This is a little "song" I sang this morning in prayer as I was taking the time to go back and remember all that the Lord has done. This was how the Lord encountered me when I had given up all hope. This was the lifeline He threw out to me....a revelation of the truth of GRACE. My journey home actually began with that exact word! Grace. My first ray of light that broke through the thick, heavy, hopeless darkness.
"He Said Grace"
He said Grace, Grace,
He said Grace, Grace,
When I was hopeless,
When I hated myself,
When all of my trying led to only failure,
When I though He was angry and I had given up,
He said Grace, Grace
I am going to take those chains off of you,
I am going to bring you out of that pit,
Run to me when you know you have failed,
That’s why I suffered, that’s why I died,
Why do you stand off from the cross?
Run to me when you fall short,
Run to me when you sin,
That’s why I suffered,
That’s why I died.
He said Grace, Grace,
But you won’t receive my gift,
You beat yourself up, and you hide your face,
Thinking I am pleased,
Oh don’t you see?
Why I suffered?
I am grieved, I grieve,
Because you waste my gift,
You waste my suffering,
When you need it the most.
That is why I died,
He said Grace, Grace,
Come to me and receive cleansing,
Run to me,
Come to me and be washed,
I am going to give you Jesus,
Watch and see what I do,
I am going to give you His life,
I am going to take those chains off of you,
I am going to bring you out of this wilderness,
I am going to bring you through!
I am going to do it,
You will see,
I won’t reject you,
I won’t condemn you,
That is what the cross is for,
So you can come to me,
Humble yourself, receive, receive,
Can you believe?
In the midst of your worst failure and sin,
Run to Me!
He said Grace, Grace
This encounter ended the deadly habit I had of condemning (beating myself up) and hiding from God when I failed. From that moment forward, I learned to immediately receive his forgiveness, for He made it very clear that it caused Him much grief when I rejected the cross. He also made it crystal clear that if I would not run to Him, I would never make it back-because His power was the only thing that could help me.
May we all avail ourselves of this great grace in which we stand, believing on His sacrifice to cover our sins, and believing on His power to work in us that which we cannot do ourselves (which is everything that is good!) Anyone can clean the outside of the cup, but only God can make our hearts like His. We wait for His righteousness, not our own, and that comes by faith! Amen!
Update: I went on a prayer walk and received more on this. It was like the Lord was saying I died to give you my life. I had to die so that I could give you myself, my life. I received Phil 3:8 and was struck by this commentary essentially saying the same thing:
The ‘gain’ is of course the opposite of the ‘loss.’ His balance-sheet has on one side ‘all things lost,’ on the other ‘Christ gained,’ and that is profitable trading. But we have to go deeper than such a metaphor, and to give full scope to the Scriptural truth, that Christ really imparts Himself to the believing soul. There is a real communication of His own life to us, and thereby we live, as He Himself declared, ‘He that hath the Son hath life.’ The true deep sense in which we possess Christ is not to be weakened down, as it, alas! so often is in our shallow Christianity, which is but the echo of a shallow experience, and a feeble hold of that possession of the Son to which Jesus called us, as the condition of our possession of life. Christ is thus Himself possessed by all our faculties, each after its kind; head and heart, passions and desires, hopes and longings, may each have Him abiding in them, guiding them with His strong and gentle hand, animating them into nobler life, restraining and controlling, gradually transforming and ultimately conforming them to His own likeness. Till that Divine Indweller enters in, the shrine is empty, and unclean things lurk in its hidden corners. To be a man full summed in all his powers, each of us must ‘gain Christ.’
Lord, expose all wrong beliefs infected by the leaven of man's traditions! Give us eye salve that we ALL may see Father. Amen (again).
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