Redefining Grace

Redefining Grace – Rob Coscia

If you’re one of those I keep seeing that focuses on the negativity of cities, states, and nations, pointing out all the wrongs that God must hate, I have a word for you. The dark cloud you keep pointing at isn’t a judgment from God. It isn’t even directly from the enemy. It’s from you. It’s the result of your retreat.

When you abandon your post of influencing the city in the fruit of the Spirit, you remove all the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, and hope that God has given to you, and you leave a gap. A gap you then judge as the sin of others, most of whom are living as best they can in the absence of a demonstration of something better.

Whether it came from an offense against you, or your own failure, somewhere along the way you listened to the enemy’s definition of grace, that it is conditional, limited, and must be earned. That kind of warped grace makes you insecure. So you protect your religious position by judging those who have experienced less of God’s presence than you, then punish them by removing all of yours.

I invite you to let God redefine grace for you. You are so completely, perfectly, unceasingly loved by your Father. You do not have to earn it. You don’t have to perform for it. You don’t have act perfectly, or stress yourself and everyone around you to the breaking point trying. As in Zechariah 4, cry out “Grace, grace!” over all that you are, including your past, and all that God wants to be for you.

When you know that Jesus’ love and grace toward you are unending, they will overflow to your family, your work, your city, your nation. You’ll remember that it’s not your job to curse the darkness. It’s your joy to transform it.

“Let your light so shine before others, that they may see the good things you do, and glorify your Father in heaven.” (Matt. 5.16)

from: http://bit.ly/1NaqQzx