Today we're beginning a brand new message series called "The Power of Grace," and I'd like to begin with a question. The question that we're going to process throughout the course of this series is: What is God really like? What is God's true character?
Now, when it comes to meeting somebody, when it comes to getting to know people, sometimes you'll meet a person, and at first, you think they're one thing. Then, the longer you get to know that person, perhaps you see them in a different light.
Now, there are some people you get to know, and what you see the first time is what you get over the long haul. I would say to you, you know, we've had an opportunity to get to know each other a bit over the last year. You've gotten the opportunity to know Stacy; she hasn't spoken quite as much as I have, but you've gotten a chance to know her.
If you met her, you would see on stage when she communicates, she's sweet, she's kind, she's loving, she's shepherding. If you met her in person, you would see all those things; they would be true. But there's also one part of her that I don't want you to be deceived with. If you were ever to play a board game with Stacy, if you were ever to play Rummy Cube or if you were to ever play some kind of Domino's game or an iteration of it, what you would see is a different version of her that will almost hurt you.
If you play spoons with her, she won't sin, but she will almost sin grabbing us. She might even slap you to get the spoon out of your hand. So, all that to say, I don't want you again to be deceived if you get to know her and you ever play that game with her.
Now, the point that I'm making is every person, every person that we meet, there's more than what we see in the first impression. You have an impression, you have a view, you have an understanding of what God is like, regardless of what religion you come from, regardless of whether or not you grew up in a church or didn't, or you're an atheist or a long-time follower of Jesus.
You have a perspective of what God is like. A theologian said one time, "Your view of God is the most important thing that you will hold in your mind." But more than just at a cognitive level, at a heart level, your perspective and your desire to pursue God is based upon what you believe when you think about God.
Although your view of God does not change the character of God, your view of God radically determines your approach to God. I want to encourage you to write this down: Your view of God determines your approach to God.
So, if you see God or you view God as this far-off, distant cosmic killjoy, kind of this deistic view of Him that He wants nothing to do with our lives on a day-to-day basis, you won't pursue Him. If you believe God to be angry, waiting for the opportunity to strike you, you'll stay as far away from God as possible.
But when we see the Bible, when we go from Genesis to Revelation, the character of God is revealed in the pages of Scripture. Who God is is shown when God came in human flesh. Jesus, the Son of God, God in human flesh, reveals what God is truly like.
So, for the next four weeks, I want to wrestle through that question together as a church family: Who is God and what is God like? I would say to you, deep inside of your soul, there is a longing to know your Creator. Your primary purpose for existence is relationship with God, and there is nothing in this world that will fill that hole deep inside of your soul more than knowing God.
So, my prayer for you is that desire. I want to come to that fire deep inside of you and stoke that fire with the desire to pursue and to know God. The same way Moses said in the Old Testament, "Oh God, I want to know you. Show me your glory." My prayer for us as a church is that longing would be inside of us to know what God is truly like.
So today, as we begin, I want to start with an overview of God's grace. We use this phrase because to know God's grace is to know God's power, and to know God's power is to know God's grace.
I want to begin with an overview of the power of God's grace, and then over the next few weeks, we're going to look at a passage of Scripture, Luke chapter 15, known as the parable of the prodigal son. We're going to journey through those three characters in the three subsequent weeks, looking at the grace of God from the angle of Jesus describing what God is truly like.
Today, we're going to begin with Psalm 103. If you have a Bible, you can turn there, or it will also be on the screens. King David is describing God, and he begins by describing what God is truly like, His character. He says this: "The Lord is, verse 8, compassionate and merciful, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love."
Now, this is important: God is slow to get angry. I'm so grateful for that, aren't you? That God is not one looking for an opportunity to be angry at humanity. Maybe you grew up with a father who was quickly angry, or perhaps you had this view of God through that filter. David says, "He's slow to get angry. He will not constantly accuse us nor remain angry forever. He does not punish us for all our sins. He does not deal harshly with us as we deserve. For His unfailing love towards those who fear Him is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth."
Verse 12 says, "He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west." The Lord is like a father to His children, tender and compassionate to those who fear Him. This is what God is like. David knew this from his experience with God. David knew this from reading the Old Testament, the parts of the Bible that were written at that point, to see that God is gracious and compassionate.
