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| New Mexico Scene |
“What is grace?” I asked God. And He said, “All that happens.” Then He added, when I looked perplexed, “Could not lovers say that every moment in their Beloved’s arms was grace? Existence is my arms, though I well understand how one can turn away from me until the heart has wisdom. ”St.John of the Cross
Christ’s coming brought grace. The law came by Moses but grace and truth by Jesus Christ. O happy day! The subject of grace presents a vast topic but essentially grace means favor; a disposition to grant something freely. Christ releases the Father’s disposition to grant something freely, having died in our place as our representative man. Any “worthiness” aspirations by us to gain a thing, would eliminate grace. Self-merit can only conjure a wage. Grace earns no paycheck, neither becomes one; grace stands outside of this rationale as screened.
A blind person cannot see. People, who can see, choose and evaluate certain things. A sightless man sees nothing. God has been released in His Holy disposition, blindly favoring one; anyone and all, and when that one becomes me, I am blessed beyond measure.
The Father, with full sight, favors His own Son, sees Him totally worthy, and this is justice. So, knowing this judgement, Father places me in the Son and blindly sees me in the Son’s worthiness, and this is grace.
Grace, the most glorious thing, culminates God’s healing plan for man. Grace is why the self reliant, self serving and self absorbing clutter must escape a person’s mind-frame. This free-floating self-debris diametrically opposes grace. Grace doesn’t need participation to remain grace; grace and the nature of God are synonymous.
In contrast, a wounded disposition attracts the protection of meandering drift. Awareness of emotional reaction, impulse, defensive positioning, and wound protecting create this drift. These inhibit grace from gaining an entrance, and result in positive assertion of the negative float. See, wounds represent anti-grace because they dis-grace.
For example; a baseball player who pitches, looses the big game. His team may support him and somebody says “Buddy, you’re a winner.” Well, Buddy just filled up his emotions with disappointment, disillusionment, and pain. He may act cordially with his team mates, but the few encouraging words from them begin a potential future healing at best.
A person in this state cannot help himself. Shot through and through with ‘loser’ and, Oh, he covers the shame with all variations of hiding; he knows not the ultimate outcome. He became an anti-grace-disposed person, and simply resists hearing about “you’re a winner”
Folks, thousands of objections and shortcomings and rebellions and demands and disappointments and despondency and sin-propensities etc, have all been test-tubed and processed by God’s eternal measuring device; never can they reach the source of God’s love and favor to hurt it.
By love, I am not talking about somebody’s nice words but instead something intimately linked with truth and grace. When the above realization dawns on a person; and that person perceives grace-immovable, it puts all above objections and loser-ship in a secondary escrow account, because grace rises again to the top.
Grace supersedes all. Grace is above all. Grace is before all, and grace doesn’t care if you are a total jerk, fool, idiot, slacker, mover, or shaker. When God says He favors you and loves you with an everlasting love, nothing can stop God. Nothing! Grace doesn’t need anybody’s help or support; It acts freely and independently of any influence. God doesn’t ask if we want to be the object of his love, He just makes us that.
Just sit down and think of every scandalous reason, every religious reason, every psychological reason, and every rational reason that opposes God’s free unmerited favor from entering. Then think of God’s Son dying on a cross to satisfy all that angered the Father and hindered the operation of grace. Now, can you just give up the self righteous pride and let Him love you just as you are, just as He rose from the grave to do?
He doesn’t care if you lost the game; what is a game but a tiny battle in the big war already won by God? He doesn’t freak out at my freaky sin propensity and nature to self-deceive and screw up. He is not swayed in His determined love for you and summons you and me to a life above; to be the head and not the tail.
This is the cure, this is the ointment; this is what we need and were made to never live without. We are incomplete without this grace and once we taste it we will never let it go away again. O Please dare to take God at His word and let Him love you into real healing and nurture.