The Grace God Provides for Daily Living
In a fallen world, aren’t you grateful for God’s grace. We need it. With pressures from outside of us and pressures inside of us, we need the steadying, active, enabling grace of God in our lives. The good news is that, in fact, God does provide grace and mercy for us. Mercy means God does not give us what we deserve; instead, God provides us grace, which means He gives us much better than we deserve. God’s grace is grace for you and enables you to live as God intends for you to live. God’s grace is grace unto change. Here’s the scoop regarding the grace God provides for daily living.
The Promises of Grace
When we look through the Scriptures, God makes several promises related to the grace He provides us through Christ. In the moment of salvation, God immediately makes all this grace available to the new person in Christ (cf., 2 Pet 1:2-4). The grace of God rests in the exceedingly great and precious promises provided by our union with Christ. So, what are they?
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God continually works in you (Phil 1:10; Eph 2:10; Phil 2:13)
God began a good work in you at salvation and continues that work every day you live on earth. The work itself completes only after you get to heaven or Jesus comes back. What incredible news and grace! You sin cannot ruin the grace of God included in His plan for you. What God begins – which includes your salvation, God finishes – which includes your glorification someday when you arrive in heaven. Those that are saved are described as God’s creative masterpiece, in whom God continually works. Here is the good news: God continually works in you as a matter of His character, His love, and His commitment to you. Furthermore, your sin cannot circumvent God’s plan or grace.
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God’s grace/mercy is new every morning (Lam 3:22-24).
This truth and these two verses in Lamentations repeatedly rank as some of the most cherished verses in the Bible. Every single morning, God extends His mercies fresh to you. Regardless of what you did yesterday, how you responded to your circumstances, or whatever it was that you pursued, you did not burn out God’s compassion. Instead, His compassion, mercy, and grace are renewed. One of my favorite ways to consider this kind of grace/mercy that is available daily to us is through the story of manna and the children of Israel. Every day, regardless of what God’s children had done the day before, God provided fresh manna in the wilderness. Not so much that they had more than a day’s provision; instead, God provided just enough manna for that particular day. Resting on the new day’s dew, God provided manna fresh every single morning. God provides grace for us, resting on His good character and promise through the Spirit, fresh every single morning.
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God’s grace is up to the challenge (1 Cor 10:13).
Although grace is not specifically mentioned in this verse, I love to have people memorize the simple statement along with this verse, “God’s grace is up to the challenge.” In the text itself, the Apostle Paul teaches anytime we face pressure throughout our day, God limits the pressure in order for us to have the capacity in the Spirit through grace to endure in faithfulness to Christ. Paul emphasizes the fact that God is faithful. God limits. God provides. In other words, the work God does in every one of our pressures to enable us to respond faithfully to Christ is nothing less than His grace to us in those trials. Catch this – in every single one. Regardless of the list of pressures in your life today, God limits those and in grace provides a way for you to remain faithful in them.
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God’s grace includes wisdom and blessing (James 1:2-5, 12).
How can we call God’s work in and through our pressures anything less than God’s grace? He treats us better than we deserve. Most English Bibles use the word trial here to refer to the pressure-filled circumstances in which we find ourselves. Specifically, the text calls them varied. They come in all kinds of shapes and sizes – never just one and never just negative. When these pressures invade our lives (or when we fall into them), whenever we ask, God provides wisdom to help us endure them, and God promises blessings to us when we do. He does not simply provide wisdom; instead, He provides wisdom liberally. In this case, wisdom means we have the capacity in the Spirit to apply the Bible to our daily steps while seeing the path of righteousness ahead of us.
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God provides grace to the humble and ultimately the fruit of righteousness (James 4:6; 1 Pet 5:5-12; Prov 3:34; James 3:17-18).
When you humbly choose to follow God by walking in the Spirit, God provides you grace upon grace. This enabling grace helps you do what is right. While you do what honors God (which is what is right), you can consider that sowing seeds of righteousness, which produces fruit of righteousness. This fruit then produces an entire harvest of righteousness in your life – which includes much peace. The key to enjoying this type of grace that is available to you is humility. Whereas pride keeps you from experiencing this kind of grace, humility guarantees it – not because we have earned it, but because God promises it.
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God’s grace is grace unto change (Titus 2:11-14).
What a wonderful promise to consider that God’s grace is changing grace. It moves us from who we once were and what we once did to who God is making us and where God is taking us. We move from being dominated by and enslaved to unrighteousness and our lusts, to having the opportunity to live self-controlled, righteously, and godly today. Even when it feels like we are stuck on this journey, God continues by His grace to nudge us on to a better place spiritually, emotionally, and ultimately physically. By His grace we belong to His people. We are His children. As such, through grace, we become more and more eager to do good in His name and for His glory.
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God provides grace unto eternal life (Rom 5:1-5, 20-21).
When you humbly come before God and seek His forgiveness of your sins, otherwise known as repentance, then God promises you eternal life through His grace. The Apostle Paul describes us as standing in grace (the Apostle Peter does as well in 1 Pet 5:12). Paul writes, “But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more, so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom 5:20-21).
Three Specific Implications of the Grace God Provides for Daily Living:
- As you desire to honor Christ in your trials and circumstances, God provides grace for every step of the journey. Isn’t that great news? When you want to step out by faith and choose to glorify God in the midst of your pressured circumstances, God provides you grace. He provides grace in the first step and every step thereafter.
- Daily grace ultimately becomes eternal grace. At some point, when you put day after day after day of God’s grace together in your life, it will transition into eternal grace. It may be through death or the return of Jesus Christ, but either way you will experience the eternal grace of God.
- Your sin cannot separate you from the grace of God or the love of God (Rom 8:38-39). I love this one! Your sin cannot outpace the love and grace of God for you in Christ. So, should we be sinning? No. But, when we do, we can have the greatest confidence in the grace brought to us in Christ, motivated by His love.
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