Amazing Grace

  This summer on the canoe trip one of the staff members made a comment along these lines: "What I’ve noticed is that people who have grown up in a Christian home don’t see the grace of God very easily.  Because I have a ‘testimony’, I am very aware of God’s grace."  Very true.

  I am definitely of the ‘Christian home’ variety who has not only taken grace forgranted but for the most part not understood it; knowing that grace is "getting what we don’t deserve" but not knowing experientially why I didn’t deserve it.  By God’s grace, He has been teaching me day by day to see His grace not just through theological eyes, but also to be awed by it and thankful for it.

  First off, I have learned that the gospel can be summed up into two sentences:

1.  I am a great sinner

2.  Jesus is a great Saviour

  It is impossible to appreciate the second without understanding the former.  I have written a blog about sin previously (January 4) but this quote from The Valley of Vision in a prayer entitled "Self-Knowledge" words it well.  "I have cause to loathe myself, and not to seek self-honour, for no one desires to commend his own dunghill."  God has been abundantly gracious to me in the way He has worked in my life.  I honestly do not remember a day without Christ.  Paul said in Philippians 3 that he had a lot of reasons to boast.  So do I.  I grew up in a Christian home, go to church and went to a Christian school, never committed any ‘major sins’ and have always been zealous for God.  That is the grace of God active in my life BUT because that is how He has chosen to work in my life, it is incredibly easy to miss His grace, to pass over it, to think it’s because I’M so good.  No matter what my situation or reputation, God is showing me more clearly all the time that I am indeed a great sinner.  Every day, every hour, every moment.

  Which would be depressing if not for the second sentence.  Hallelujah!  I have a great Saviour!  I say with Paul, "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!"