Having completed month one of the Race, and now almost two, I feel as though I am in a state of being renewed not only in my spirit, but also in my mind. For example, last month was a huge wake up call to the spirit realm. I didn’t think much of spiritual warfare as an actual battle or something to be constantly aware of until then. It was a pretty significant phenomenon throughout the month that it brought to life parts of the Bible that I didn’t pay much attention to before. Last month held the first time I saw a little girl have a dark spirit in her, the first time I locked eyes with an elder and felt my spirit fighting against his in a temple, and the first time I saw people revolve a good majority of their lives around the attempt to maintain peace with spirits that will never bring peace. By seeing all of this happening around me it illuminated how blessed and free I truly am to be following Jesus. It’s a beautiful choice I get to make every day. Yet, a lot of times I get wrapped up in the logical side of following Jesus instead of just allowing Him to love me freely and with grace.
During our debrief at the beginning of the month we had a session on deconstruction and reconstruction. We were given the direction to think on what God is showing us deep down (deconstructing) and what He is reconstructing in us. After some reflection, I wrote down the words “wrestling through grace” without really thinking about it or knowing what it meant to me. I remember sitting in that session going through in my mind what I have done in my past and all the mistakes I have made. It didn’t add up in my head how God can still be so full of grace towards me. It was a weird state where I believed I had been forgiven for those sins, yet I couldn’t comprehend the grace that comes after forgiveness.
Then a few days after that at church I heard the pastor say the term grace meaning “to show favor” in Greek. I instantly was reminded of the words I wrote down a few days prior and was shocked that this pastor randomly stated that during worship. It also brought me back to the verse I wrote about in a previous blog Ephesians 2:7 where God points to us as examples of His kindness and GRACE.
AND if it wasn’t clear enough, the last song we sang in church that morning was grace to grace…. God is so cool and intentional.
All in all, I am here getting close to finishing up month two trying to figure things out with God about what it means to freely accept His grace every day by reconstructing what I have understood about Him. God’s grace and human grace are very different and I think He wants to show me a new way of understanding what His grace towards us looks like and how to walk in that freedom. It’s a lot that I am processing and working through, but it’s going to be so worth it!
