Grace |

I can’t believe that just one week ago I had the pleasure of the company of 453 of my closest blogging friends at Allume. I’m sorry if you’re tired of hearing about it, but I don’t think it’s going to wear off any time soon. 🙂

Anyway, it’s Five Minute Friday (or Saturday for some of us) and time to write with my bravest writer voice along with the crowd at http://www.lisajobaker.com. All the details are right there if you want to play along. And now….GRACE:

One of my favorite speakers last weekend said that legalism used to be a list of “don’t do’s” that you had to conform to if you wanted to be a “good” Christian, and now it’s more a list of “do’s” that you’re expected to follow, but the truth is that neither of those is a true barometer of your inner spirituality. Because…grace.

I find that we are much freer with grace when it applies to other people than we are to ourselves. At least sometimes we are. My 9 year old daughter has been known to tell me out loud to give grace to some other driver who just cut me off in traffic. My 4th grader, y’all. Where does she get this stuff?

But it’s usually true, isn’t it? We smile anyway when someone hurts our feelings, because…grace. We love on our kids even when one of them has forgotten to take the trash out two days in a row, because…grace. We continue to love and follow a friend on social media even when we feel a little slighted because while we’re close online, we never got to speak when we were in the same room at a conference (this did not happen to me, FYI), because….grace.

And then we want to throw the book at ourselves every single time we trip and fall. The words from our own minds condemn and shame us when we yell at our children. When we fail to stop and give money to someone holding a sign on the interstate exit. When we sleep in instead of getting up to read the Word. But grace is the hand that reaches down to pull us back up to our feet so we can keep on walking in the light.

Grace is not a get-out-of-jail free card by any means. If you are a Believer, the Holy Spirit will let you know when you’ve sinned, and you’ll feel remorse and repentance. But grace means that you don’t beat yourself up every time that happens. It means you remind yourself that God alone can judge and that He loves all His children, from the lowest of the low to the highest of the high, and nothing, nothing, you do can change His love for you.

(Once again, I find I could write for hours on this subject when I didn’t think I had five minutes in me. Now it’s your turn: give us your best five minutes on Grace.)