Seeking Him - Week 5: Grace: God's Provision for Every Need

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Grace: Apply Liberally

Nancy: Let me just introduce us to the subject of grace—God’s grace—by reading an extended passage in Ephesians chapter 2—the first part of that chapter. I had my notes all set to go this morning, and as I went back to them, I thought, I just want to read a chunk of Scripture to start off this session. I’ll wash us with the water of the Word and give you a sense of the context for the grace of God and why it is such incredibly wonderful news.

Then we’ll talk about: What do we need God’s grace for? What is God’s grace? Why do we need it? And how do we get more of it in our lives? 

Ephesians chapter 2, verse 1: The apostle Paul says, “And you were dead.”

Now, dead is dead. Dead people can’t do anything. They can’t move. They can’t breathe. They can’t go to church. They can’t be good Christians. They can’t be bad Christians. They just can’t do anything.

“You were dead.” And not just physically dead, but “you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked.” That is dead-dead. That’s a problem. You were a prisoner. You were a slave. You had no life. You were dead in trespasses and sins. You were a walking dead person.

You once walked in those following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived [all of us were there! We lived] in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind (vv. 1–3).

Talk about a negative diagnosis! And some of you are thinking, I thought you were going to make us feel better today. You’re making us feel worse! The best is yet to come. You were dead. You were—this is past tense. And there was a whole conspiracy here. You walked in these things. The world led you this way. Satan led you this way. Other people—the sons of disobedience—walked this way. Our flesh made us walk this way. Our desires of our mind and our body . . . I mean, the world, the flesh, the devil, everything was cooperating to contribute to our being lifeless—dead in trespasses and sins.

What a place to be! There’s no hope. We never could have redeemed ourselves. We never could have rescued ourselves. We never could have saved ourselves. We never could have reached out to God. We never could have sought Him because we were dead. Right?

But—verse 4—I love this paragraph! “But God.” God was not dead. God is not dead. And He came to us when we were dead, and we could not help ourselves.

“But God, being rich in mercy.” All those things we just read about how we walked in the passions of our flesh, the sons of disobedience following the course of this world. We needed mercy, and God is rich in mercy. And He came to us.

God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, [let you forget what you just read—you were dead. Dead in sin. God] made us alive together with Christ—[now here’s that word] by grace you have been saved [through faith]—and he raised us up with him [with Christ] and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith (vv. 4–8).

I tell you, grace isn’t precious until you see what God has saved you from. Like, people say, “I just want the God of the New Testament. He’s a God of mercy and grace, and that’s the God I want. I don’t want the God of the Old Testament. He’s always harsh. He’s killing people. He’s just. He’s a God of wrath.”

Listen, the grace of God will not be precious to you until you have experienced His wrath, His judgment, and what it means to be dead in your trespasses and sins. So you read through the Old Testament, and you see people trying like crazy to obey God, but they can’t because they’re dead. They break the law because they are lawbreakers from birth. And so you get to the end of the Old Testament, and the last verse in Malachi brings a curse on all the peoples of the earth because they’re all lawbreakers.

And then you get to Matthew chapter 1, verse 1, “The gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of David,” and you go, “Yes! I needed some good news right now!” It’s the good news of His saving grace.

Well, verse 8, 

And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, [What is the gift of God? It’s grace! It’s] not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them (vv. 8–10).

There’s that word again. We were walking in our own ways—the ways of this world, the ways of Satan, the ways of the sons of disobedience—and we were objects of God’s wrath. Now we are new people. We have been saved. We have been redeemed. We have been made alive. We have been raised, seated with Christ in the heavenly places. And we’re created for good works which—that was in eternity past, but we never could walk in them because we were what? We were dead! Now we are alive, and we can walk in those works God created us for.

I would like to see you get really excited about God’s grace over these next few moments, if you aren’t already. We’re celebrating that. The word grace is used 123 times in the New Testament.

