simply, grace

I am sometimes overwhelmed by God's grace. It's a concept I don't understand, and in my pride, I have a hard time grasping what it really means to be covered by His grace. I found myself feeling really weak recently, and in my wandering, I came across some well-known passages in the bible about weakness. Over and over, I read how Christ's strength overflows in my weakness. This is where grace amazes and overwhelms me. I cannot for the life of me grasp how big His love is. I am a logical kind of person. Logically, when I screw up or show my weakness, I deserve nothing. However, instead of nothing, I get more than enough...I get grace and I am made whole. The deeper my pit of insufficiency goes, the more His grace and strength is poured in. That makes no sense, yet it is. Worldly logic is so upside down, yet I fall into the trap of trying to fit God into a small box built from my limited understanding of grace and love. Hallelujah that He won't stay in my little box.

I am so overly logical that when it comes to my feeling insufficient, I googled "grace of God" simply in attempt to find commentary to tell me what to think and how to respond to His grace. It turns out, the only way I can really respond is to just bow down to His bigness. In my google search about God's grace (seriously, I literally googled it), I came across some great definitions. I think this is my absolute favorite:

"Grace is God's unmerited favor. That is, grace is God doing good for us that we do not deserve. In the Bible, grace and mercy are like two heads of the same coin. Mercy is God withholding judgment or evil that I deserve; grace is God giving me blessing or good that I do not deserve. Because of God's mercy, I do not receive the judgment of God against my sins; because of God's grace, I receive eternal life and a promise of heaven though I do not deserve them. Both mercy and grace come to me though the Lord Jesus Christ." (from http://www.learnthebible.org/what-is-grace.html)

Wow. I'm not gonna lie, even having grown up in the church and having been a Christian for quite some time, it still amazes me to be reminded of His grace. When life is chaotic and nothing makes sense, He still is. I deserve nothing, yet I have everything. I am nothing, and He is my everything.

I'm not even sure what the point of this blog post was other than to just revel in the basic nerdy analysis of God's grace. I am where I am and have what I have simply by the grace of a wonderful God. Amen.