There's this side of God that is good. There's a side of God that is a loving father. In fact, when Jesus taught us to pray, He said, "Pray like this: Our Father," to begin through relationship, the kind of relationship a son or a daughter has with a good father. Our Father, to pursue Him as a father who loves us as His children.
But there's this other part of God as well that's also in conjunction with His goodness. In Psalm 104, I want us to see as well. The psalmist describes, and this passage of Scripture says, "Let all that I am praise the Lord. O Lord my God, how great you are! You are robed with honor and majesty. You stretch out the story curtain of the heavens and you lay out the rafters of your home in the rain clouds. You make the clouds your chariot. You ride upon the wings of the wind. The winds are your messengers."
Then verse 5 says, "You place the world on its foundation so that it would never be moved." This is describing the power of God, the greatness of God, the glory of God, that He is separate, He is holy. So when Jesus said, "Our Father in Heaven," He's describing both the goodness and the greatness of God.
To understand again the power of God and the grace of God, you cannot separate those from one another. He is holy in all His ways, and He's also good and kind. The journey of understanding this transforms the way that we pursue God. Your view of God's greatness and your view of God's goodness is determining your approach to God.
Now, I want today, as we begin our series, to look at grace through the filter of a gift that God is trying to give to us. What God is trying to do is, with all of His children, give good gifts into our lives. I want to begin, as we go back to Psalm 103, starting at the top of Psalm 103. These few verses are some of my favorite verses from the Bible.
These are great verses to read in the morning when you're beginning your day and you're making your coffee and you're just rolling out of bed and really not wanting to be out of bed yet. These are great verses to get into your soul. I want you to hear, as David starts, he says this in verse 1, coming back to the top of Psalm 103: "Let all that I am praise the Lord. With my whole heart, I will praise His holy name. Let all that I am praise the Lord, and may I never forget the good things that He does for me."
Now, when you read that phrase in another version, it says, "May I never forget the benefits that God gives into my life." It's kind of like when you get a job. You go get a job, and you get a paycheck, and you have a benefits package. That benefits package might come with insurance; it may come with time off that you still get paid. But if you start to take too much time off, guess what happens? The benefits package dries up. It's like we don't pay people who don't work, right?
Sometimes in our mindset, when it comes to the good things that God does for us, we carry a filter, the same filter that we carry with our work or with our careers, that if I work, He's going to do good things for me. But David is describing grace. He's describing something that is not earned but is given from God.
Look at these five-fold blessings that he says: He forgives all of my sins. He heals all of my diseases. He redeems me from death and crowns me with love and tender mercies. He fills my life with good things so that my youth is renewed like the eagles.
There are five particular aspects of God's grace that I want us to see. Now, what I also want us to consider when it comes to understanding God is that you and I are in a spiritual battle with forces of darkness in our life. There's an enemy that is trying to steal, kill, and destroy every good thing that God is wanting to do in your life.
All the way back to the Book of Genesis, when Adam and Eve were in a garden, the first thing that the enemy tried to do was to get them to question the word of God and the goodness of God. So, every one of these five-fold aspects of God's grace that's present in your life, the enemy is trying to rob you of experiencing and living into that grace.
As we walk through, there might be one. I want you to star the one that when you look at it, you're like, "That's the one that I need." Perhaps there might be one of these five that is hard for you to believe. I want you just, as we walk through these, to think about them and to receive this truth: God's grace for your life.
The first thing that David highlights is that God is a God who forgives. He forgives me. As you consider the forgiveness of God, the forgiveness of God is able to wipe the slate clean. The forgiveness of God is able to bring forgiveness from all of our past.
It's kind of like this: at my house, sometimes boxes pile up. Does anybody have boxes pile up at their house? Like this, out of curiosity, on the front door? Some of these boxes you order from Amazon or Walmart or wherever you shop, your vendor of desire. But these boxes will often pile up at our house, and sometimes people will take a box and they'll open it and they'll put it in some room, and you can't find it for weeks on end.
Sometimes gifts from grandparents don't get opened in time. We actually, true story, had so much mail at our house when we moved into our home that the post office said, "There's too much mail in your mailbox. You need to come and get it from the post office because we can't fit any more mail."
Neither Stacy nor I are really good with administration, just in case you're wondering. But we're good at other things, but just not administration. But we sometimes collect boxes. Now, some boxes you actually pay for, but then there are boxes that come as a gift.
I will say to you today, there is a box that comes as a gift, which is the grace of God. Inside the box, as David describes these five things, I want to begin with that first word: that the grace of God forgives.
