I have had a line from a song running through my head for weeks. "Why are you trying to earn grace?" I had been kind of perplexed as to why this line has been in my head - I mean, I am all about grace. I am all about so totally knowing that I can do Nothing to earn it. Have always thought of myself as someone who is never really going to struggle with works as a way to salvation. And while, yes, you're probably not going to find me at a food pantry or tending to lost kittens as a way to seal my salvation, I have come to realize that I have been trying to earn my grace in other ways. Namely, in trying to get my life to look like what I think God wants it too look like. I have a picture of what I want my marriage, my kid, my church to look like, mistakenly thinking that this picture is God's picture. And I have been trying to get it there, only to be frustrated time and time again. I have been completely focused on ME - My needs, My hopes, My dreams. I deceived myself into thinking that all of those things were God's desires for me. The thing that I have known but not known until this weekend is that it is all about God, not about me.
We have grace, we have forgiveness, we have a relationship with the Almighty. We are loved and protected by a good and sovereign God who is ordering our life, everyone's life, for His good purposes. (Eph 1:11) We can rest in that; there is perfect security there. If that is true, then why do we try to turn our relationships and our lives into what we want them to be? God meets our needs – abundantly. Because of that, we can give people Freedom; we can release them from our expectations. They cannot meet our needs like God does. Then, it can be about them, about Him, rather than about us. When we can get our love from the Source, why would we ever need a human being to fill us up? There is endless power in God – why would we go anywhere else? If we truly are God's vessels here on earth, why would we make anything about us? If we have surrendered our lives – or, more accurately, are continually surrendering our lives to Him – then it is His will and purposes that should drive us. Our will is no longer relevent – how could it be when set side by side with the will of the Creator. Whose will matters? If not because of who God is, then definitely because of what He has done for us. (Rom 5:8) To be a child of God's means that you surrender your authority to His. In relationships, then, we are only and all for Him. How freeing! Freeing for me, freeing for the object of my love. This spills over, too, into our circumstances. God is sovereign. Utterly and completely sovereign. (Lam 3:38) Who am I to question my circumstances? Whether the broad circumstances of my life – job, home, children – or the small daily circumstance – poop in panties, insomnia, clogged drain – God is sovereign and has designed it all. Do we really trust Him? Do we believe that He works all things for His purposes or do we think that we have a say, that we have influence, that God needs our opinion? (Dan 4:35) Does God even have the capacity to make a mistake? Then why don't we praise Him for where He has us with an understanding that He is perfect and His will and ways are perfect. How blessed are we to be encircled in His plan, to be safe within His arms, knowing that this moment is designed by Him. Every moment is. We could not be in a safer more protected place. Praise be to Him, forever and ever!!
Return to your rest, O my soul,
For the Lord has dealt boutifully with you.
For you have delived my soul from death,
My eyes from tears,
And my feet from falling.
~Psalm 116:7-8
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