I have found that the idea of grace is a wonderful concept to think about but a whole ‘nother thing to live! In my own life, I find that I don’t like to give myself grace.
Let me rephrase that: I want to give myself grace—I just usually don’t.
I am often my own worst enemy and my greatest critic (which is saying something because I’ve had some doozies) but it’s true of all of us, I think: we are usually pretty hard on ourselves.
That really comes into play when I think about approaching God. All of the fear and failure comes cascading down the moment I start looking up. The weight of my sin and shame fills my mind in a full-frontal assault on my conscience. The problem comes during times I forget that all of that has been paid for. Covered. Rendered impotent to keep me from God.
This morning Karen and I read what Paul Tripp wrote in his devotional, New Morning Mercies:
Since your standing with God is based not on your righteousness but on Christ’s, in moments of failure, you can run to him and not from him.
Tripp says that we have three options when confronted with our failure:
You can commit to be an evidence denier, working to convince yourself that you’re okay when you’re really not okay. You can comfort yourself with plausible arguments for your righteousness, giving ease to your conscience. Or, in the face of your failure, you can wallow in guilt and shame, beating yourself up because you did not do better and working hard to hide your failure from God and others. Or, in the brokenness and grief of conviction, you can run not away from God but to him.
Owning the failures of the day is important but has to be viewed through the lens of the cross. In Christ, I am forgiven. What’s next, though?
Well, If I take Scripture seriously, I know that I’m called to holiness. If I stop there, I’m going to tank because, again, that whole failure-thing.
What I have to remember is that Jesus is a complete success and He accomplished for me what I could not accomplish in my failure: He secured my holiness before the Father, granting me a righteousness that I could not secure on my own. Tripp reminded me again of this:
Yes, you are called to live a holy life, but your way of living has not been and never will be the basis of your standing with God. You can bow at his feet and confess your sins, knowing that you will receive grace and not punishment, because righteous Jesus took the full brunt of your penalty so that you would never, ever bear it.
So, today, I’m meditating on this simple but profound truth. I’m working on living this grace out in my life and what I usually find is that the more I remember the grace that God has extended towards me in Christ, the quicker the wave of conviction as I approach Him in prayer ceases.
In that moment, I’m liberated to actually live a more holy and intimate life before God as the power of Christ’s work on the cross is applied to my life through His Holy Spirit. It is still a battle of surrender I have to fight, but the war over my soul has already been won and that gives me strength and peace for today and hope for tomorrow.
I’d love to hear your thoughts or words of wisdom on the subject or work through questions or issues with you. To do so, you’ll need to comment below on this page. If you only comment on Facebook I probably won’t see it as I’m taking a social media “sabbatical.”
