Sometimes things seem hard. Let me explain. In our walk through this life with our Lord, we have the guide of the Holy Spirit and the scriptures. We look upon the good things in God’s word and our heart swells with His coming plans for our lives. But our lives have changes, decisions, and circumstances that do not reflect what we have thought would be our walk of faith. This morning the Lord has been leading me to read about grace; that intangible substance He gives all of us which enables us to make the right decisions, weather stormy circumstances, and suffer changes we would not have chosen for ourselves . . . changes wrought in the mind of God for our good and for the betterment of others.

In 1 Peter 4:10 we read that God’s people steward grace in its many forms. The “forms” are deposits from God, which are unique to each one of us, and are called “gifts.” Grace allows us to do what we cannot do, and accomplish what we cannot accomplish, through differing gifts which He, our God, has given us. You might say that grace takes us to new places, like an adventure. Grace also gives us new things, like a surprise. In the many references to grace in the Bible, grace seems like God’s enabling power in our lives, which causes us to do what we never thought or dreamt of beforehand. And herein lays a problem; grace often comes to us at a crossroads in our lives where the things we have thought of will take us one way, and the things God has thought of will take us another. It’s almost as if He is saying, “Here, let me help you with that decision by giving you a deposit of My nature inside.” The nature of God in us is manifested in our weaknesses, and not in the ways we would normally choose, therefore the crossroads is where we make that decision to follow God’s way, and not our own.

An example of accepting God’s way instead of what we think would be better is found in Paul’s writings. He describes for us that there is a thorn in his flesh, which he asked the Lord to remove. The Lord’s answer was “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Cor 12:9). Here we see that grace is actually the enabling power of power itself. For Paul to continue in his great and powerful walk of faith, he needed to have grace coupled with weakness. So we see another problem; God’s great adventures in our lives may be uncomfortable. To deepen His love in us we may be asked to care for the unlovely, and that is uncomfortable. To develop His compassion for souls He may bring people who feel hopeless to us, and this may seem draining and fruitless if we want to evangelize the world. To build unity of the Spirit for a great work ahead, the Lord may have us on a team of “difficult” people. And so it goes, God building up the deposit of His nature in us by imparting grace for those new things we hadn’t thought of before . . . or wouldn’t have done in quite the same manner God has chosen. Yes, God also gives us gifts we would like, by grace, for this is how all His gifts come to His children. The gifts are for serving the brethren and all men. If we prefer to do things our own way we will never steward the rich deposit He has put within us. But if we have a willingness for new adventures, and will be flexible in God’s enabling power, we will find grace to do far and exceedingly above what we ever thought and hoped for. Amen.