There, But for the Grace of God

 Have you ever had a moment of clarity where you see what your life might have been like had you not found a relationship with Christ and for a split second you realized that you owe it all to the grace of God? I had this experience last week and it was frightening and eye opening. It is an experience much like that tour of Bob Cratchit’s future, past and present with the ghosts of Christmas. It filled me with gratitude for how God has held me. It was an incredible gift.

I found a trusting relationship with God at the extremely young age of seven and I have followed him closely as a child, then loosely as a teen and young adult, then closely again as a “seasoned” adult. And although my path has been anything but ideal or even boring, I have clearly been held. Held in my decisions, thoughts and actions by a Father that loves me dearly.

It is hard for those of us who have followed Jesus our whole life to imagine our lives without him. And unlike those who came to Christ after hitting rock bottom, we don’t realize the depths from which we have been delivered. But last week in the glimpse of my life without God’s love, it was quite terrifying. I saw, in another person, my own weaknesses magnified to become my demise. I saw how things might have turned out for me and my family if I had to depend on my own easily fatigued struggling to make it through the tough times. And I saw how it would have been for me in the times where I felt unlovable. It would have destroyed me without that over-riding love from my Father.

Lauren Daigle’s song, Thank God I Do, expresses this perfectly.

You're my safe place
My hideaway
You're my anchor
My saving grace
You're my constant
My steadiness
You're my shelter
My oxygen
I don't know who I'd be if I didn't know You
Thank God, I do

I cannot imagine how anyone can live a life without the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Life is a roller coaster and He has carried me though so many crazy twists and turns. My hope is to someday have the faith to let go of the bar and fling my hands in the air knowing He holds me.

If you are reading this and you are tired of a life of striving on your own power; know that God hears your humble prayer and will fill you with a new life of placing your eyes on him. You don’t have to earn this. It is free for all who ask. Then you can place your eyes on Him and let go of that load. This song expresses it beautifully.

Choose Hope

 I’m a mess. There, I said it. I struggle with issues like anger and fear. To top it off, I am a control freak. It is so hard for me just to stand down. And I find myself in a world that has lost love, kindness, sanity and is full of greed and depravity.

But…

I have hope and hope makes all the difference! My hope is in Christ. God wants to save us from our own destruction because He created us and loves us. He created us with the freedom to choose. All we have to do is believe and trust what He said. He said that God created everything and then sent His Son, Jesus, to earth to live in the flesh among us. And that Jesus was crucified over 2000 years ago on a real Roman cross to his death and that His body was buried in a real tomb and three days later He rose to life in the flesh. He returned to heaven after leaving behind the Spirit form of God to help us grow as believers. And He said that on a day that we have no idea about, Jesus will come again and gather up all of the dead believers and those believers left on earth and take us to live in an unimaginably beautiful place with Him to live a totally fulfilling existence without pain and death. And in this lies all my hope.

Here are the words of Jesus explaining to a guy named Nicodemus, who wanted to know why the Son of God came to earth to live as a human among us.

John 3:16-17 AMP
"For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the world, that He even gave His One and only begotten Son, so that whoever believes and trusts in Him as Savior shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge and condemn the world that is, to initiate the final judgment of the world, but that the world might be saved through Him”.

So He clearly lobbed the ball into our court. We each must choose to participate by belief and trust. We must choose to volley our thoughts and beliefs daily with Him or to walk off and leave Him. But if we participate, we become the recipients of grace for all the messing up that we have done, are doing, and will do.

It is this hope that keeps me looking to God. My hope keeps me talking to him. My hope holds me up when the world knocks me down and consequently, love and compassion grow where there was none before. Everyday my hope is in Christ. Everyday I talk to Him about letting go of my anger, fear and control issues and I see that He is making improvement in spite of me. So I have hope for a bright future knowing someday, all these issues will be a thing of the past.

If you haven’t made this choice and want to, simply tell God in a humble prayer that you choose this hope and believe in your heart that He will do what He says He will do. If you have this relationship with God, may you find a way to share it with those who want it.

Photo by Laurissa Noack

Truth

Cells of a common water plant under a microscope

My absolute favorite part of teaching science was teaching 6th grade students to use a microscope. Soon after this they could discover for themselves the microscopic functioning parts of a living plant cell and the microscopic zoo in a drop of pond water. Experiencing their excitement over these eye opening discoveries was beautiful. In case you didn't get to experience this, here is a video of pond water through a microscope.

As a science teacher, I have had the privilege of learning some of the astonishing details of the makeup of living things and Earth’s precise ‘Goldilocks’ location in this vast universe. It takes a much bigger stretch of the imagination to think that this amazing detail was made possible by some cosmic accident than to accept the fact that there is a Divine Designer. The truth is that there is a God who created this universe, solar system, earth, and every living thing in it. 

It is also a fact that God, in an act of love, sent his Son in the form of a human to this Earth over two thousand years ago. There is irrefutable evidence that Jesus walked on this earth, lived among humans, taught, and performed miracles while here.  There is irrefutable evidence that He was killed by being crucified in an agonizing and humiliating death on a cross.  His body was buried and after three days, he was seen alive, walking, talking and eating. And over a course of forty days after his death, it is documented that he was seen by well over 500 eye witnesses.  This is a feat that only God himself could engineer. To this day, as hard as they try, no one can disprove this fact. 

The purpose of God sending his son here was a mercy mission to give us a way out of our certain failure and destruction. 

John 3:16-18 ESV 

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 

He gave us the choice to accept or reject this grace. I have chosen to accept his mercy and now there is evidence in my daily life of his presence in me through the Holy Spirit. Without him, I am misguided, timid, incredibly selfish and self-centered, suffering from every malady inherent to a selfish lifestyle. Now, when I choose to listen to Him, he gives me divine power over this selfishness, as well as love for others and self-discipline to boldly pursue him in my life. So my daily walk before and after following him is evidence to me that the Holy Spirit is in my life now.  

This is the evidence and the truth. But don’t just take my word for it. You can search it for yourself. Please test God, the Bible and Jesus. Then you can chose to accept it or deny it based on fact, not hearsay.