Experiencing Grace

The last week of our "Set Free" theme on project was Experiencing Grace. Yet again, the Lord blew me away with truth I never expected to hear.
The week before, I had just learned that I can't depend on my feelings when it comes to God's forgiveness. Experiencing grace week was just perfect, because it was like the Lord was saying, "You've learned that basic truth, now lets learn more so I can show you how much you've been missing out on."

It's not a surprise to God that we are sinful. He knew we would be, and he created us anyway. Why? So we could experience his immeasurable grace.

By nature, we are children of wrath. We deserve wrath for our inborn sin. Ephesians 2:5 talks about how we were dead in our transgressions. This is our character. This is what we're born with.

God's character is one of abounding grace, kindness, love, power, and many more adjectives than can even be counted. He is perfect and sinless and beautiful. So why in the world would he want to have anything to do with such imperfect and sinful people?

That's another part of God's character: he loves us. He created us and wants to be with us. Our sin separates us from him. There's this huge gulf that nothing we could ever do could bridge, because we're imperfect and we will always sin.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ--by grace you have been saved--and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

These verses from Ephesians 2 explain why we get to be with God. God is rich in mercy and loves us so much that he sent his son to die, to take our place, to take the wrath we deserve. Jesus lived a perfect life that did not deserve wrath, but took all of the wrath we could ever rack up, past, present, and future, so that we could have a chance to live in the perfection of God. He bridged that gap between us. By God's grace we are able to live forever with him in heaven. How freakin cool is that?

This is something that I shared with people who do not know God every week. But to hear it for myself was for some silly reason different. Sometimes I forget that I need the Gospel every day too. It's not just for people who don't know God. Since God loves me so much, all of my sins are forgiven. Not just some, or the ones I think are smaller than others, but ALL of them. And by God's grace I am made new and redeemed. My favorite verse this summer was 2 Corinthians 5:17:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away, behold, the new has come. 

If I've accepted Christ as my savior, and recognized what he's done for me, I am a new creation. I can't be held down by any sin I've ever done or will do. God has seated me with Christ, and nothing can change that.

Honestly, there is no sweeter truth.