Experiencing God’s Grace…pt. 3
In the years after my divorce, I learned a great deal about God’s grace. He kept me in a home with food and clothing. He provided a strong support system around me with new friends and my church home. A couple of families adopted me into their fold so that I would have a family to connect with. All throughout this time I worked on building my relationship with God by spending time in His Word and prayer.
Even though I continued learning and growing in God’s grace, I still felt that I needed to help the Lord with my relationship issues. My friends kept telling me to just let it go, that someone would come along when I stopped looking for it. I didn’t really understand, because I would never stop looking for someone to love me. Unfortunately, God’s love still wasn’t enough. But someone in my church family gave me this prayer:
“The Surrender Prayer”
Lord, I am Yours. Whatever the cost may be, may Your will be done in my life. I realize I’m not here on earth to do my own thin, or to seek my own fulfillment or my own glory.
I’m not here to indulge my desires, to increase my possessions, to impress people, to be popular, to prove I’m not somebody important or to promote myself. I’m not here even to be successful by human standards. I am here to please You.
I offer myself to You, for You are worthy. All that I am or hope to be, I owe to You. I am Yours by creation, and every day I receive from You life and breath and all things.
And I am Yours because You bought me, and the price You paid was the precious blood of Christ. You alone, the Triune God, are worthy to be my Lord and Master. I yield to You, my gracious and glorious Heavenly Father, to the Lord Jesus Christ, who loved me and gave Himself for me; to the Holy Spirit and His gracious influence and empowering.
All that I am and all that I have I give You.
I give you any rebellion in me, that resists doing Your will. I give You my pride and self-dependence, that tells me I can do Your will in my own power if I try hard enough.
I give You my fears, that tell me I’ll never be able to do Your will in some areas of life. I consent to let You energize me, to create within me, moment by moment, both the desire and the power to do Your will.
I give You my body and each of its members, my entire being: my mind, my emotional life, my will, my loved ones, my marriage or my hopes for marriage, my abilities and gifts, my strength and weaknesses, my health, my status (high or low) my possessions, my past, my present and my future, when and how I’ll go home.
I am here to love You, to obey You to glorify You. O, my beloved, may I be a joy to You!!
I read through this prayer every day, and made special effort to really put those words into my heart. Every day I knew that I should surrender to the Lord, and I tried. I really wasn’t sure if I was doing it right, but I knew that God still listened, and I knew that He knew my heart.
5 years later
Then, one summer day, I felt His still, small voice telling me to finally let go. I needed to let go of my hurt, to let go of my need for love, to give up my search for a man to love me, and to finally forgive my ex-husband for how much he had hurt me. So, in my journal, I wrote a letter to the Lord telling Him that I wanted to give up. I finally gave Him all of my desires and needs. For the first time, I threw myself into His hands and told him that I needed Him to have complete control of my life. I contacted my mother-in-law and asked her to let my ex-husband know that I was willing to repay him for some of the debts that he had taken care of for me.
I felt God’s grace move quickly after that. A couple of months later the uncle of one of my students called me and asked me to go out with him. By the end of that calendar year we were married, and a year after that, Super Stuffy was born. Within a year and a half, God had completely answered the prayer that I had been praying, begging, and crying for five years. He matched me with a man with whom I fit perfectly. A man who loves me for who I am and will never leave me. He confirmed this choice with so many small details that just fit together that we both knew without a doubt that God had brought us together. The love that my new husband gave me taught me a lot about the grace of God.
The next big step
With the birth of Super Stuffy, I took another big step toward understanding the grace of God. I loved this little person unconditionally, and I did everything that I could to help this little person grow. But as he did, I also realized that I did not show him unconditional love, and my fear grew that I would destroy this little person with all the mistakes that I was making as his mom. I also experienced fear because I felt sure that I still needed to make it right with God every time that I messed up. How could God still forgive me, even when I made so many mistakes with this little one?
Every day I decided that I would do better than the day before. I would surrender my day to God and then do my best to be the perfect mom that I thought He wanted me to be. If it was a good day, then I felt good about myself. I would think, “I’ve got this thing.” If I could just keep doing the same good things every day, then I would be that perfect mom and my kids would be just as perfect as they could be.
Perfection is Impossible
However, inevitably bad days would come, and the mommy guilt kicked in when I believed that I had totally messed up with my kids. I would go back to the Lord and ask him to forgive me and try to figure out what I did wrong so that I could apply a new technique in order to do better. I would read a new parenting book or try a new strategy to help my kids get along. My failures became a sledgehammer over my head, and I would imagine that God was terribly disappointed in me.
