A thought by John Townsend from his
book, People Fuel (p. 58). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. (Click on the book
title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)
Townsend, John. People Fuel (p. 42).
Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
Yes, it is.
John says, “It did a much better job
than the law did to bring us into right standing before God, ‘so that, just as
sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring
eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord’ (Rom. 5:21). Another word for grace
is favor, as in one person bending or stooping to be kind to another. A
practical way to understand grace is to think of it as God being for us. He
always wants our best and does not move to our detriment. Even when we are weak
or straying or rebellious, God is for us.
“Grace helps us feel loved and
connected, helps us tolerate our own failure and that of others, and
strengthens us to fight another day. God provides us with grace vertically
(directly, from himself) and horizontally (indirectly, through people). And
many types of nutrients come via grace.”
John tells about a problem of a mom and
her daughter. Whenever the daughter come
to talk with the mom about her problems, the mom was quick to say to her, “Honey,
listen to me. You are smart and you are strong. You’ll be okay.”
And the daughter would at that moment
would quit listening. And that was very
frustrating to both of them.
At one point, John said to Katherine, the
mother, “You’re very good at encouraging and helping, and Erin does need that.
But your sequence is wrong.”
He then said, “Jesus came full of grace
and truth to give us both, to save us and grow us. But the order is significant
here. The Bible doesn’t say that he came full of truth and grace; it’s the
other way around. It’s a good illustration of how growth happens. We need to
experience grace before we are ready for truth. If you’ve ever been ‘truthed’
by someone, without grace, even if they were right about what they were saying
to you, it probably felt harsh, unloving, and impossible to respond to… That is
why grace is so helpful. One of the functions of grace is to help us digest and
metabolize the truth. Then we can make use of someone’s advice without feeling
judged. When we know they are truly with us, we are more prone to respond to
the truth.”
That is so easy for many of us to do,
isn’t it? We know what they need to do but we haven’t earned the right to tell them the truth until we have shown them that
we really care for them. It is so
important to see that grace earns the right to give truth. That’s where we need to start. And that can be very difficult for some of
us, can’t it? But you see, don’t you that
Jesus has done that with us?
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