Tapping into the
Grace of God
August 22, 2005
Jesus performed amazing miracles. He opened the
eyes of the blind, healed lepers, cast out evil spirits, and
raised the dead. In each of these instances, Jesus did for
others what they couldn’t do for themselves. At its core, that’s
what Christianity is about. It’s about God doing for us what we
can’t do for ourselves. Just as we can’t earn forgiveness and
eternal life, so we can’t overpower sin and selfishness. We must
rely on Christ to accomplish that work in our lives.
When we marry, we enter into a relationship that
Christ wants to empower. Apart from him we’re a sailboat without
wind, a plane without a prop and a car without an engine. He
alone possesses the strength to break the chords of selfishness
so we can love one another. We must ask for his grace during our
time of need. We must ask him to enable us to act selflessly . .
. to serve when we want service . . . to give when we want to
take.
Such prayer activates our faith and unleashes the
power of God’s grace in our lives. Just off the deck of our home
stands a massive old growth fir tree. Years ago half of it broke
off leaving a jagged tooth-edged top. During the early morning
hours of summer turkey vultures use the top of the tree to sun
themselves. They look like statues as they spread their massive
black wings—six-feet across—lift their featherless pink heads
and absorb the warmth of the sun.
Once rested, they leap from the tree and soar into
the sky. If the wind currents are right, they’ll glide higher
and higher covering miles of space without flapping their wings.
Even ugly turkey vultures look graceful when they fly. Of
course, those giant birds don’t create the air that lifts them
heavenward. Before they jump, unseen air moves around, over and
under them. But the ever present air has no lifting power until
they jump. Only then will the birds soar above the pull of the
earth. Similarly, our faith in God enables his invisible grace
to lift us above the gravitational pull of selfishness. We must
spread our wings and leap into his ever present and invisible
grace—trusting him to do for us what we can’t do for ourselves,
allowing him to enable us to love our wives more than ourselves
and to daily put their needs before our own.
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