Category: Grace

My Dearest Sister,

The topic this month holds a special place in all of our hearts; for without God’s amazing grace you and I would still be lost in our wretched sinful selves, without hope!  Praise God for His mercy and love which He has so graciously lavished upon us and has allowed us to be called “His children”!!! Praise Him, Praise Him that it is so by no merit of our own!!!

My heart’s desire in writing you this letter is to share with you a time when God’s grace came to me and my family in an unexpected even unlikely manner.  It was such a small thing in the grand scheme of things as they say.  The grand scheme, if you will, was my daughter’s life long battle with seizures.  She was 14 at the time and had just undergone brain surgery where a neurosurgeon severed the right hemisphere of her brain from the left hemisphere.  The journey our family traveled to that moment was strenuous and filled with many tears.  Just when it seemed things would calm down to a point where growth could take place those nasty seizures would show their ugly head again to disrupt any progress that had been made in our daughter’s life.

Don’t get me wrong, our path was definitely sprinkled with joy as well along the way.  However, most days held a quality of oppressive uncertainty to it.  Eventually we made it to a group of Dr.’s that could see the problem and offered a solution that promised (albeit a very slim promise) an end to her besetting seizures.  Test upon test led her to an operating room where for six hours we heard very little….and then finally: all went well, she is stable, the permanent separation was complete.

In the ICU we were told the next 24 hours of her recovery would be critical to the outcome of the surgery: she could reject what just took place, she could start to seize again, she could bleed out in her brain causing irreparable damage, she might not wake up for days…the list went on.  It was late in the day when we  began to see signs of her waking up, but no one wanted to rejoice for after all that little bit of hope might be fleeting!  All the emotions that had been set aside in the making of the decisions that brought us there to that moment seemed to well up and over flow all at once, uncontrollably we wept.  Then, in came the nurse who would be caring for her through the night.  I cannot even recall her face although when she smiled I got the sense that something unforgettable was about to happen. She said “Hello, my name is Grace….” I do not even recall anything else she said!

For those of you who know me well, you know that I am not one to read too much into ordinary things, nor am I someone that reads between the lines.  However, at that particular moment I knew without a doubt that God used this sweet nurse’s name to speak peace into my heart when my heart was tempted to doubt Him and all the lovingkindnesses He had shown us up to that time.

As her name was spoken my heart recalled that it was by God’s grace that my daughter had even survived beyond the first trimester of gestation and the stroke that took place, it was by God’s grace that her condition was discovered when it was, it was God’s grace that sustained her life and ours and that allowed us to always look beyond all the medical prognoses, it was by God’s grace that Olivia’s God given personality was protected and reserved for a time when all the seizures would be gone and the medicines would no longer play a part in her life, it is by God’s grace that He  taught me the sweetest, deepest things of Himself through Olivia’s life!

I pray that this simple recollection of mine would help to open your eyes and your heart to God’s grace for you today! Do not let the small things in your life that take place slip by without seeing His gracious omnipotent hand!

“My grace all sufficient shall be thy supply…”

~Susan

“And He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.’” ​-2 Corinthians 12:9

My Dearest Sister,
​You may have noticed this about me already, but I can be a bit of a perfectionist at times. It really bothers me when something I do doesn’t turn out just like I had envisioned. Sometimes it even seems that anything not done perfectly is a failure. Whether it’s that I accidentally tapped someone’s bumper in traffic, spoke harsh words to a friend, or forgot to return the library books on time, I hate facing the fact that I have made a mistake. I am reminded of what Kayla mentioned in her letter to you a few days ago. Our flesh wants to rely on its own strength, doesn’t it? To admit weakness is to admit that we aren’t perfect, that we make mistakes and have faults. In short, it is to admit that we can’t do it on our own. What I and my fellow perfectionists sometimes seem to forget is that failures and mistakes are a part of life. No one is perfect because “all have sinned and fall short”, remember? We really can’t do it on our own and that’s the whole reason we need Jesus to begin with.