2 Corinthians 9 talks about “the surpassing (the exceeding) grace of God” (v. 14).

1 Peter 4 talks about “God’s varied, manifold grace” (v. 10). We’re going to look at what some of the varieties are of His grace.

2 Corinthians 9 tells us “God is able to make all grace abound to you” (v.8). God is not stingy with His grace. Aren’t you glad?

1 Peter 5, verse 10, He is called the “God of all grace” (v. 10).

Grace. Grace. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound! It’s a gift from God. We don’t deserve it. We can’t earn it. It’s given to those who are helpless, those who have no means of making it apart from God reaching down to rescue them.

God’s grace is what gives us the supernatural desire and the power to walk with God. Sometimes you want to walk with God, but you say, “I can’t.” Or maybe you could, but if you didn’t want to, it wouldn’t matter.

God’s grace is that supernatural life of Jesus within us that gives us the desire and the power to walk with God, to trust Him, to obey Him, to love Him, to serve Him and to love and serve others. It’s enabling us to do what God has made us to do and called us to do. God says He blesses obedience, but we can’t obey Him without grace. Right?

You need God’s grace for everything in your life, and I mean everything. I do, too.

• It’s impossible to become a child of God apart from the grace of God.
• It’s impossible to live the Christian life apart from the grace of God.
• It’s impossible to overcome sin in your life apart from the grace of God.
• It’s impossible to serve God or to do those good works He made us for apart from the enabling power of His grace.

So I want to talk today about a few of those varieties, those varied, manifold graces of God. We referenced already the first one, which is God’s grace for salvation—God’s saving grace. That’s our conversion. We read this in Ephesians chapter 2. How can we have a relationship with God?

Now here there’s such a difference, a world of difference, between what Scripture teaches us about how people can be made right with God, between what Scripture teaches and what every other religion in the world teaches. The contrast is huge!

Religion says that man is basically good. He’s able to please God if he just tries.
Scripture says that man is basically sinful. He cannot please God. He is helpless to please God no matter how hard he tries. Why? Because he is dead in trespasses and sins.

Religion says, “Trust yourself. Trust your own works.” And I don’t care what religion you’re talking about, it comes down to this anti-grace way of thinking—that’s what religion is. Religion says you’re dependent on your own effort, self-reliant.

Scripture says, “You don’t trust yourself. You will die if you do. You trust Christ. You don’t trust your own works. You trust His work. You don’t trust what you’ve done. You trust what He has done on the cross.” Scripture says that we are dependent on the grace of God, His efforts, His action on our behalf.

Religion talks about man’s effort to earn salvation as a reward for his behavior, for his good works.

But God’s grace poured out to us, His saving grace, is based on the death of Jesus Christ. He redeems and saves all those who believe in Him—not because of what they have done but because of what He has done.

Religion makes us dependent on our own merits.
Grace puts us in total dependence on the merit of Christ.

Religion leads to condemnation.
God’s grace leads to forgiveness.

Religion leads to death.
God’s grace leads to life.

Religion leads to more sinning.
God’s grace leads us to be able to live righteousness lives.

Religion leads us to boasting. “Here’s what I did. How good I am.”
God’s grace leads us to humility. “I had nothing to do with this—no say in this. I could not have saved myself.”

Now, I want to suggest, as we look at these kinds of grace—first, God’s saving grace, and then these other kinds of grace—that in your life you will always be going either to Mt. Sinai or Mt. Calvary—two very important places in the Scripture. Mt. Sinai is in the Old Testament. What happened at Mt. Sinai? The law was given. The law condemns because we cannot keep the law. Mt. Calvary is where? What was given? The grace of God.

John 1:17 says, “The law was given through Moses; (that happened at Mt. Sinai) but grace and truth came through Jesus.”

In your life you will always be trekking to Mt. Sinai, where the law was given, or to Mt. Calvary, where grace was given. I want to show you how that works.

First of all, for salvation—we just talked about that. If you’re going to go the religious way, you’re going to go to Mt. Sinai, and you’re going to try to perform and be good enough for God to accept you. It will lead to death. It will lead to condemnation because you can’t be good enough. The soul that sins, it will die.

