Pastor Elwin Ahu
September 19, 2010 - W1038

Today we are talking about God’s grace. Let’s start with a small game. You need to find a partner for this game. It’s a word association game. I first say a word, and then you say your word that is in association with my word to your partner. Here is the first word – “Democrat”. What does it mean to you? Second word is “Republican”. Next one is “Portuguese pastor”. How about “Pake pastor”? Another one is “God’s love”. The last one is “God’s grace”. What does God’s love mean to you? And what does God’s grace mean to you? We have a lot of ideas associated with these words and can discuss about them. But “God’s grace” is the hardest one to describe. God’s grace is so important and essential in our Christian faith but it is not necessarily easy to define it with our own understanding. Even though we have been using the word “grace” in a lot of context, we might not have been able to define God’s grace well. We might even be devaluing “grace” by our insufficient definitions too.

“But He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Cor. 12:9-10 NIV)

I am sure a lot of us will be puzzled about why God didn’t remove the thorn for Paul, and what does it mean by “God’s grace is sufficient for you”? Surely no one likes to be insulted, or in any persecutions or hardships. How can we be delighted in such pain and suffering? If we don’t understand what Paul was saying, it is because we don’t understand God and His grace. If we understand the potential and power of God’s grace, we will learn through our sufferings and how to lean on God’s sufficiency through His grace. A thorn can be in different forms in our lives nowadays. It can be a physical thorn like sickness. It can be emotional like depression. Our thorns can also be the people who are around us all the time and they give us pain. There are thorns in many ways in our lives, but I would like to challenge you with these questions: Is God’s grace sufficient for you when those problems are never resolved after all that you have tried? Are you able to lean on God’s sufficiency and find rest in Him even though the thorns in your life remain unresolved?

After Paul learned what grace was through suffering, he found rest and peace in Him. For us, we could be suffering now because of troubled families, bad bosses, financial issues, worrying about how our future would be, or fear of failures. However God’s grace is sufficient for us, and it is truly sufficient when He promises that it is. Are you ready to live on the truth of God’s words when the reality hits you and when all sorts of problems surface in your life? A lot of times we believe in theories but we would bail out when the reality hits us. So the turning point is whether we are truly leaning on God during our sufferings. Before we can lean on His grace, we have to learn the basics of what God’s grace is. The first thing we need to know about God’s grace is that He gives His grace to us freely, it cannot be earned.

1. It can’t be EARNED

We can never earn God’s grace. God gives us His grace for free. We never deserve His grace but He gives it to us for free because He is love. It has been difficult for us to grasp God’s grace because it is contradictory to what the world has been teaching us. We have been taught about working hard to get rewards, to receive earnings and to be successful. We were trained to prove our worthiness and abilities in order to earn rewards. We would complain if we don’t receive what we think we “deserve” after our hard work. We expect to only get what we have paid for, and subconsciously accepted that there was no free ride in this world. But God’s grace is totally different from what we learn in this world. His grace is always a free gift and we don’t need to do anything to earn it, as the bible said, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.” (Eph. 2:8-9)

He loves us and gives us grace freely. We only need to accept the gift of God into our hearts. Nothing can make God love us less or give us less grace, because He loves us always unconditionally. He loves us not because of how big our faith is; he doesn’t count how many sins we had or how many times we prayed. God’s grace to each of us just never changes. We do not deserve anything; we have what we have in our lives because of God’s grace, not because of our works.

In our society, we would be loved only because we have done well, but God is not like us, He loves us regardless. When we understand that our heavenly father always loves us no matter if we score or not, it gives us power and strength to tough out the difficulties in life regardless whether we succeed or not at the end. We can certainly press through all the hardship because we know that God is always there to love us and His love empowers us. I learned this from my son. My son played in a football game one time and failed to score. I lectured him on the way home and he was so upset at me afterwards the whole night. After shower that night, I came up to him and gave him a big hug, I told him to forget about what I said in the car, asked him to just enjoy life and have fun because I love him no matter whether he scores or not. His attitude then changed totally. He became very excited and now looks forward to each game though he is still not good at it yet, because he knows that his father loves him always regardless. But we cannot get these lessons of God’s grace from reading a book. The best way to learn God’s grace is through our response to problems in life.

2. It’s learned from your response to life’s PROBLEMS.

God was more interested in Paul’s response to the thorn in his flesh instead of removing it. It is written, “…for this reason, …there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me—to keep me from exalting myself! Concerning this I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me.” (2 Cor. 12:7-8) God never took the thorn away for Paul. We might think that it was not fair to Paul as he was so close to God but God didn’t remove the thorn for him. Paul implored the Lord three times regarding the thorn to be removed. God did not remove it because He wanted to teach him His grace and let him experience it through suffering. God actually used Paul to show us our typical response to problems in life. Often times we would want God to just fix our problems instantly and we miss out on the lessons. We would want to ask God to remove the problems, or even the people causing us problems. In other words, there are three kinds of response:

·     AVOIDANCE;

·     BAND-AID;

·     GOD-CENTERED;

Avoidance is our first typical response in our daily lives. We don’t want to face problems and trouble, and ask God to take away the problems from us without facing them at all. The second typical response is to ask God to put a band-aid on our problems, and to fix the problems instantly regardless of what God wants us to learn. These two are self-centered solutions, and we only see the problems and our feelings and do not care about anything else - even God. We don’t want to face troubles or hard feelings because we just want to be “happy”. However “happiness” is not going to build character in us. Life is not about pursuing worldly happiness. God is more concerned about our holiness than our happiness. If we don’t want to face our problems and want to be self-centered, we would miss the important lessons God is teaching us and then we would become a person who lacks hope and character. And this is what Satan wants to see in us. Satan would not be worried about Christians praying, but he would want to trap us into being self-centered, praying for self-centered needs and not building character.

“…we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us.” (Rom. 5:3-5 NIV) God’s grace is all we need when we are in trouble. We don’t need to overcome the challenges, or have the troubles to be removed. However, the power of God’s grace will not be fully released until it is received first and then converted into action.

3. It must be CONVERTED into action.

“My grace is enough; it’s all you need. My strength comes into its own in your weakness. Once I heard that, I was glad to let it happen. I quit focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ’s strength moving in on my weakness…I just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become.” (2 Cor. 12:9-10 MSG)

Paul understood what God was doing through him, and he learned to convert God’s grace into actions. Our Pastor Roy, who is our prison chaplain now, received God’s grace while he was in prison. He converted this grace into actions and started a prison ministry and Angel Tree Camp Agape ministry. He passes on God’s grace to the people who were in his situation through prison ministry, and to the children of those who were in prison through Camp Agape. Through these ministries, Pastor Roy witnessed that God can turn around anyone’s hurt and use it for His glory. There was a boy in the camp. He was hurting and the mentors were having a tough time with him. But the boy stuck it out and stayed at the camp. He learned about forgiveness and accepted Christ into his life. He came back to the camp this year to be a youth mentor and passes on God’s grace to others.

God’s love and grace never depends on what we do. Are you ready for the world now with God’s grace in you?

Discussion Questions:

1. Can we earn God’s grace?

2. What kinds of response are self-centered and destructive?

3. What is the right response to life’s problems?

4. How can we release the full power of God’s grace after receiving it?

5. What action would you make today to pass on God’s grace to others?