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QTMs for 1/20/17: IT IS BY GRACE… ALL OF IT.

Posted by on January 21, 2017

Can’t stop this.

Image result for Coffee and God's grace

Grace, the God kind.  You can divert it, deflect it, dodge it, even ignore it.  You can’t stop it.  It’s as much a part of God as light.  Grace – God’s grace – is as limitless as Eternity.

When I was in the third or fourth grade we lived for a short time at the end of a little country lane back behind Buck’s Corner.  I’m sure it was a rental, but that never mattered to me.  What did was the little bit of pasture where the landlord’s cow lived; for  back at the far end was a small irrigation ditch.  I put up with caring-for-the-cow chores so I had access to that ditch.

Water skippers, crawdads, cool, flowing water, rolled-up pants legs and bare feet . . .  to a kid, is there anything better?

Image result for small irrigation ditches

That little ditch in an obscure, now-changed-and-gone spot in eastern Oregon was my first introduction to how Grace is.

There was a cement diversion gate into which a weathered piece of thick plywood could be shoved to get water to the pasture – and our garden.  My dad told me to leave it alone because the flow was too strong for me to get the plywood back out and I’d flood the garden.

You see where this is going.

Grace is like that.  We’re saved by it (Ephesians 2:8).  We love one another through it.  We share in it together (Philippians 1:7).  It gives us strength and we grow in it (2 Timothy 2:1, 2 Peter 3:18).  God’s grace is the mending glue for broken hearts, broken lives, broken dreams.  It’s His grace, continuously and effortlessly flowing from God’s very presence (Hebrews 4:16) that gives you and I, fellow believer, what it takes to carry on.

Absorb this lyric by Matt West . . .

There’s a war between guilt and grace
And they’re fighting for a sacred space
But I’m living proof
Grace wins every time
No more lying down in death’s defeat
Now I’m rising up in victory
Singing hallelujah
Grace wins every time
Words can’t describe the way it feels
When mercy floods a thirsty soul
A broken side begins to heal
And grace returns what guilt has stole . . .

For the prodigal son, grace wins
For the woman at the well, grace wins
For the blind man and the beggar, grace wins
For always and forever, grace wins
For the lost out on the street, grace wins
For the worst part of you and me, grace wins
For the thief on the cross, grace wins
For a world that is lost, grace wins! 

Grace Wins lyrics © Atlas Music Publishing
You’re getting this, right?  I had to learn the lesson that I could easily shove that hunk of plywood down into the cement grooves if I was quick.  Getting it out was another story that my tender backside told and retold.
Image result for God's grace
 I never knew the source of that water; it just flowed on and on. I could no more stop the flow of that little irrigation ditch than you or I can plug the incessant, neverending, exhaustless flow of  grace.
God’s grace is like that.  And how to describe it?  “Amazing”?  There aren’t enough adjectives.  None.  Grace is infinitely more expansive than any description.
Can’t stop it, can’t describe it.  That’s God’s grace.
Image result for God's grace
Jam the plywood down in your soul if you want.  You can try to disprove what God the Father tells you.  All you’ll do is divert all that limitless flowing grace that empowers and helps believers overcome to all those around you.  Just yesterday, Pastor Paula White-Cain prayed over our new President and our nation for God to grant us “the grace to unify us”.
Nope.  This grace stuff?  Can’t stop it.  And there’s nothing more powerful nor more vital you can receive.  May as well get to using it, letting it flow over and through you.
  “Infuse your life with action.  Don’t wait for it to happen.  Make it happen.  Make your own future.  Make your own hope.  Make your own love.  And whatever your beliefs, honor your Creator, not by passively waiting for grace to come down from on high, but by doing what you can to make grace happen . . .  Yourself, right now, right down here on Earth.” ~ Bradley Whitford
© D. Dean Boone, January 2017

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