Have you ever wondered what ‘grace’ has to do with the homeschool mother? Grace is a word often used but what does it mean and how does it relate to us?

Are you fulfilled in your walk with God? Are you doing enough to deserve His pleasure and acceptance? Is reading the Bible a duty, a chore, a bore or a pleasure? Are you reaching God? Have you searched for Him and found Him? Sometimes we can get caught up in a vicious circle of trying harder to deepen our walk with God, to reach Him, to please Him, yet we end up tired and weary, closely followed by a feeling of failure and disappointment. (Or am I the only one who has experienced this?) What is missing in all this? Is unfulfilled striving all there is?

The bad news

There is a wrath awaiting us! Yes, it is true. Couple this with the fact that there is a Holy God, in whose presence we cannot be, and you find ourselves in a terrible situation. No matter how hard you work at being or doing good, no matter how much you try to avoid sin, you still, in and of yourself, can not avoid the wrath nor can you enter His presence!

Now for the good news!

The believer knows and accepts that Jesus the Christ has made a way possible to avoid that wrath – through Him we can gain access to God’s presence. Not only does Jesus rescue us from that wrath, not only are our sins forgiven but He bought a place for us – so we can stand in a place of total acceptance and security. So, it isn’t what you know, it is WHO you know. It isn’t our doing or being that was able to attain this. It was all by his grace…all by His favour that we did nothing to deserve.

Now that we’ve been accepted, forgiven, rescued by grace, we need to learn what it means to live in grace. We not longer have to try and reach God. God reached down to man! No more striving. Wahoo!

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
Romans 8:37

Living in Grace

Do you live in victory or in that vicious circle I wrote about above? Early in my walk as a new believer, I would set my feet to making resolutions. I wanted to get closer to God, to be used by Him and other fairly noble but misguided thoughts. These thoughts would lead me to going to the front of church during the altar call, repenting (again) and asking forgiveness (again) and making yet another commitment or resolution to do better in my efforts at growing as a believer. Within a few weeks or months I would be back again at the altar, repeating the same action. Oi voi! What a trap! What an unfulfilled path to tread. Where was the victory that Paul speaks of in Romans 5:17 and 2 Corinthians 2:14 In another post I’ll be looking at Romans 5:17 and Romans 7. It is very interesting and I gleaned a lot from it. I hope you will to.

How do you define ‘the gospel’? What does the Good News mean to you? How has it impacted your life? Are you living each day in the knowledge of God’s saving grace, knowing that God is not pleased any more or any less by your works? Are you living in the victory of the cross of Christ?

Whatever your heart clings to and relies on is your God.
~Martin Luther