Day 2

 

Grace Finds Us, Raises Us, and Carries Us


2 Corinthians 12:9 “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness.” 

He gazed into the heavens with a lot of prayer, but little hope. His eyes were filled with a hazy mixture of tears and blood. His wounds ran deep. He lay alone, vulnerable and exposed to the lurking enemy. "Please God, save me! I can't do this on my own!" Then with murky vision, a friendly face appeared as a blurry silhouette against the glaring sun. A few moments later, he awoke bouncing on the shoulders of a comrade running him to safety.

This is the story of grace. Our wounds run deep. We are broken, left vulnerable to every attack of the enemy. We regret the mistakes we’ve made, and our guilt is a daily reminder that there is nothing good enough we could do to fix what is broken. Grace doesn’t give us a license to do whatever we want to do. In fact, grace reminds us why we are completely dependent on God to heal and accept us, brokenness and all. If He doesn’t find us, then we are abandoned where we lay, fodder for the enemy.

Grace tells our story of a person who had nothing to bring to the table. That God chose us before we were fixed. He didn't choose to find us depending on whether we chose first to pick ourselves up. He chose to seek us out where we lay, making Himself vulnerable to the most lethal enemy ever to stalk the soul of man, death; to find us, to raise us up onto the shoulders of our Savior, Jesus.

We live today as one who was raised to new life, but still with the capacity to fall back into old behaviors, to stumble again into the same narrative of shame and guilt. But here is the greatest part of the greatest story ever told. 

It is in our most vulnerable states that we find rest knowing that we are completely dependent on God finding this wandering sheep again and again. The grace of God prompts the Good Shepherd to look for us to place us back onto the shoulders of Jesus. His faithfulness to never stop looking for us is the tireless expression of God's persistent grace. 

Prayer

Heavenly Father, thank you for reminding me that while you see me in the perfection of Jesus, you know that I am not there yet. I am still a broken person who is healed, but who is still working through my brokenness. I don't completely understand all this, but I trust you today to place me on the shoulders of Jesus again, and again, and again. Thank you for never giving up on me. I will live today trusting you to make me someone I cannot be without your work of grace. Amen.

 

  Click this link to find out more about the influence of grace from my new book "Living Under the Influence: How Grace Sets Us Free from the Performance Mindset." Click this link to visit my author's website.





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