Y’all probably know by now that I tend to struggle with perfectionism. With perfectionism, comes a viewpoint that makes grace incredibly hard to understand. I think as humans, grace is a hard concept in and of itself. Most situations we encounter in life are performance based and there is no grace if you mess up. Perfectionism doesn’t exactly help this already difficult topic to get any easier.
So, I was sitting in my college dorm room a month or two ago, and doing what I tend to do often, go through the motions of perfectionism, guilt, fear, etc…Then, I had this thought that I believe the Lord shared with me.
God does not base the grace He gives us on a scale. He doesn’t look at the entire week, and go, “Well, Monday through Wednesday you really screwed up, so when Saturday comes, there’s no grace for you.”
I don’t know if anyone else does this, but I usually think about the grace that God might give me in terms of everything I’ve already done that week.
I messed up on this too many times this week.
I haven’t spent time with God in several days, but now I really can’t cause I have an exam to study for – cue guilt.
Does this sound familiar to y’all? Do any of you find yourselves doing the same thing?
“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness,” ~ Lamentations 3:22-23
For me, realizing this, gave an entirely new meaning to the verse, “his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning.” Not only are His mercies new every day, but He is not judging us on all of our actions in order to determine whether or not He should give us grace.
Is anyone else’s mind exploding? Cause mine definitely is.
As believers, with the Holy Spirit living in us, we are heirs in grace. Grace is the birth certificate, the blood of Jesus is the writing, the Holy Spirit is the identification.
“But he gives more grace,” ~ James 4:6a
And then in James, He expands on the concept of grace. Not only does He give us perfect grace, but He gives more grace. When we think that surely we have exhausted the supply of grace, that God cannot possibly want to extend further grace to us, the Bible clarifies that nope, God actually loves to extend grace to His children.
I love this quote from Dwight L. Moody:
“We must not limit the mighty grace of God.”
How true is this? It can be so easy to carry guilt for things that we should not feel guilty for, or if we should feel guilty, then instead of freeing ourselves from that guilt after repenting, we continue to hold it close – telling ourselves, that Jesus could not really mean that we receive grace for that.
“And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace,” ~ John 1:16
But wait. There it is again – more grace. Grace upon grace.
Grace.
Such a simple word, but so difficult to wrap our minds around. I don’t know if we will ever understand grace or how deep it goes on this earth, yet I do think that as we grow in our faith, we will be able to better grasp a tiny portion of the truth, strength, and expansiveness of God’s grace.
~ Southern Dreamer