Coming back to forgiveness, forgiveness is the release from the consequence of sin. It's the release from what we deserve for what we've done. God wipes the slate clean, and I love how David describes the character of God. It says that He doesn't treat us as our sins deserve. Given unto ourselves, given unto our own choices, we have a tendency as humans to move away from God, away from His teachings and His ways.
But God is a God who brings forgiveness into our lives. God is one who forgives. Now, not only does He forgive, but God is a God who heals. David says, "He forgives all my sins, and He heals all my diseases."
Perhaps this is hard to consider because maybe you know somebody that was praying for a healing, but they didn't get the healing that they were praying for. I believe it's so important to understand that grace and God's way of healing us sometimes happens in a moment.
I know people that have prayed for healing from cancer, and God healed them. I know people who have prayed that God would radically transform their marriage, and He did it. I know people who were in depression or anxiety, and there was a moment of healing.
But then sometimes, there is a process that people walk through. Here at Saddleback, God uses different ministries to help people's lives with healing. Celebrate Recovery is a place where healing happens over a process. There's a care ministry that we have, different small groups, and we have people that will get counseling in that process of healing.
God is a healer that uses His body called the church to bring healing to our lives. Sometimes healing is an event; sometimes it's a process. Other times in our life, that healing is something that is happening in eternity, in all of time.
I love Pastor Rick's quote where he says, "God has all eternity to fulfill His promises," which means on the other side of this life, our bodies are fully redeemed. There's no more sickness, there's no more sorrow, there's no more pain and suffering because God has redeemed the brokenness and completely healed our bodies.
But regardless of when God heals—if it's God healing now in a moment, if God heals over a process, or God heals in eternity—God is a God who heals. He is taking what is broken and putting it back right together. He's mending things that have been separated and should be together.
God is a forgiver, and God is a healer. God not only heals, but God also does redemption. So, God is one who redeems. Redemption is a bit of a different concept from forgiveness and healing.
Redemption, another version says, "He redeems my life from the pit." So, the image is God reaching down to you and I when we are at our lowest, worst moment of life. Perhaps when you think of God and being in relationship with God, the thing that comes to mind for you, if you could just visualize in a measure, is to imagine the thing that comes to mind is like you at your best and God being really proud of you.
But what the Scripture says is that God comes to us in our brokenness and redeems. The Bible uses this concept of redemption. The Book of Ruth describes how God redeems. Ruth was this person who had lost her husband and her kids, and she followed Naomi back to Israel from a land far away.
There was this one guy; nobody wanted to be married to Ruth, but there was this one guy that brought her and redeemed her. The image is seeing a life that has value where perhaps that person perceives no value.
So, you may look at yourself and say, "Well, my life has no worth. I've destroyed it. My relationships are broken." But God sees you of such significance and worth that He was willing to send His Son to die on a cross.
So, your value is of infinite worth before God, that He would purchase your freedom through Jesus' death on a cross. Ephesians 1:6 and 7 says, "So we praise God for the glorious grace that He has given to our lives. He has poured it out on those of us who belong to His dear Son. He is so rich in kindness and grace that He purchased our freedom. He redeemed us. He purchased our freedom with the blood of His Son and forgave our sins."
He's a redeemer. Sometimes, in that process of imagining your life, one of the things that is so beautiful about our church is there's such a range of diversity in terms of our journey spiritually. Some people come to church for the first time to Saddleback; some of you grew up in a church, and your parents were here, and you made a decision to follow Jesus.
Sometimes, at a young age in that decision, it's hard to imagine the concept of redemption. But every once in a while, as you get a glimpse of what's on the inside and all of the brokenness, if we're given unto ourselves, what our lives could become.
There are moments in my life when I see all of it on the inside, and usually, it happens for me with my kids. Isn't it true that in parenting, oftentimes what's on the inside is revealed more than any other relationship? I can look at what's on the inside and think, "Oh, if God had not intervened on my behalf, what my life would become."
All the things that would have happened. Some of you would be dead by now if God had not intervened. Others of you would be addicted to something that you flirted with a long time ago. Some of you would still not be married in this moment if there wasn't redemption.
Oh, for the grace of God that redeems broken lives! He is a God who forgives; He is a God who heals; He is a God who redeems. Not only does He redeem, but He transforms. He changes people. He makes us look like different people over the course of time.