God said at Mt. Sinai that anybody who touches this mountain will die because God is holy, and we are sinful. You go to Mt. Sinai, you will die.

You go to Mt. Calvary for salvation, you’ll say, “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to Thy grace I cling. I have nothing good that I’ve done, nothing I could offer You. I rely totally on Your grace to save me.”

If you’ve never been to Calvary for salvation, then maybe God is calling you today to come to Him. Stop trying to lean on your own efforts, your own religion, your own good works, and say, “Jesus, I need You. I’m going to cling to You and Your grace. I could not save myself, but thank You for dying for my sin. I receive Your grace.”

Now, as we’ve said, God’s grace is varied. It shows up in many shapes and forms in our lives. We need it, not just for salvation, but we also need it for sanctification. We need it, not just for conversion, but when God convicts us of sin as believers to grow spiritually, to become more like Jesus.

I received an email from a listener who said, “I have an active prayer life. I listen to the radio, study my Bible, attend church, serve, and give to others. Yet, I have a huge burden of guilt that I can never be enough, look enough, feel enough, believe enough in God. I feel like I will never, ever be able to do enough or love enough or be enough to please God, that I will not ever be able to measure up.”

Are there some of you who have felt that way? Maybe you don’t even want to raise your hand, to say, “I’m one of those people,” but I’ve met a lot of people like this. And all of us have moments where we’re trying. We’re struggling. We’re trying to be the Christian we know God wants us to be, and we do all this stuff, but we just feel like, “I can’t measure up!”

Here’s the thing: When it comes to your Christian life, your Christian growth, your transformation into the likeness of Jesus, your dealing with sin, you’re either running to Mt. Sinai, or you’re running to Mt. Calvary.

If you run to Mt. Sinai, you’re responding in pride. And what are you going to do when God convicts you of sin, this sin habit in your life or this attitude that is not pleasing to Him? 

If you’re convicted of sin, if you’re going to Mt. Sinai, you’re going to:

• defend yourself 
• justify yourself 
• blame someone else 
• rationalize your sin 
• cover up 

These are all responses of pride, and the law kills. It condemns.

Instead of blaming, rationalizing, and defending, maybe you’re just going to have more self-effort, more struggle. You’re going to be like one of these “Avis” Christians—“We try harder.” (laughter) You’re going to try harder. “I’m going to be a good Christian if it kills me!” It might. You go to Mt. Sinai, that’s a place of death.

And what happens when you respond in pride? What does God do to the proud? He resists them. He opposes them. Right? And when God resists you, you have no grace to obey God. So you can’t change, and so you disobey Him. And then you have more guilt, more condemnation, more fear, more bondage, more death.

Or you just try and cover it up, and you become a modern-day Pharisee—acting, a hypocrite. That’s what happens if you go to Mt. Sinai. That’s the pathway of pride when God convicts you of sin in your life.

Now, if you take the pathway of humility, you’re going to Mt. Calvary. Instead of defending or rationalizing or blaming your sin, instead of just trying harder, you agree with God. You humble yourself. You say, “Lord, You’re right. I’m wrong.” You confess your sin, and God gives you His grace.

What does God do to the humble? He pours grace on them! And so if God gives you His grace, what does God’s grace do for you? It gives you the desire and the power to do what you could not do yourself, which is obey God. It’s dealing with sin in a way of humility, going to Mt. Calvary to get grace, and then you obey God, and obedience brings blessings, and eventually you are conformed into the likeness of Jesus.

Now, it doesn’t happen in ninety seconds like I just said it. It’s again and again and again. Every time God speaks to me about an issue in my life, about a sin in my life, I have a choice” 

• Am I going to respond in pride—Mt. Sinai? Or am I going to respond in humility—Mt. Calvary? 
• Am I going to the law? Or am I going to grace? 
• Am I going to get condemned? Or am I going to get life? 

It starts with how we respond to that conviction.

