GOD IS THE GOD GRACE.

DAILY DEVOTION.

DAY SIXTEEN.

EPHESIANS 2:8.     For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God.
This verse shows us that we are saved by grace, that as we put our faith in Christ we are saved, that it is a gift from God, so if it is a gift, can we earn it? The next verse says that we can not earn it through our works, because if we could it would give us the opportunity to boast in our achievements. So what is grace? Grace is God's favor, we can't earn it; it is the act of the holy Spirit drawing us to God, The word tells us that God desires all men to be saved and come to know the truth, Jesus said that He is the way, the truth and the life. When we hear the gospel the Holy Spirit speaks to our heart, faith is stirred within us and the Holy Spirit draws us to Christ, who is our salvation. There is absolutely nothing we can do to earn it, let's face it, when most of us were saved we certainly weren't trying to please God, we were out there living our own lives, doing our own thing. So is grace a new thing, or is God a God of grace?  Many believe that grace is only a new testament thing, The usual context is, "We are no longer under the law, we are now saved by grace" Let us have a look at this, I believe that if we know the truth about grace we can have a greater understanding of the nature and love of God.  Psalm 84;11 For the Lord is a sun and shield; The Lord will give grace and glory; no good thing will he withhold from those who walk uprightly. This verse shows that God is their light and their protection and that He has given them grace and as they walk in it and walk uprightly or in moral integrity God will not withhold His favor from them. Again in Psalm 103;8 it say that the Lord is merciful and gracious, Slow to anger and abounding in mercy. God does not deal with us as we deserve, He didn't deal with the children of Israel as they deserved. The word gracious means to treat with kindness. So we see from these verses that God has always been a gracious God, one prepared to show mercy and to treat His children with kindness despite their failures. The truth is that the law was never given to make men righteous, Paul said that if anyone could be made righteous through the law, then Christ died in vain. The law was given as a teacher to bring people to the promised Messiah, who was Jesus. Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. Abraham walked in God's unearned favor, Jesus said of Abraham, "Abraham say My day and he rejoiced" So then does grace mean that we don't have to do anything? We know that when we come to Christ and are born again we now have the Holy Spirit living in us, the Bible tells us that we are God's temple, that His Spirit dwells in us. In Zechariah 12;10 it says that Holy Spirit is the Spirit of grace, and in Hebrews 10;29 the Holy Spirit is again referred to as the Spirit of Grace. So we have the very grace of God living on the inside of us. So now that we know this, how does that effect our lives? can we just go about living our lives as we please, or are we expected to do anything as Christians? Jesus gives us a few clues on this, In John 15 He was talking about how He is the vine and that we need to be abiding in the vine and that we are expected to bear fruit, if we don't then we will be cut off and discarded, He tells us in that passage that the key to remaining in the vine is to walk in His love and to walk in obedience to His commandments, but hang on, aren't the commandments part of the law, and we are no longer under the law? The commandments are fulfilled as we walk in love for God and in love for our neighbors, We demonstrate our love for God as we walk in obedience to His will and purpose for our lives and as we serve our neighbors in love. Jesus also warned us that it is only those who do the will of the Father that will inherit the kingdom of God. So how does the Holy Spirit come into this? Firstly Jesus said that it is the Holy Spirit that will guide us into the truth, So it is only by the grace of God that we can understand the truth of His word, we cannot work it out with our own understanding, Paul said that the natural man or our natural thinking cannot receive the things of the Spirit, it is only by the Holy Spirit that they can be understood. In Galatians 5;25 it says that if we live in the Spirit then we must walk in the Spirit, In Romans 8:14 it says that all those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. So we can see from these two scriptures that we are meant to live our lives led by the Holy Spirit, we are meant to walk in the grace of God. The beautiful side of this and the most powerful aspect of this is that if we walk in the grace of God, in His anointing, in His Spirit we will not fall into sin, Galatians 5:16 says that if we walk in the Spirit we will gratify the lusts of the flesh. But Paul makes an interesting point in Galatians 5:18 He says that if we are being led by the Spirit the we are not under the law, the moment you stop walking in the Spirit you stop walking in the grace of God and you come back under the law. It is important that we understand this because in Romans five Paul says that where sin abounds grace abound all the more, so when temptation comes God's grace, God's anointing is greater, if we will yield to it  we won't fall into temptation. He goes on in chapter six to explain how we have been crucified with Christ, the old man is dead so that sin no longer will have dominion over us, we can now count ourselves dead to sin and alive in Christ, that we can yield our members to Christ as instruments of righteousness because we now are under grace, under his anointing, no longer under the law. Praise God, We serve the God of Grace, He has given us His Spirit, we now have His grace dwelling on the inside of us and that we can live everyday in that anointing, walking in the favor of God, living lives of total obedience to His will and in absolute freedom.