Now, it's not like He takes you from somebody that goes from, "Oh, I used to love to bowl, and now I follow Jesus, and I like skydiving." That's not the point. It's this change of our character from the inside out.
That was a dumb joke; I'm sorry. That was stupid.
Anyways, the transformation of our character is this inside-out becoming more like Jesus over the course of time. What He's in the business of doing is giving us the desire to love more, to be kind to others, to be more at peace in the midst of chaos, and to walk with freedom from worry.
He is the kind of God that takes you, and you look one way, and maybe you look at your life and you're like, "I'm so frustrated with the things that are not in my life." But thank God you're not what you were! Thank God that your life is different. Five, ten, fifteen years ago, you were a different person.
I can look at people in my life. I think about my dad, and I think about Stacy's dad, that in their 60s and 70s, they're different men than they were 20 years ago. They're more kind, they're more loving, they're more present because the grace of God transformed them.
It gives me so much hope to think in the future, 20 years from now, I can be a different man because of the grace of God. Sometimes, when it comes to the grace of God transforming us, we still get confused.
We start believing that it's by faith in God's grace that we have salvation, but we follow Jesus, and perhaps the longer we follow Jesus, the more we're trying to change on our own power. But Philippians 2:12 says it like this, and this verse is so important for transformation.
It says, "Therefore, my beloved, as you've always obeyed, so now, not only in my presence but much more in my absence," Paul says, "work out your salvation with fear and trembling."
This line is important; you might want to underline it: "For it is God who works in you to will and to work for His good pleasure." So, He's putting inside of you desire through His grace to become a different person.
Some of us are so focused on modifying our behavior, changing ourselves from the outside in, and we're walking around trying to modify all these things and getting exhausted in the process.
It's like this last week, we had, dare I say, a minor crisis in the Wood household. Actually, last week, Saturday, a little over a week ago, we started having this fly problem. It started with about four flies in our house; it went to about 16, then it went to 32, and it rapidly multiplied to when it became like the plague in Egypt, where there were flies swarming all over our house.
I went to Lowe's; I got some of those sticky things. I actually brought in the big electrocuter that you're only supposed to have outside. We have one of those tennis rackets that you just walk around trying to kill them. So, we became murderers very quickly.
If you're on a fly empathy kick, I can't help you with that because we killed hundreds of them. They were taking over our home. Actually, one night, I had some friends over, and Stacy and our friends were home before I got home from work. So, I walked in, and there's like this stack of about 200 flies. It was so gross.
Now, I was thinking about this illustration, and I was like, "Okay, we can call an exterminator, and they'll solve the problem." So, we called the exterminator, and the exterminator comes over, and they walk through the house, and they're like, "Well, if you don't know where the source of the problem is, you can't solve the problem."
I'm like, "Well, isn't that why we paid you to come, so you could tell us the source of the problem?" So, we took all the plants outside, and we eliminated some stuff that might be near the house that might have it, and we tried to deal with the source of the problem.
Now, I'm happy to report to you we have about four flies that are hanging on, and these are some feisty ones, but we still don't know the source of the problem. I really wanted that exterminator to tell me the source of the problem so I could create this awesome preaching illustration about Jesus knowing the source of your sin and your problem.
But I couldn't use him as the Christ-like character in this illustration. He doesn't know the source of the problem, but the principle holds: if you don't know the source of the problem, you can't solve the problem.
But what Jesus does is He gets to the source of the issue inside of us so that we don't have to walk around trying to swat everything in our life. He transforms us through the power of His grace.
He's a God that heals; He's a God that forgives; He's a God that redeems; He's a God that transforms; and finally, He's a God that renews. David says it like this: "He gives me good things in my life. He fills my life with good things so that my youth is renewed like the eagles."
So, God is in the business of filling your life with goodness. A part of the journey of living in God's grace is lifting our vision to realize all the good things that are constantly happening around us. Our minds and our hearts are so trained to look at what is not good, all the things that are broken around us.
It is a journey spiritually to come back to, over and over again, with gratitude how He renews us. I went parasailing this summer; it was a lot of fun. It was another birthday gift that Stacy gave to me.
When we went parasailing, there were these huge birds. I'm not sure if they were eagles or not, but I'm going to believe by faith that they were eagles because I was looking down on them, and they had their arms like this.
What I noticed in these huge birds is that they would catch the wind, kind of like when you're parasailing and you catch the wind, and they would be lifted up not based upon their own strength but based upon the wind that was coming off the mountain.
