Hallelujah, grace like rain falls down on me
Hallelujah, all my stains are washed away
Lyrics by Tod Agnew
What is grace? According to the dictionary, Christian grace is the love and mercy given to us by God because God desires us to have it, not because of anything we have done to earn it. My bible describes it as: God’s free and unmerited favor toward sinful humanity. It is different from justice or mercy. Justice is getting what we deserve. Mercy is not getting what we deserve. Grace is getting what we do not deserve. A recurring theme of the New Testament is grace. The gospel message is all about grace. We can’t earn our way into heaven God has freely offered us the gift of salvation. No amount of works will get you closer or farther from God.
Something I’m learning while being on the field is grace. As Christians we must give and receive grace frequently: to ourselves, to others and, to let God give us grace.
Giving grace to myself is very difficult. As a perfectionist I desire everything to be perfect and when it’s not, there are consequences. However that’s not what God says. He says that when we mess up, He will welcome us with open arms. When we sin and ask for forgiveness He immediately wipes the slate clean and we are white as snow in His eyes, and his view of me is the only one that matters.
Another way I’m learning to give myself grace is in my body image. Quite honestly I did not want to share this part of my journey but God has called me to share it. My first month of the Race we did manual labor 6 hours a day and because of that I didn’t gain weight, in fact I lost it. But while we were in Nicaragua and here in Rwanda we eat mostly carbs and do ministry working with people, not manual labor. Because of this my body is changing, I have curves in places I’ve never had before, my clothes are a little more snug, and it makes me uncomfortable. But after asking God what he says about what I see in the mirror, he spoke loud and clear. He said Liz, THE MIRROR DOES NOT MATTER. ONLY I MATTER. And then he said think for a minute Liz, your vanity should not get in the way of sharing the gospel. A few pounds and you being uncomfortable is nothing, NOTHING compared to the pain that My Son suffered for you. Because of you being here and spreading the gospel, people are BEING SAVED. You can gain a few pounds for the sake of people’s souls being saved. And so I just have to have an eternal perspective, a mindset that says think about the salvation of others first.
We must also give others grace. Living in community can be really hard sometimes. We say things we don’t mean, words come out wrong, we are humans and therefore mess up all the time. There is conflict and confrontation and we make mistakes. Therefore we must be givers of grace. We must extend grace to our fellow teammates and to choose to assume the best about others, or even better assume nothing at all. Learning how to communicate effectively is also difficult and so we must learn to give grace when our teammates and squad mates struggle to communicate in a way we understand. We must give each other the grace to get through the days and months. We must give grace when our teammates have off days and are homesick. It’s something we must all learn to do.
We also must let God give us grace. God’s grace is like the rain that often falls here in Rwanda. It’s a rain that soaks our souls. It flows over our skin drenching us from head to toe: completely unavoidable because the rain falls at the most random of times. God’s grace drenches is even though we don’t deserve it. Even if we try to walk or run away from it, we can’t. Instead we must learn to dance in the rain. Take joy in the grace he has given us, We can’t hide from his unending grace.
And so here in Rwanda God is teaching me grace: for myself, others and how to receive it. It’s a hard lesson to learn but one so incredibly valuable.
Ephesians 2:8-9
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, this is not from yourselves. It is a gift from God, so that no one can boast.