Perfection: flawless, freedom from flaw or defect
Excellence: superior; eminently good
Perfection vs. Excellence
I grew tired of riding this roller coaster, but I didn’t know how to get off. In one of my Bible studies, I discovered that there was a difference between perfection and excellence. Yes! By this time, I knew that perfectionism was running my life, so this difference gave me hope. I didn’t need to be perfect, I could just be excellent. However, I never quite figured out in real practical ways the true difference. I knew that I could not be perfect, but in daily life excellence meant the same as perfection. I never discovered the secret of being “eminently good”. Superior wasn’t even a consideration. I still could not get off this ride.
I saw God as a disappointed parent
Even though Super Stuffy gave me a first glimpse into what the grace of God really is, it also confirmed my picture of Him as the disappointed parent. Super Stuffy and Bear Bear would keep making the same mistakes over and over again, and each time I would get frustrated and angry. I wondered when they would ever learn and I was disappointed that they wouldn’t listen to me. God has to be the same way, right? I mean, He has every right to be angry and disappointed with me. I am a dirty, rotten sinner, and I do not deserve any favor from God.
A Beginning to my Understanding of Grace
The true understanding of God’s grace started to truly make its way into my heart through the words of a song by Tenth Avenue North. I love music, and I usually have it going in the background most of the time. But I don’t necessarily listen to all of the words. On this occasion these words caught my ear:
“By Your Side”
Why are you striving these days
Why are you trying to earn grace
Why are you crying
Let me lift up your face
Just don’t turn awayWhy are you looking for love
Why are you still searching
As if I’m not enough
To where will you go child
Tell me where will you run
To where will you runAnd I’ll be by your side wherever you fall
In the dead of night whenever you call
And please don’t fight these hands that are holding you
My hands are holding you
God began to speak to me
After the song was over, the radio station played an interview with one of the members of Tenth Avenue North to ask him about the story behind this song. He described my story. He described the roller coaster, the cycle of motivation, guilt, and recommitment. It seemed as if God was speaking to me and asking me why I was still fighting to earn what he had already given me freely. I believe He was telling me to just let go and rest in what He had already done for me.
But I still did not understand. In His Word, He tells me exactly what He wants me to be and exactly what I needed to do in order to grow in my walk with Him. But the more I tried, the more I failed. How do I live every day in God’s grace? I felt so frustrated that I needed some advice, so I went to someone who could help.
GraceWalk
She gave me the book titled GraceWalk by Steve McVey. In it he described his lowest point. He had spent his life as a pastor, working for God in ministry, but he did not experience the victorious life that Christ promised us. He wrote that he went through the same cycle as I did. I could identify with his struggle because it was mine. I had never found anyone else who described this endless roller coaster as well as he did.
All of my life I have lived with the philosophy that every time I messed up I would try harder to do better next time. I always failed. I knew that I couldn’t follow the rules in order to obtain salvation, but for some reason, I thought that I could follow the rules in order to live for God. Throughout my life I have developed patterns of self reliance that meet the needs that I thought I had. I used these patterns in order to try and follow God’s rules. That self reliance kept me on this never ending roller coaster.
It’s all about relationship
After reading this book, the understanding of God’s grace finally made it from my head to my heart. Living for God is not a set of rules that you need to follow. Living for God is none other than a relationship with Him. In his book, Steve McVey uses the story of Mary and Martha to illustrate his point. Martha worked in the kitchen, frustrated because Mary left her to do the work alone. But what was she busy doing? She was serving Jesus! Her focus was on serving Him! But when she expressed her frustration to Him, He told her that Mary was doing the better thing. Mary was just sitting by His feet, listening to His words. If Jesus had asked for a cup of water, Mary would have jumped up and gotten one for Him. For Mary, the relationship was the most important thing.
I serve the Lord out of love, not obligation
I still serve the Lord, but not because it will make Him love or even accept me more, but because my service flows from the love that I have for Him. For most of my life, I have prayed that God would bless my efforts to live for Him each day. Sometimes He showed me those blessings in spite of myself. But sometimes He didn’t. Even on those days when I prayed that He would bless my efforts, sometimes things still fell apart.
Now my prayers have changed. Now I pray that God would live through me, that He would use me in whatever way He wishes. He does not want to bless my efforts. My own flesh needs to be broken so that He can live through me. The Holy Spirit is a gentleman. He will influence, but He will not force. I need to let go of the control of my life so that He can take that control.
The Closer I get, the farther I realize I need to go
This does not mean that I now live my life perfectly. Far from it! But if I continue to surrender my life and my will to Him, then I can trust that He will take control and He will make me look more like Jesus. My only goal is to become closer to Him. He is my reward, and I want nothing more than to draw closer to Him each day.
Even though I understand God’s grace a little bit better, I know that I still have a ways to go to allow Him to apply it to my life. I hope that my story has encouraged you in your walk with the Lord.
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