What David is saying is that He gives lift, He gives strength, He gives power to my life. He renews me so that my strength is like the eagles, so that I can soar and I can walk in His presence. I can have strength for my life.
Now, if you look at your life and you ask, "Am I living in God's grace?" I think for so many of us, we would say, "I don't experience that kind of power in my life." Again, so often, there's this gift of God's grace, but we're not living with what's inside of that box. We're not experiencing it.
Part of the problem for us is that we're stuck often on a cycle of works. In our minds, we're working so hard to change ourselves. We're working so hard to earn God's favor, and the cycle of works does not work.
It begins when we try to earn God's grace. If you could imagine these boxes, we think, "Well, some of these boxes I pay for; some of these boxes I earn." So, when I order something on Amazon, I expect it to come when I pay for it, right?
It should come two to three days later or two to three hours later; it should be there immediately because I earned it. So, what happens when we think this way about God's grace is that not only do we try to earn it, but we start to expect it.
Like, "Why is there not more renewal? Because I'm working so hard. Why is there not more transformation? I am going to church in a hurricane, and my life is not changing." We start to expect, and then what happens with that expectation is that we begin to overlook.
So, God is doing good things, and we're overlooking, and we become bitter and frustrated. We're going to see this in Luke 15 as we journey through the older son that just expects the father to do good because he's done good to bless him because he's been the perfect older brother.
This cycle of works is exhausting; it is discouraging. Some of you today, you're living on a cycle of works, and God sent me here today to give you a new cycle to jump on. It's the cycle of grace.
The cycle of grace begins with receiving. It's a gift that we did not earn; it's a gift that we didn't pay for, but it is a gift that someone paid for, and His name is Jesus. He paid the price so that we could be forgiven. He paid the price so that we could be healed.
He's the one that made a way that God's grace could be distributed to the nations. He's the one that made a way that rich and poor, young and old could come together in a body called the church. If not for His grace, Paul says in Ephesians, "For it is by grace you have been saved."
It is a gift from God through faith. This is not from yourselves; it is a gift from God, not by works so that nobody can boast.
So, when you stand in worship and you're listening to music, perhaps some of you lift your arms; others of you, you're just watching other people. But when your arms are lifted in worship or you're focusing and singing these songs, it's not, "Oh God, what a great week I had! I didn't lose my patience once with the kids. I washed the dishes two out of seven nights this week. I showed up on time to work," blah, blah, blah.
There's no boasting in the presence of God because compared to His holiness, my depravity and my brokenness, there is infinite qualitative difference between us and God. So, no boasting in His presence.
What Paul is saying is that grace is a gift. Even the transformation of who you are is a gift from God. So, if you're not what you were, it's not something that you earn. So that nobody can boast, "For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ."
So, your life is a trophy of God's grace, displaying His mercy, His goodness, His kindness to the world, which God prepared for us to do in advance. It's by grace, and it comes by receiving through faith, believing that all of these things that we talked about are available for our lives by grace through faith.
You receive, and when you receive, the second aspect is to enjoy that grace. So, it's to live in the lavishness of God's grace. That's why at the end of this message series, we're going to have one huge block party at all of our campuses, and it's going to be a massive celebration as we talk about the celebratory nature of God.
There's something about enjoying, as the psalmist says in Psalm 34:8, "Taste and see that the Lord is good." Taste and see His kindness and His mercy.
So, when you go to the beach and you see a sunset, or you lift your eyes and you see a tree that was just beautifully created by the hand of God, you can look at it and say, "Oh, I'm so grateful for the billions of years of evolutionary forces that pulled this together and the combo of the gamma rays."
Or you could say, "Oh my God, you are wonderful, and you have created all things, and you are so worthy of worship."
"I taste and see your goodness all around me. Thank you for the beauty of the—I can't even begin to fathom in my mind what colors there will be in heaven, but you are so majestic, and there's nothing in this universe that is more beautiful and more wonderful than you are."
To taste and see when you're sitting with your daughter for a cup of tea, or you're walking down the street holding hands with your spouse, or you're there in a quiet moment and you feel the wind across your face, the goodness of God is to be enjoyed by the human soul.
The more that you encounter and enjoy the grace of God, the more grateful you become deep in your core. So, the freedom that you have and the joy and the presence of God that is around you, again, it's not something that we earn. We receive, and we're to enjoy it.
