Saving Grace

The message the world wants to send when it tells us that thoughts and prayers are meaningless is that our God can't - or won't - save us. 

To borrow a phrase from way too many of the younger folk I've been hanging out with for the past several years...

Sorry, bro. 

He already has. 

And He keeps saving me every single day. 

Before He found me (for it is always we who are hiding from God and not the other way around), before He called out to me and asked me where I was, before I learned to step out of my shame and let Him love me, I was a hopeless sinner. 

Every day since, I have grown by leaps and bounds, and I can confidently say today that I am now a hope-full sinner. 

Hope-full because I know, with confident assurance, what my Lord is doing, which direction I'm moving, and how this all ends. 

I am not the person that I used to be. I am not the same person who gave my life to Christ more than 20 years ago, and I am not the same person who has been doing it over and over again. He keeps changing me. I recognize it in the ways that I don't operate the ways that I used to, when I have those moments when I catch myself and realize that there was a time in my life I would have responded in such-and-such a way, but that is so far from my mind now. Because my heart is different. Because I've been saved from who I used to be. 

Not only that, but I have lived enough days and gained enough hindsight into my life to see some of the things that He's saved me from outside of myself. Situations that didn't work out that I was devastated about at the time, I see now how they would have wrecked me. How those were not the right places for me. How one little step to the right or to the left has completely changed the trajectory of my life for the better - for the far better. I know that He has saved me from things that would have destroyed me. 

Not only that, but I know that He is still saving me from the things I don't yet understand. Things I don't see yet, don't know, don't comprehend. I'm old enough to admit that there are just days that I don't know what's going on, that I can feel it in my soul that something's off, but I can't really put my finger on it. In these times, I know that God knows what's happening, and He's leading me toward or away from something for a reason. One day, I'll have the hindsight; today, I just have the faith. But He is saving me even now from things I just don't know. 

And because of the Cross, He has saved me forever. He has invited me into the abundant life, both now and for eternity, where I will finally understand what life was supposed to be like, what we were created for, how this human thing we're doing was supposed to go were it not for sin. I will understand fully what I know now only dimly, and I cannot wait for that day. 

My God can't - or won't - save me? 

Bro, He already has. And He still is. 

My whole life tells that story. 

It's called grace. 

And the world's got nothing like it.