Space for Grace

While I don’t know the whole recipe for life, I know it calls for lots of grace.

The more I experience the snow of winter the more I find pictures of our seasons and storms in life.  Besides that winter requires more space because of snow on cars and tough road conditions; it also requires more grace.  Some of the general road rules have to be set aside at times during the snow.  When it’s really bad cars may have to drive through red lights because the roads won’t allow them to stop.  Yet even if just on days where the snow has covered the ground, parking between the lines is really just a guessing game.  I can’t be expected to know where the lines are if I can’t see them, nor can I expect anyone else to do the same.  This picture reminds me of how I need this same grace in my own life as well as for other people, especially in the midst of any level of storm or trial.  For someone who values doing things well and right this can be quite a feat to extend grace to myself and yet that is exactly what this season calls for me to do.  So whatever season you find yourself in, however far over the lines you park, let there be space in your life for grace.  You need it and so does everyone else.  

“Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

Hebrews 4:16 NASB

Our God is gracious.  He loves to extend His grace to us.  Prior to this verse we see that He is a God that can “sympathize with our weaknesses.”  Sometimes the hardest part about that is admitting that we have them.  Once we can get to that place of humility we can freely approach His grace that He longs for us to find.  His heart is that we would especially find this mercy and grace in our time of need.  We don’t need fancy words and we don’t need to have it all together.  Instead we can come without reservation, in confidence that the God who sees all and knows all is the One who can completely sympathize and understand what you are walking through.  Without condemnation He sees you longing to extend His grace in your time of need that you can extend that same grace to others.  It starts with His grace.  We need His grace.  Come walk free in His grace.  

Delighting in Work

Our work is a gift.  Sometimes wonderful and sometimes work.

I’ve found that anything worth doing requires some level of work.  In physics work is “the exertion of force overcoming resistance or producing molecular change.”  Resistance is required for change.  Work is not only the job we do each day.  It is that which we put into what we do.  It is what we put our hands to as well as the effort we put into it.  Change requires resistance.  I often want change without the resistance, yet that’s not how it works.  Or at least not with significant change.  If you feel resistance you just might be onto something.  Since we spend so much time in the work of our job or our role that is often where we feel the most resistance.  Yet that is also the very place that is our gift.  Your work is your gift and worth the resistance.  

“…Take care of yourself, have a good time, and make the most of whatever job you have for as long as God gives you life.  And that’s about it.  That’s the human lot.  Yes, we should make the most of what God gives, both the bounty and the capacity to enjoy it, accepting what’s given and delighting in the work.  It’s God’s gift!…”
Ecclesiastes 5:18-20 Message

Sometimes it’s hard to see work as a gift.  Yet here in Ecclesiastes that is exactly what Solomon is encouraging us to do.  In the midst of searching through life’s seeming meaninglessness Solomon finds that it is through God that we find meaning.  Apart from Him it all ends in meaninglessness.  God empowers us to enjoy His provision.  Knowing this he says that our work is God’s gift to us for us to delight in and make the most of it.  Some days that seems so easy to do and other days it can feel more like a stretch, yet all days it remains true.  Whatever the work of your day looks like today may you have “both the bounty and capacity to enjoy it, accepting what’s given and delighting in the work.”

Don't Lose Heart

Though all hope may seem lost…Take heart again, take courage again, take hope once again.  

Discouragement is a normal place to find yourself, but not a place to stay.  We lose some of the meaning of this word in the English.  In the Latin ‘cor’ means heart.  The word discourage has roots in discouragier from the French language.  Des means away and corage means courage.  When our courage gets taken away so does our heart.  Discouragement sucks the life out of us. Without heart and without courage we find ourselves without life.   Without life we can’t do the things we were made to do, called to do and love to do.  So don’t let anyone or anything take your heart from you.   Even if it’s been lost for a very long time you can still grab hold of it.  Speak courage to your heart until you believe it.  Take heart again, take courage again, take hope once again...and again.  

“Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.”

2 Corinthians 4:16 NASB

The Biblical definition of losing heart means to be utterly spiritless, wearied out, or exhausted.  Now that’s a dark place to find yourself.  Yet, you don’t have to stay there.  In 2 Corinthians Paul is encouraging us with his own life.  Even though he was threatened, beaten, imprisoned, and stoned, even still he learned the secret of not losing heart.  He saw the purpose behind every affliction; the value of the inward man more than the outward man; of the spirit more than the body.  He saw the opportunities all of his pain and suffering brought him to know Jesus and to share Jesus.  His secret was in the day by day renewing.  It’s a day by day process and battle.  So take today.  Take this moment.  Speak words of renewing life to your spirit.  Let it find newness once again in the truth that we need not lose heart.  This place is meaningful, the pain is worth it, and you can take heart once again even in this place.  

For some extra encouragement check out this short message from John Piper mixed into Shane and Shane’s song, “Though You Slay Me."

"Though You Slay Me" (featuring John Piper) by Desiring God