It’s amazing to me how much I still try to do on my own when it comes to healing. In spite of powerful encounters with the love and healing of God, I still find parts of myself trying to manage me.
Can you relate?
There’s still places in my heart trying to grasp the magnitude of grace. Grace is a foreign concept to our natural minds. Our human mindset is riddled with constant evaluation of what is right, wrong, good, bad, acceptable or not acceptable etc. We each have a sometimes unconscious, internal scale evaluating what our performance should look like in a given situation.
This is part of the system of “death” the Bible reveals to us in the book of Romans. Even science is now confirming that our stressed out attempts to be the best can be very harmful to our physical health.
It is to this mess our Father, the Son and Holy Spirit have come to be the answer to it.
In Psalm 46:1 we read that God is our “ever-present help in time of need”. Lately, I’ve felt like Holy Spirit has emphasized this verse within the context of our struggle with sin and brokenness.
We know He wants to be our refuge in trials, but what about with sin?
Unfortunately, harmful theology has taught some of us that God really doesn’t like us and when we mess up it’s definitely our job to get it cleaned up before He “sees it”. When we inevitably can’t get ourselves “cleaned up”, we hide.
When we hide we do not realize we are hiding from the help we desperately need. The book of Romans chapters 5 and 6 are unashamedly explicit in their portrayal of the superabounding, unmeasurable grace of God towards us.
“And this free-flowing gift imparts to us much more than what was given to us through the one who sinned. For because of one transgression, we are all facing a death sentence with a verdict of ‘Guilty!’ But this gracious gift leaves us free from our many failures and brings us into the perfect righteousness of God—acquitted with the words ‘Not guilty!” (Rom.5:16 TPT)
Grace not only covers but empowers. It is a sin-conquering gift from God.
In our fallen state we tend to favour a system we think we can control. Therefore, a foundation built of condemnation actually makes more sense to us than one that is built on Christ. Under our human system we measure, evaluate, create standards and then enforce punishments when standards are not adhered to. That system, call it religion if you like, never came from God.
His system, grace, opposes everything about ours.
We find it hard to let anyone help us. Somewhere inside a belief system constructed with the help of shame, tells us that to need is to be weak and inappropriate.
The Cross tells us different.
To need is to be human. Our need is a grand opportunity to meet with the One our souls are made for.
Our healer, provider and grace-giver.
He is a fountain of acceptance, rest from our system of control, and the love we desperately need. He calls to us, “just let me help you.”
Don’t hide from help dear one. All of heaven is eagerly awaiting our invitation to be the help we need to overcome and live abundantly in the life He has created for us
“So then, we must cling in faith to all we know to be true. For we have a magnificent King-Priest, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who rose into the heavenly realm for us, and now sympathizes with us in our frailty. He understands humanity, for as a man, our magnificent King-Priest was tempted in every way just as we are, and conquered sin. So now we draw near freely and boldly to where grace is enthroned, to receive mercy’s kiss and discover the grace we urgently need to strengthen us in our time of weakness.” (Heb.4:14-16 TPT)
Leave a Comment