John Piper says it this way: “Grace is not simply leniency when we have sinned. Grace is the enabling gift of God not to sin. Grace is power, not just pardon.”

Saving grace gives us pardon. Sanctifying grace gives us the power to live a Christian life. We couldn’t get saved by ourselves. A lot of people understand that, but then they think, Now I’ve got to live the Christian life. I knew I couldn’t get saved by struggling and striving and trying harder, but now I think I’ve got to struggle and strive and try harder to be this good Christian.

No! You were saved by grace, and you live by grace. As a Christian, you walk by grace. You couldn’t get saved on your own merits or efforts. You can’t live the Christian life, you can’t deal with sin on your own efforts or merits. It’s all, all, all of grace. The law came by Moses—Mt. Sinai. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

Well, saving grace, sanctifying grace, and then God gives another kind of grace—that’s grace for suffering—grace for suffering. Not just dealing with our conversion, not just dealing with conviction of sin, but also dealing with circumstances that come into our lives over which we have no control.

God uses circumstances in our lives to make us see how much we need Him. And what do you hear me say all the time? “Anything that makes me need God is a blessing.” Those circumstances, if they’re beyond my ability to manage or control, they make me dependent on His grace.

A lot of times when we do conferences, I will pray in the week leading up to the conference for the women who are going to be attending. I’ll say, “Lord, would You create circumstances in the lives of these women—I don’t know who they are, but You know. Would You create circumstances while they’re at home this week or at work, wherever they are, would You create circumstances that would make them realize how desperately they need You, and then bring them to this event already aware of their need?

Now, when I tell the women that, sometimes the first night of the conference, I say, “Don’t you blame me for what happened in your life this week. (laughter) Everything fell apart. No, this was God loving you enough to make you see how much you need Him.”

When you face difficult circumstances, pain, suffering, affliction, struggles, again, you will either run to Mt Sinai or you will run to Mt Calvary. You will run to the law, or you’ll run to grace. You will respond in pride, or you will respond in humility.

If you respond in pride, you will do what a two-year-old does when you try to show him or her how to tie their shoes. “No! Me do it! Me do it! Me do it! No! Me do it! No! You no do it! Me do it!”

That’s what Christians say when they’re living in the law rather than grace. “I can handle this. I can handle this. I can handle this.” And sometimes I wonder if God doesn’t say, “Okay, if you want to try, go ahead.”

Pride leads us with God resisting us. Right? Self-effort. Or we resent, we resist, or we run from the circumstances God has created in our lives. We become bitter. God resists, and we don’t have any grace to deal with that hard circumstance.

If you go to Mt. Calvary when you face those hard circumstances, you will humble yourself. You will say, “Lord, I can’t do this. I need You.” I think those are some of the sweetest words God can ever hear from the hearts and lips of Christians, His children. “God, I can’t do this. I need You.” 

Acknowledge my need. Cry out to God for grace. And what do we do when we humble ourselves? God gives grace, the desire and the power to please Him.

I’ve heard it said that God’s grace is kind of like an ambulance. I don’t call an ambulance to my house if I’m just having a nice day and everything’s going swimmingly fine. Why would I call for the ambulance? 

When do you call for the ambulance? When you’re in trouble. When you’ve got a crisis, you need the ambulance. And when you call that number, 9-1-1. You say, “I need an ambulance.” I can’t do the siren sound, but it starts to go off, and it comes racing to the scene of need.

I picture God’s grace like a great big ambulance from heaven, His grace ambulance. He’s up in heaven. He hears us cry out, “Lord, I can’t do this. Help! I need You.” And there go the sirens, and here comes the ambulance, bringing God’s grace, racing to the scene of need.

Listen, God has grace for every circumstance you will ever face in your life. He gives grace for this moment in your life. Tomorrow He will give you grace for whatever is in that moment. He’s not going to give you tomorrow’s grace today. You’ve got grace for this moment.

I’ve got friends who need God’s grace desperately right now. I have a sweet friend who buried her husband of sixty-some years this morning. She needs God’s grace.

