For all that is joyous and truly freeing about living a redeemed life, there is an equally pervasive weightiness that we experience in the most mundane moments of daily life. You know what I'm talking about.
It's the stuff that weighs on your mind even after you watch the fun movie, go out for coffee with a friend, or get a good workout in at the gym. It's the everyday struggle of living as a fallen person, with other fallen people, in a fallen world. It's the rub of disobedient children, misunderstanding co-workers, or relationships in need of reconciliation. It's everyday...in our homes, while we work, among God's people. It's the point at which our redemption reality intersects our "already and not yet."
Paul Tripp summed it up very succinctly for me this weekend at the conference I attended at my church:
"God will take you where you never intended to go in order to produce in you what you couldn't achieve on your own."
He shared, in the most poignant of ways, that "it is never an interruption when our eyes see or our ears hear the sin of another person. It is never an interruption; it's always GRACE."
- It's grace when our children bicker, because we have yet another opportunity to point them to the loving rest of our Savior.
- It's grace when our spouse loses his temper, because it is God's gift that we might exercise forgiveness and encouragement.
- It's grace when we experience hardship, because it is Christ who gets the glory for sanctifying us THROUGH the pain.
It is all grace. It's uncomfortable grace.
It's uncomfortable because He is not interested in simply relieving the difficulties we face in relationships or elsewhere; he desires to redeem us through them.
What difficulties are you experiencing that you never intended for your life?
Those very difficulties are the exact circumstances in which God INTENDS for you to realize your own weakness and acknowledge his strength...his sufficiency...his redeeming power.
I've been thinking on these things all weekend. I've been considering what makes me happy and what gets me down in relationships...with my husband, with my children, with my family and friends. What brings me the greatest joy in relationships is not usually the opportunity I have to be long-suffering; it is when I have to suffer the least.
I'm under conviction about my expectations for ease and comfort. I'm under conviction about how interrupted I feel when others around me sin (and how blind I can be to my own). I'm under conviction about what I expect God's grace to feel like in my daily life. I'm finding grace in the everyday, all over again.
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Now let's link up in community...
Welcome to GraceLaced Mondays, a link up dedicated to sharing any and all blog posts by like-minded lovers of grace--God's grace! Grace is found in the everyday when you are intentional about taking note of it...and I invite you to share your story, great or small, of how everyday moments are full of Grace.
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