Then, as we enjoy it, we're to remember it over and over again. So, to recall the faithfulness of God, to remember His goodness.
I'll say this: in a broken world, when there's so much around us—there's divorce, there's loss, there's cancer, there are people that die young that shouldn't die—there's so much pain and sorrow in this world. How do you command your soul in the midst of so much grief?
I gotta imagine today, in a room this size and joining online, there's some of you, you are at the lowest valley of your life, and you're holding on by a thread. All the memories of what is not right are flooding your mind today, and God wants to fix your eyes to bring your memory or to bring you for the first time to the realization that you were not made for this world.
You were not created by God for earth; you were created for eternity to be in relationship with God. The good news of the message of Jesus is that not only did He die a death that we deserve to die, He conquered death. He came forth victoriously, and He is alive today.
He is crowned as King of kings and Lord of lords, and He is being worshiped. For all eternity, for those of us who trust in Him, we have the confidence that we will be with Him in heaven.
Sometimes that memory is to look back on these truths that you've been told in your heart, to bring your soul and command your soul. As Lamentations 3:19, I'll finish on these. Jeremiah is writing, and actually, I was reading these verses this week in my Bible, and right next to these few verses was March 2020, right in the midst of COVID.
I remember reading these verses and being so impacted in how Jeremiah commanded his soul. Listen to these words: "The thought of my suffering and homelessness is beyond bitter words or bitter beyond words. I will never forget this awful time as I grieve over my loss."
Some of you, that's where you are today; you're in a deep place of grief. But I want to remind you, as you look at my eyes right now, this truth from God's word is true for your life: "Yet in the midst of this, I will still dare to hope when I remember this truth: The faithful love of the Lord never ends, and His mercies never cease. Great is His faithfulness; His mercies are new every single morning."
So, I will say, "The Lord is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in Him." Again, command your soul today to put your hope in God. If He never did another thing for us, He has already done enough.
I want to invite you, challenge you, exhort you, encourage you today to receive this box of God's grace into your life by faith. Turn to Him and say, "God, I need your grace."
Now, I want you to look back through that list for just a moment in your notes, and I want you again to circle the place where you need God's grace. Circle the one that God is bringing to your mind.
Perhaps some of you, there's an area you've been trying to change, and you're doing it in your own power. Others of you, it's in the area of healing, and you're praying for a physical, emotional, maybe a spiritual healing. Some of you today, this is your day of salvation; this is your moment to put your trust in God and have your sins forgiven.
I want to say it one more time: Jesus died on a cross to pay the price for our sins so that we can stand holy and righteous before God. With a crown of thorns on His head, nails in His hands and feet, as His blood was spilled, it was spilled for you.
The penalty and the price of sin was placed on Jesus so that you can be free. So, the bondage, the weight, the concern of your sin—maybe you walked in with it today, but you don't have to walk out with it. You can walk out a new creation, free spiritually because of what Jesus has done for you.
You can do that right now in this moment. You can put your trust in Him and receive the gift of His salvation. Will you close your eyes and bow your head as we pray together?
As the Spirit of God is at work and stirring, some of you today is the day of your salvation. Today is the day you begin a relationship with God. In this moment, just tell Him, "God, I need your grace. Jesus, I believe that you died on a cross for my sin, and I believe that you conquered the grave. Please forgive me for my past. I trust in You in this moment."
As you pray that prayer, God changes us from the inside out. As you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth, He makes you a new creation.
In just a moment, we're going to invite you to let us know that you prayed that prayer and made that decision. Others of you, perhaps you just need an honesty of your heart to acknowledge before God, "I need your grace. I need your grace to transform me. I need your grace to give me lift and strength again. I need your grace to change the way I see my life."
God, give me your perspective on your grace for my life. Oh God, we thank you today that there is more than enough grace from your throne, that your mercy is new with every morning.
God, I pray that even as we go back about our weeks and we wake up on Monday and Tuesday, and some are in deep grief and sorrow and heaviness, God, that you would lift our vision to see beyond the sorrow, to see that you're with us in it. You're carrying us through it, and there is a day on the other side of it where your power, your grace will look back and say that you sustained us through it.
Thank you that we live for eternity. Thank you that our hope is not just in the circumstances of our lives changing, but our hope is in You, who have conquered the grave. You are alive today, and we put our trust in You. In Jesus' name, amen.
on Nov 05, 2023
