A Heart Full of Grace

A compilation
http://anchor.tfionline.com/post/heart-full-grace/

Everybody can be great … because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.—Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Grace has to be the loveliest word in the English language. It embodies almost every attractive quality we hope to find in others. Grace is a gift of the humble to the humiliated. Grace acknowledges the ugliness of sin by choosing to see beyond it. Grace accepts a person as someone worthy of kindness despite whatever grime or hard-shell casing keeps him or her separated from the rest of the world. Grace is a gift of tender mercy when it makes the least sense.—Charles R. Swindoll

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Jesus tells us: “Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.”1

Easier said than done, you may say. You’re not even sure you want to love those who have hurt or wronged you. After all, they don’t deserve it. You’d just as soon distance yourself from that cranky boss, that former friend who hurt you, that coworker who talked badly about you behind your back.

One of the most wonderful things about God’s love is that it can override our sometimes-all-too-human reactions and prejudices. He may not be happy about some of the things some people do or the way they do them, but He still loves them. Isn’t that the way He is with us? He never stops loving us no matter what our faults and flaws, and in spite of what we do. He never rejects us or withdraws His love. He always has hope for us, no matter how far we’ve strayed.

That’s the sort of love He wants us to have for others, and it’s ours for the asking. “Love will cover a multitude of sins.”2 God will give you as much grace and love to forgive others as you ask Him for.—Shannon Shayler3

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A small boy was caught trying on his grandma’s glasses, and his mother asked why. He said, “I want to wear glasses like Grandma’s, ’cause she can see much more than other people. She can see when folks are hungry and tired or sorry, and she can even see what’ll make them feel better. She can see how to fix a lot of things so they’re fun, and she can see what a fellow meant to do, even if he didn’t do it right. She can see when a fellow is going to cry, and she can see how to get him smiling again. I asked her one day how she could see so good, and she said it was the way she learned to look at things as she got older. So when I get older, I want a pair of glasses just like Grandma’s, so I can see as good as that, too.”—Author unknown

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The biblical idea of encouragement implies the help of one who comes alongside of another to support or strengthen them in time of need. Someone with a gracious disposition reaches down to help others and lift them up.4 A gracious spirit does not unlovingly criticize, condemn, discourage, or suppress someone so as to hinder their growth. Grace purposes not to defeat others, but to boost them toward Christlikeness.

Someone has said that grace holds a halo over our head and helps us grow into it. We are more likely to grow when others expect and encourage us to become what God has made us in Christ. A gracious spirit reflects love in that it “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things”5—it believes the best about others and optimistically helps them with a forbearing spirit. Graciousness gives others the benefit of the doubt in matters of conscience and conduct that are less than absolutely clear.—Dr. Charlie Bing6

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The big issues that face me as a teacher, writer, husband, father and employee are all about grace. Grace in everyday life. Grace to people who don’t deserve it. Grace as a way for me to live in the power of the Gospel when I’d rather be controlling things and determining outcomes. All day, every day I have to live in an atmosphere where the use of the law, guilt, manipulation and punishment are the standard ways of doing business. But I want my life to be more and more and more about grace, not to lessen the law, but to accomplish what the law cannot accomplish: create followers of Jesus and create lives—individually and communally—shaped by his Spirit.

When I remember the grace of God in my life, particularly at those moments when no one could rescue me from my sin and foolishness but God alone, it fires my heart with a hunger for grace in my relationships, actions and heart-motivation. …

The question for me today and from now on is “Has grace made me gracious?”—Michael Spencer7

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I am a perfectionist. I worry about getting things wrong. I like to stick to the rules, get things right, and try to be the best I can be. Self-improvement isn’t a bad thing. But the problem with having a perfectionist attitude towards yourself is that we often transfer this attitude towards other people. We set our own high standards for how we expect them to behave. However, inevitably other people won’t always meet our expectations. They will let us down. They are imperfect. I need to learn how to show God’s grace to imperfect people. …

God wants us to treat others with grace. Undeserved favor. If we were to only dish out encouragement, friendly words or kindness to those we feel deserve it, we may seldom get the opportunity. But if we are prepared to show tolerance for the things others do that we don’t like, hold back our judgments and love them, imperfections [and all], we bless them with God’s grace.—Melanie Caldicott8

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“Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.”9

For the past 10 days, I have been contemplating God’s grace to us and how we, in turn, can extend grace to others.

We naturally do just the opposite. We see and tell people how they should change rather than encouraging them in what they are doing right. So often we are impatient with a sales clerk, point out faults in our spouse and children; we slander co-workers and pastors.

How then, can we become gracious—more like Jesus?

Richard Blackaby in his book, Putting a Face on Grace, has a list of tips for us.
Speak words intended to build up, not to bring down.
Focus on their need rather than your own.
Freely forgive.
Swallow your pride and say, “I’m sorry,” and “I was wrong.”
Live your life with a goal of “no regrets.”
Don’t keep score of what is fair.
Grace doesn’t condemn or give up on people.
Grace emphasizes mercy, not justice.
Read 1 Corinthians 13 regularly.

And always keep in mind that it is God’s Spirit within us who will change us into becoming people who extend grace to others.

[Prayer:] Father, you continually show grace to your children no matter how many times we mess up. Thank you so much. We don’t deserve your love. Enable us, through the power of your Holy Spirit, to become people of grace. Amen.—Katherine J Kehler10 

Published on Anchor June 2014. copyright @ tfi

1 Matthew 5:44–48 NKJV.
2 1 Peter 4:8 NKJV.
3 Love's Many Faces (Aurora Production AG).
4 See 2 Corinthians 8:9.
5 1 Corinthians 13:7.
6 http://www.gracelife.org/resources/gracenotes/pdf/gracenotes27.pdf.
7 http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/has-grace-made-me-gracious.
8 http://essentialthingdevotions.com/2013/06/13/showing-gods-grace-to-imperfect-people.
9 Ephesians 4:29 KJV.
10 http://www.thoughts-about-god.com/meditating/kk_grace2.html.