Grace

[Printable version]
[Also published in Nuggets for the Needy]

Mavis M. duCille

Omega Message – June 1986

Grace is undeserved favor– God to man.

Enoch found grace with God – He walked with God and God took him as he desired.

Moses found grace with God – talked to God face to face and lived – received the ten commandments written by the finger of God, and led a miraculous life from Egypt to Canaan; died and was taken away of angels, and did not see corruption.

Elijah the prophet found grace with God; lived a life of power and spiritual authority, was taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire.

Jesus Christ our great benefactor, the very author of Grace, with all the faculties of God fully developed in him, showed us what it meant for man to live by the grace of God. He was the embodiment of Grace, and peace and love. In Him we beheld the glory of God; He is the grace of God.

God dealt with the patriarchs individually according to His promises. He dealt with Israel, His choice as a nation, under the law, according to His promises. The prophets stressed repentance in their prophetic writings and encouraged Israel to take advantage of the GRACE which God always makes available to man. They stressed repentance as an inward work which renews the heart, as a gift of God’s Grace.

God’s Grace envelops mercy, loving kindness, goodness and forgiveness. His AMAZING GRACE includes the Divine Power to equip man to live above his fallen state, thus fulfilling the mission of Jesus Christ. He said he came to seek and to save that which was lost.

God, therefore, exonerates himself from blame because GRACE is His free gift to everyone. Accept it and you have life; reject it and you are lost. Grace is from the begining to the end of our Salvation. Justification is through Grace. When one comes to Jesus in repentance, God, in His Grace treats him, the guilty one, as if he had never sinned. Here (not in yourselves, Eph. 2:8) Not of ourselves, but the will of God. Eph. 1:13 speaks of Consecration and Baptism as the next step in grace – a provision for the conquest of sin in the believer’s life. It is therefore necessary that one must be at an AGE and STAGE to recognize sin.

No Grace – No Gospel:

Every step in the Christian life is due to GRACE. Romans 8:28-30 shows there is a calling, a justification, and glorification, with a responsibility in between; obedience being the moral attitude.

Hebrews 4:15-16 “For we have not an High Priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the THRONE OF GRACE, that we may obtain MERCY, and find GRACE TO HELP IN THE TIME OF NEED.”

So many times we Christians fail so miserably within our own selves to our loved ones and the world in general, forgetting that the whole creation groans and travails, waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God. Before the world can have that witness, we the people of God, must overcome the nature within us that is contrary to HIS DIVINE NATURE.

There is a work to be done in the soul – the mind; the emotion; the will; the Desires (this is man), by daily exercise, which necessitates getting to the throne of Grace – i.e. Forgive that you might be FORGIVEN.

The trouble with many Christians is that sin does not appear EXCEEDINGLY SINFUL. The Holy Spirit has not been allowed to permeate the soul to do the purifying work to which the heart and conscience bears witness. They always seem to be either excusing themselves or accusing one another; therefore, anger, malice, strife, malice, wantonness, love of pleasure, divisiveness, cunningness, impatience, bitterness, selfishness, pride and ego which exalts self almost or altogether above God, gear, contention etc., fruits of the flesh in general. All these are enmity against God, having one’s personality organized in the wrong direction.

Because the flesh lusts against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh, God makes provision for man in mercy and grace – that we might find the grace needed for the situations of each day.

It matters not how much one prophesies, preaches, impart healing, teaches, or is involved in any church activity, one needs to find GRACE to help when accused, robbed, beaten, reviled, cursed or caused pain or grief, the believer does not draw from the abundance of words in one’s own vocabulary or one’s own strength, but from the abundance of GRACE from the THRONE OF GRACE. This will glorify God and produce much overcoming strength.

Matt. 5:22 shows that under the Grace, anger is equated with murder, and a wrong look is equated with adultery.

To stand on one’s pride and depend on, and use one’s strength is frustrating the GRACE OF GOD, whereby we are S-A-V-E-D – Saved from being born in sin and shaped in iniquity – being saved from our own self nature, and to be saved from corruptible to incorruption, and from mortal to immortal.