Understanding Grace

When we understand how grace works in our lives, we will find ourselves living with a new freedom in our daily relationship with Jesus. Every good thing in our lives is a result of the grace of God. You and I really do not deserve anything. If you have good health today, it is because of the grace of God. Any gift or ability you have can be credited to the grace of God. If you are an excellent parent, it is not because you are so talented with children, but it is the grace of God that enables you to be a good parent.

If you are a fantastic basketball player, it’s because of the grace of God. You may say, “But I practice.” Who gave you the ability and health to practice? God did. Good students are recipients of the grace of God. If you are a financially secure businessman, the grace of God is the reason that you are successful. When we get this truth into our spirits and live out the grace of God, it totally revolutionizes us. It changes us from the inside out.

The devil cannot puff you up with pride if you understand the grace of God. People who are proud are really saying, “I am the reason things are working so well” and they look to themselves instead of to God. People who are living in the grace of God are always looking to Jesus. They are totally dependent on the grace of God. They are living with a sense of thankfulness, knowing that He’s the One who has given them every good gift and every good thing they have. Everything that we have, everything that we will ever do, everything that we are, is simply by the grace of God.

Paul, the apostle, went through years of theological training and had an impeccable background of pure Jewish descent. Yet he says that all his advantages of birth, education and personal achievement can be attributed to the grace of God. “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me (1 Corinthians 15:10).”