Yesterday we were looking at the ‘amazing grace’ of which we are recipients, not just the one off event when I was born again, but the amazing grace which is transforming me day by day. As in John Newton’s wonderful hymn, there is the – ‘Amazing grace that saved a wretch like me’ – and there is the grace ‘that brought me safe thus far’, and the grace ‘that will lead me home’.
Today’s thought is a simple one but it’s just so profound, and I hope it will provoke some of that overflowing gratitude in your heart, and on your mouth. It is simply this; that this ‘Amazing Grace’ will never ever run out. At the beginning of the pandemic we heard lots about stockpiling. The fear that some essential, (and not so essential) things might run out and disappear from the shelves in our shops, caused people to buy far more than they could use of many items.
Fear does that to you. You have to hoard and protect yourself from possible future lack. Well today let us thank God that there is an abundance of grace. There is no need to stockpile, and you can’t stock pile grace even if you wanted to, it’s a moment by moment thing. It’s about walking with the Lord day by day, hour by hour, rather than storing it up. I wonder if this is why the ‘big meeting euphoria’ only lasts a little while, unless we take what we have learnt and feed it to ourselves daily.
I believe that we can’t store up grace because the Christian life is about ‘walking’ with the Lord in friendship and relationship, it is not about ‘charging ourselves up as if we were a phone or an ipad. There is however always grace available when we need it. Corrie Ten Boom recalls how her father answered her question about how she might handle future events like death or suffering, and he replied that in the same way that he would give her the ticket for her train journey when they reached the station, even so God would give her the grace that she needed when the time would come.
This is why there is no point in worrying about how you will cope with tomorrow’s challenges because you are anticipating them without the grace to handle them. That will come tomorrow when it is needed. Jesus also told us not to be anxious about tomorrow saying, ‘So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself.’ Matthew 6:34.NASB.
Whether it is grace to handle the challenges of the day, or the grace that we need constantly at work in our lives to transform us into the likeness of Jesus, it is still true, as we have noted before, that our ‘God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.’ 2 Corinthians 9:8.
Our thanksgiving today is threefold. Thanksgiving firstly that there is an abundance of grace. Grace that has saved us and grace that is working in us that transformation as life unfolds for us day by day. It is never ever going to run out. Secondly thanksgiving for the grace that provides moment by moment what we need to meet the various challenges that every day brings, and finally the thanksgiving that keeps us walking closely with the Lord moment by moment, enabling us to receive all that grace, as He imparts it to us by His Spirit, in a never ending flow.
