LINKY – UNITE – When Works Devour Grace

Welcome to UNITE!  I am so glad you are here!

For all of those new HERE, I have been writing a book and have been on a short sabbatical.

However, UNITE is still open, continuing to be a place to gather, connect, and meet new people each and every Tuesday.

The rough draft of my book is done. (Thanks for all of your patience)  However, I am still busy working on a proposal, and am trying to spare my fingers, so I will be taking a few more days off.

This week God has been showing me, GRACE.

My six year old brought a book home.  The word on the cover? GRACE.  I go shopping and in a rack of children’s clothes, I find a white shirt.  For an infant.  Totally out of place.  The words embroidered across the front?  GRACE.

Nothing more….just, “GRACE”.

Then, I go to church, Sunday.  Pastor speaks the words God has already imprinted on my heart.

And it is through these faith-words, you know God is alive and active.  It’s through confirmations like this, the Holy Spirit moves freely and you just know these are God-words…not just mans.

The sermon?  GRACE

Still, I am finding WORKS is easier to receive than GRACE.  Like a prideful master, in a world admiring business and exhaustible effort….

WORKS constantly rises, attempting at every opportunity, to devour GRACE.

We receive grace.  But then, the striving of a ministry, a marriage, a family. a business….tends to grow like weeks, taking over the foundation that God had lain for His success….His purposes.

And we must (I must) slay that giant.  Continually.  Daily.  Moment by moment.

And the only way I have found to do that is by being still.  Solitude.  Waiting on  God to give me what I need for the day…and taking…..not one morsel more.  Not one morsel for my ego, my mission, my purposes.  Feeding simply and only on what He gives me. 

And it seems, our greatest quest in this life….To lean on, trust in, rely on, solely….GRACE. Yet to do that, we must embrace the stillness, silence, tranquility…the truth of our own souls.  After all…

• Who is ever found, set free, saved through works?
• What striving ever gets anyone into the Kingdom of God?
• After all, isn’t it GRACE that separates every other religion from the one true God?

No paying penitence, no good thoughts, no works will ever get us into the heaven.  Only Jesus can.

Still, why do we reach for, want, continually strive for a tangible Savior?  A golden calf?  Our selfish alters?  Earthly symbols of man-made idols….to comfort our own souls?

I have been tested.  Pressed.  Asked.  Questioned lately….

• Isn’t His resurrection power enough?  
• Isn’t GRACE thick enough to fill the deep trenches inside of us?  
• Isn’t His shed blood….His living sacrifice….His unbiased offer for us to come inside His secret place.  Behind the veil.  There in the residence of where the Holy of Holies lives….Enough?

Maybe we wait for God to come to us….When He waits for us, to repent, accepting what He has already given….GRACE.

The unmerited, unearned favor.  The blessing He gives….despite us doing.  Anything.

This is where God has been taking me this week.  To do “only” what He asks.  And to trust Him with the rest.  To stop, hear, be still….setting aside anything that I might think I am….

Offering it all, there on the alter of my own selfishness….my life.  

Thanks for baring with me, as I filter through all the things He has been showing me this week.

(Linking with Jen, ThroughChrist)