be in relationship with His creation. If we look for reasons we aren’t worthy, we’re always going to find them. If we look to God and accept His grace to move in the obedience of His will, we’re always going to find Him right next to us. What are we really looking for?
So, this whole thing comes down to: God’s grace is amazing, and we don’t deserve it. Our only response to that is gratitude. When we get in moods, I hope we step back and remember we can’t be perfect, but His grace is sufficient for us. If faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen, we don’t need to clearly understand why God chose us to be grateful He did.
