Grace: December 17, 2013

TODAY’S WORD FOR TUESDAY DECEMBER 17, 2013.

GRACE

DEFINITION:

Mercy, clemency, pardon, the influence or spirit of God operating in humans; the freely given, unmerited favor and love of God.

SCRIPTURE:

Grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. II Peter 3:18.

KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE:

Grace is the freely given unmerited favor and love of God. It is solely by God’s grace that we are saved. Grace is part of God’s divine nature along with love, patience, kindness, righteousness and justice that caused God to give His only Son to die on the cross for us and to save us from our sins. If our faith is real we cannot remain complacent. We will want a closer relationship with our Lord, and this is also what God wants from us.

God wants us as individuals and as families to grow daily in grace. Today we will share together three attributes of grace from the scripture. These are faith, love and humility.

First, we need to grow in faith. We need to believe the promises of God that He gives us with more diligence and apply them to our life each day. Our faith must increase with consistency and with simplicity. We limit what God can do through us because of our lack of faith. He wants us to step out with great faith and let God do His will in us and through us to bring honor and glory to His Holy name. 

We also must grow daily in love. Our love needs to extend beyond what and who we love today. We need to be more Christ-like as we share our love with others. We need to be forgiving, more purposeful in what and who we love, and our love should be reflected through every thought, word and deed that comes from us. We are to love the lovely and also the unlovely. We are to love the believer and the unbeliever. At times this will be very difficult, especially to love an unlovely person or an unbeliever who stands strongly against what you believe. But God wants us to grow in the grace of love.

Finally, for today, we need to grow in the grace of humility. For many people this is most difficult. People want to be thought of highly when they accomplish something but that is not what God wants from us. We need to be humble in our speech and our actions. We must recognize that in and of ourselves we are nothing without God. As we grow downward, in other words increase our humility, we will grow upward in our approach to God. This will happen in our prayer life and as we read the Bible. Our fellowship with Jesus will become more intimate.

In Genesis 6:8 we read that Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Noah was a righteous man who loved God, had faith in God, and obeyed God in humility. It must have seemed like a crazy idea to build an Ark in the desert. Noah did not argue with God. He built the Ark just as God commanded him to do. By God’s grace Noah and all his family were saved while everyone else perished. It is only by God’s grace that we are saved. 

In Psalm 84:11 the psalmist tells us that the Lord will give us grace and glory and no good thing will be withheld from those who walk uprightly. The more we grow in grace, the more God can work in our lives. The key for us is to want to love and to know God and to choose to walk with Him daily.

LEARNING:

Our memory verse for this week is found in Romans 15:4.

For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.

PRAYER:

Help me to teach my family to love God, have faith in Him and to be humble so that we may find grace in Your sight just as Noah did so many years ago. Help me to listen to what You say and then may Your Holy Spirit give me the conviction and courage to obey and walk with You in the direction You lead me.