Full of Evidences

Christine Wyrtzen Devotional

ABUSING A GRACIOUS GOD

 

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?  Romans 6:1-2

Think of the most gracious person you know.  How easily was it to accept what they offered?  Perhaps you’re the kind of person that squirmed, trying to put a limit on what they wanted to give.  Or, perhaps in the folly of immaturity, you took their gifts for granted and felt entitled to more of the same.

No matter what a man or woman gives, it is nothingness compared with the gracious gifts God gives.  Whose offering can exceed the forgiveness of sin, the removal of condemnation, and the start of a new life that begins now but lasts forever?

Paul asks a redundant question.  Should we continue to sin and offend such a gracious God?  May it not be!

The stumbling block for any of us is that Satan has disfigured the face of a gracious God.  When suffering doesn’t cease, when we don’t get the answers we want to the prayers we whisper, we assume God isn’t really on our side.  Gracious?  Hardly.  And yet Isaiah said that ‘God longs to be gracious to us and He waits to have compassion on  us.’ Is.30:18

The Old Testament saints and the New Testament apostles all made the grace of God a recurring theme.  They did this despite their hardships.  On what did they base their experience of grace?  On God’s longsuffering nature, on His willingness to forgive without regard for whether or not they would continue to make the same mistake again, on His many provisions of strength, on His ability to change the lives of people.  They knew that heaven was ‘not now’. They were ambassadors to a dark world.  Ah, but on the inside?  God was gracious to transform the inner landscape of their soul so that they were full of evidences of His grace and glory.  I, too, have tasted and I want so much more.

No matter how big my appetite is for You, You are gracious to exceed what I ask for.  I vow to hate sin more because of who You are.  Amen