​I am reminded of Paul’s story in 2 Corinthians 12 where he talks about his thorn in the flesh. The Scripture isn’t really clear as to what this thorn or weakness was, but Paul does say that it was given to him so that he wouldn’t be “exalted above measure,” or be made prideful. He pleaded three times with the Lord that this thorn would be removed so this was obviously something painful, either emotionally or physically, that he struggled with. Instead of removing the thorn, the Lord answered him with the assurance that “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” You see, it would be easy for a guy like Paul, who received all these revelations from God and became such an important part of the early church, to let his position go to his head. Maybe God knew that if Paul wasn’t made very well aware of his own shortcomings, he would have tried to do it in his own strength, not God’s. Maybe he, or even those around him, would have made the mistake of thinking he was just too perfect.

​But as you know, no one – not even Paul – is perfect. If you remember the story, he had quite a tainted past. He used to be Saul of Tarsus, a persecutor and slayer of Christians. But God had a different plan and direction for his life, one that involved an outpouring of grace and mercy on a guilty soul. And dear sister, we are all like Paul in that we all desperately need his grace! Our flesh is weak and sinful and desires to master us. You see, if we had the power to live righteously and perfectly on our own, then we wouldn’t so desperately need a Savior. Then the whole point of Jesus’ death and resurrection would be null and void. But as Romans 8:3 says, “what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled…”. We can never, by our own weak nature, be perfect enough to please God. But the good news is that we don’t have to: Jesus fulfilled that righteous requirement for us when he took all our sins upon himself on the cross. It was graciously given to us, even though we don’t deserve it.

​The key to receiving this wonderful grace is that we have to admit that we need it to begin with. James 4:6 says that “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” It’s hard sometimes to face our own faults and mistakes without feeling like total failures in life. However, our weaknesses shouldn’t be a source of frustration and shame, but should serve as a stark contrast to God’s perfectness and strength, thereby drawing us back to Him. So, my sister, the next time life reminds us of our mistakes and we start to feel like Miss Imperfect, let’s use it as an opportunity to remember God’s sufficient grace, for it is more than enough to cover all our faults and failures. We may not be perfect but that’s okay, because we serve a God who is!

​Your grace-filled sister in Christ,
​~ Lauren Titcomb

I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose. -Galatians 2:21

Dearest sister,

Once again I have found myself relying on my own ability to live righteously before the throne of God. And once again, I have been found wanting. I have fallen down time and time again and I am weary; weary of falling and weary of getting back up. Oh sister, when will we learn! Our strength is not found in ourselves. We are but dust formed by the mighty and omnipotent hand of God who breathed into us the breath of life. We can no more live righteously on our own than we can breathe without God supplying our every breath. Yet the attitudes of our hearts often reflect an unwillingness to depend on God for everything.

I think one of the main reasons people are quick to reject Christianity is that it requires us to admit that we are not in control and that we need help. We are not strong enough on our own, we cannot  earn perfect righteousness and therefore we must rely on another, namely Jesus Christ. People don’t want to rely on grace; they want to rely on their own works. They want to believe that everything they do is earning them some sort of favor in God’s eyes that will get them into heaven. This is the “gospel” that people want to believe, but it is not the true gospel.

The phenomenon of this faith plus works religion is not a creation of the American culture. In fact, when Paul was writing his letter to the Galatians he was writing to defend the true gospel that was under attack in the churches of Galatia. Paul says in Galatians 1 “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ” (1: 6-7). The Judaizers had infiltrated the churches and were preaching a message contrary to Paul, that of a faith plus works salvation. Paul takes a stand against them, defending the truth of his gospel that he received not from minds of depraved and corrupt men but from a revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul reminds us “that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ” (Galatians 2: 16). He continues saying, “so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be saved.” Did you catch that last part, dear sister? No one will be saved by works of the law. This means that you cannot do anything to earn your salvation. Not your prayers, devotions, church attendance or any other good deed that you could contrive will grant you entrance into the gates of heaven.

Think about how you’re living. Is there any area of your life that you are depending on works and not grace? Is there an attitude in your heart that ‘nullifies the grace of God’? Examine your heart, dear sister. Ask the Lord to bring you to repentance where necessary and live in the light of His glorious grace.

In awe of His grace,
Kayla