Does it ever hit you that to hear the terminology the grace of God that it feels like nothing was just spoken? Does such feel empty? Isn't there sort of an, And? or So? that immediately lingers? This very grace dynamic of the present and engaged God among His followers has been aborted. We prefer intriguing meaning of Greek verbiage or profitable social works that would give us something to show for our faith efforts. In other words, the grace of God is in perpetual danger of being shelved for the exchange and implementation of human acts in the Kingdom business.
J. I. Packer wrote over forty years ago that our conception of grace has not been so much debased as non-existent. The thought means nothing to them; it does not touch their experience at all. Talk to them about the church's heating, or last year's accounts, and they are with you at once; but speak to them about the realities of which the word 'grace' points, and their attitude is one of deferential blankness.
For those of us who cut our teeth on legalism, grace is a four-letter word. This bias must be overcome. The church, the members, are in deep need of the grace of God that is a five-letter word which connects the earthy with the heavenly. God's grace is indescribably beautiful and over-achingly powerful. His grace thrusts us into a zone of which the human cadence knows nothing.
We just must not leave home without it. The grace of God transcends us from being human leaders to beyond-imagination service in the most drastic form of robust spirituality.
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