Growing In Grace

The following are some thoughts I shared in response to a piece I read over at Lydia’s site, you can read it here.

Lydia,

“So yeah getting revelation and all is great, it's the walking out of our life with God day by day, moment by moment, learning to lean and depend on him that can be VERY HARD. Like I said the concept is simple and glorious, freeing and refreshing, but the actual 'doing' of believing to me can be difficult. I'd saying believing is work.......but when we do get to the point of resting, well yes, it is easy.”

From my perspective, I see it not as being ‘mission hard’ or ‘mission difficult’ but actually ‘mission impossible’. Otherwise grace isn’t at all what it truly is.
I have seen and continue to see ever more clearly how His great love for me is allowing me to discover, as our brother Paul said, “There is nothing good in my flesh”. What before was hidden from my understanding was that any so-called goodness that is not a result of His life in me as me is nothing but total depravity. The chip that was embedded in all of mankind as a result of Adam’s sin operates within the knowledge of good and evil. We, in our cleverness (lol), have segregated one from the other, but in fact they are one and the same.

Here’s a thought - imagine Jesus saying this: “Son, if you continue to abide within this relationship I of which I have called you to be a part, get set for a wild ride. I’ve got this incredible “concept” I want to share with you, and as you focus on the concept, you will know the concept and the concept will set you free.”~HA!

I see our loving father using everything that touches our lives to keep us in a place whereby grace, along with any thing dealing with our continued growth in Him, will become a continual impartation rather than burdensome information!
I love it this verse from James where our Father is directing us, “With meekness [to] receive the engrafted word of God wherein it will continue to save your soul.”

Our brother Paul (who in my opinion was walking experientially in a wonderful measure of grace) beseeched his Father to remove his ‘thorn in the flesh’. It was within the context of this situation that he discovered a whole new dimension of grace of which he previously had no comprehension:
Because of the extravagance of those revelations, and so I wouldn't get a big head, I was given the gift of a handicap to keep me in constant touch with my limitations. Satan's angel did his best to get me down; what he in fact did was push me to my knees. No danger then of walking around high and mighty! At first I didn't think of it as a gift, and begged God to remove it. Three times I did that, and then he told me,

My grace is enough; it's all you need.
My strength comes into its own in your weakness.
Once I heard that, I was glad to let it happen. I quit focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ's strength moving in on my weakness. Now I take limitations in stride, and with good cheer, these limitations that cut me down to size—abuse, accidents, opposition, bad breaks. I just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become.

Trust me, what was made known to Paul was much more than conceptual information. It was an impartation, and that impartation is, in my opinion, all part of our birthright.

Many want to “get it” from their heads into their hearts, the reality that is ours in Christ, thing is, it’s completely the opposite. It says the (knowledge) love of God has been shed abroad within our hearts already, but, that is being translated into the warp and woof of our being, i.e. our soul, Christ being fully formed, established in us as us.
This process does not take place without it being contested on every turn, sort of reminds me of the promised land being entered into by the second generation of those led out of Egypt, only to discover within this idyllic piece of real-estate that was theirs, it was occupied by squatters unwilling to be evicted by the owners!

Rich