Ephesians 2
Monday, August 15, 2022
Every time I study the word “grace”, I am led to two other words that are not used in everyday language: unmerited favor. My brain is naggled when I look up the definition of one word, only to be more confused by ‘fancier’ vocabulary. I want it simple.
Another reason, I believe, that the concepts of grace and unmerited favor is sometimes a challenge to wrap my mind around is that it’s not frequently extended in practice – from others to us or even from us to others. There is so often a string attached, an expectation to meet or a limit set. But that’s not how the grace of God works.
God knows every bit of our lives: our thoughts, words, actions; the good, the bad, and the ugly – and decides to freely offer His grace – a gift that we really don’t deserve – to us so that we can be in right standing with Him.
Teachers often have “back to school” dreams where something inevitably goes very wrong. Last night I had a dream that my supervising principal kept finding mistakes in my work. And in my dream, she was getting frustrated and I developed a growing concern for my job. Thankfully, that’s not my reality. My principal is great and trusts me to do my job well.
God isn’t a supervisor who is tracking all of your mistakes and missteps, evaluating your every move, just waiting to see if you’re good enough to keep, or if He needs to remove you from His team.
Yes, He sees our every move and He rejoices in our successes. He also continues to love us and support us as we stumble, fall, and fail. He’s the one who lifts us up, brushes the dust off our knees, wipes away our tears, and tells us that we can do hard things because we can draw our strength from Him.
This is grace: God’s unmerited favor.
-Bethany Ligon
Application Questions
- How would you describe God’s grace to someone who has never heard of it before?
- What do you love best about God’s grace? How has He picked you up after you have stumbled.
- How well do you give grace to others?
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