I have another friend who’s struggling with a deep sense of brokenness after recently exposing years of sexual abuse. She needs God’s grace.

I have another friend whose daughter is in a treatment program for severe OCD. That mom, that young adult daughter needs God’s grace right now.

I need grace every day of my life in a thousand different ways.

I need grace to stay out of the kitchen late at night when I’m not hungry. (laughter) Apparently some of you do, too. (more laughter)

I need grace to be more concerned about my husband’s needs than I am about my own.

I need grace to respond graciously and humbly to critics.

I need grace for book deadlines, and recording deadlines, and tough decisions in the ministry.

I need grace for getting older and for the challenges—the new challenges—of being in my sixties. Now, I had challenges in my fifties, and in my forties, and in my thirties, and in my twenties, and in my teens—I would not want those challenges again! I cried the whole year I was fourteen, for no reason at all. (laughter)

But God has grace, tailor-made grace, for me, for this season of my life. There are some things that aren’t working quite the same. There’s some things that are way better and that are really way more fun, but there are some things that are harder. And I see some who need grace for the next decade. I don’t know if we have any octogenarians in here, but when we get there, we will have grace for that.

You need God’s grace for everything in your life—for responding to hurt and misunderstanding, for being wronged, when you have failed, when you’re tempted, when you’ve experienced loss or grief or heartaches or hardships.

What do you need God’s grace for? Everything!

You need saving grace.

You need sanctifying grace to deliver you from the power of sin.

You need suffering grace for circumstances that are beyond your control.

And we didn’t even get to this one, but we also need serving grace—grace to serve others. His divine enabling. He wants us to become channels of His grace, not just containers of His grace.

So you say, “I can’t do this! I can’t deal with this physical illness or weakness any longer. I can’t overcome this addiction. I can’t handle this kid. I can’t love this husband. I can’t bear not having a husband. I can’t do this job He’s given me to do. I can’t do this ministry that He’s called me to.”

You’re right – you can’t! And the sooner you acknowledge that, that’s half the battle, to say, “I can’t!” The problem is so many times we stop there instead of realizing that the next step is to say, “But He can!” He can! And He’s made a provision for whatever you need in this moment, and it’s called G-R-A-C-E—Grace, grace, God’s grace—amazing grace!!

You will never face a situation for which God’s grace is not more than enough. Your need, your failure, your weakness will never exceed His grace because “where sin did abound, grace did much more abound!”

Paul said, in his weakness, to God, “Please take this problem away!”

God, “My grace is sufficient for you!”

So I want to encourage you right now and again tomorrow and again the next day, fill in this sentence: “I need God’s grace today for ____ ” Everything! The need—what are the things that you in your heart that you need each day with the Lord—“I need God’s grace for _______.” What is it in that moment?

Then counsel your heart according to truth. Say, “Lord, thank You that anything that makes me need You is a blessing and that Your grace is sufficient for me for this moment. Now, you may not feel that, but as you counsel your heart according to truth, faith will spring up within you.

And as you humble yourself and say, “Lord, I need You.” God will pour grace into your life, and you’ll find “He helped me do this. He did this in me. He did it for me. He gave me the desire. He helped me overcome this sin. He helped me say no to that temptation. He helped me get through this impossible situation I couldn’t get through.”

Or you may not see the outcome, but you’ll know by faith that in God’s way and in God’s time it’s coming. And in the meantime, if you keep suffering, God’s grace will be more than all that you need.

Grace, grace, amazing grace. Oh how we thank You for it, Lord. I’m just loving hearing the sound of that word! Whew! Where would we be without it? Thank You that You pour grace on the humble.

So that’s why we had to talk about humility before we got to grace, honesty before we got to grace, repentance before we got to grace, and now we see that the things that were making us feel heavy and vulnerable and hard, they were just pointing us to Your grace.

May we not run to Mt. Sinai, but may we run day after day after day to Mt. Calvary where grace was poured out for sinners like me and like my sisters in this room.

So for that grace, we give You thanks, in Jesus’ name, amen.