The Grace Path

Grace is a wonder. God is the Author of all grace.....I Peter 5:10. Grace is huge. At the end of nearly every letter written to the churches of the New Testament, the writers wrote of grace to the readers. "Grace be with you all," "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all," and my favorite, "But grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." (II Peter 3:18) 

But, how do we grow in grace? How do we access grace in our lives? How can we know we have grace?

There is a path to grace. For the sake of time and space limitations, I've summarized the path of grace into three steps. These are not steps you can take for a result, they are steps that God has already put in place and that He takes in your life. Grace is His. 

The steps of grace:

Learn > Desire > Action

First, we learn of grace.....meaning we learn of Him, our Savior Christ. In Matthew 11:29, Christ says, "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of (from) me..."  Step one: we learn from Him. Since He is the Author of grace, there is no better teacher of grace! 

Learning from Him and about Him has remarkable results. Just simply learning of Him changes our lives. This change can barely be defined as we go about our lives. We don't really see it happening, but one day, as we are going about our lives, we find old desires slowly being replaced by new ones. 

This is grace at work. 

This is God's work in your life. 

You did not create these changes by your strict obedience or anything else.

It is God. Even the very desire to learn of Him comes from Him. 

One day, you notice that your desires are filtered through God's Word, a system of thinking that you have never experienced before. You begin to change. 

This is grace at work.

It is God.

This change taking place in you has a mysterious focus. Suddenly, you want to tell others about your Jesus. You find yourself motivated to look for opportunities to share His love and grace with others. This leads to teaching, serving, prayer and a host of other actions. 

Service = a sign of grace at work in your life.

God's grace. Grace at work.

Philippians 2:13, "For it is God that works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure."

God works IN you. 

My husband once said......"We are totally saved by grace, while totally depraved." I added, "In need of total grace."  

Totally saved while totally depraved in need of total grace.

It is God. 

Learn of Him.

Your desire to serve Him comes from that learning.

You will become driven to action by that desire.

Grace be to you.

~Tricia

Standing Up for Truth

I know that "Truth" is subjective IN THIS WORLD.  However, Truth is NOT subjective.  Today, I stood up for Truth in a way that I had not planned.

There was an online sale. The sale site crashed from lack of servers compared to the number of shoppers.  A few people in my contact group mentioned that the sale site had crashed.  NO ONE complained; they just mentioned that the site was down; had crashed.

So....one of the leaders within the group sent a message to everyone that basically told all that, compared to the hurricane or fire victims, this is nothing and that maybe instead of shopping the sale, we should give our money to those victims.

I immediately recognized this as spiritual abuse and spoke out against it right away.  This resulted not only in me being publicly criticized, but in the removal of any opportunity to say more on that particular forum, which led to no opportunity to defend myself against public criticism.  That amounts to cowardice.

This forum I'm talking about is for a direct sales company that claims to be "faith-based," which is one of the reasons I spent my money on them one day, instead of giving it to hurricane victims, and joined by buying their starter kit and becoming a consultant.  I've had a few conflicts since I joined.  One unit meeting held women drinking wine and using foul language - then driving home after filling up on wine.  When I spoke to that leader, she told me I didn't have to go to her meetings.  Ok, that's for sure!  I can't approve or support drinking and driving anyway, so I was glad to be rid of that group.

Other conflicts are internal.  All the training we get is geared toward sales, of course, as it should be, but its disguised as "relationship building."  It doesn't really seem like relationship building when I'm building a relationship with someone so that they'll buy something.  I'm sure not all direct sales people feel this way, but that's what all the training I've received points to.

So, I have a constant, internal conflict.  When I meet people, I want to share the Gospel with them, not sell them tote bags and purses.  But, if I share the Gospel with them, then any opportunity to sell totes is then a conflict of interest.  Do I want them to look stylish and have the latest things?  Of course!  But, do I want them wearing that stylish bag to Hell?  Uh, no.  Do I want to contribute to the family income?  Of course!  Do I want to compromise the work of the Gospel in my husband's ministry?  No way!

I'm sure there's a solution to this, but, for now, I will keep my resolve to stand up against spiritual abuse every single time, without hesitation and without fail, even if that means I don't sell another tote bag ever!  This latest conflict over me doing the right thing even when/if someone else - with power to remove my voice - does not agree, is only the latest in a string of conflicts in this world for me.  The abuser keeps her voice in all this.  No disagreement with her was expressed except by me.

~Tricia