Daily Devotions

The driving element of being a discipleship is surely the Grace of God found of Jesus Christ; but what kind of Grace? Bonhoeffer stresses in his writings what Grace is not, “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

The writer of Ephesians speaks of the riches of God,s grace in this way:- “he shows for all time the tremendous generosity of the grace and kindness he has expressed towards us in Christ Jesus. It was nothing you could or did achieve—it was God’s gift to you.” (2:7)

One writer revealed the inestimable riches of God’s grace in terms of that which he would give to his family. He wrote, “ I have now disposed of all my property to my family. There is one thing more I wish I could give them and that is faith in Jesus Christ. If they had that and I had not given them a single shilling, they would have been rich; and if they had not that, and I had given them all the world, they would be poor indeed.”

After centuries of handling and mishandling, most religious words have become so shopworn nobody's much interested any more. Not so with grace, for some reason. Mysteriously, even derivatives like gracious and graceful still have some of the bloom left. 

The grace of God means something like: "Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It's for you I created the universe. I love you." 

There's only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you'll reach out and take it. 

Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too. 

May God, our glorious Father,

open the eyes of your heart,

so that you might see 

the hope to which he is calling you,

the richness of the inheritance he has prepared for you,

and the power that is at work among you.

Go in the grace of God! Amen