Amazing GRACE

Last night I was planning a lesson for my youth group at church. I stumbled across the idea of grace and ran with it. While trying to figure out what exactly to tell these kids (6th through 12th grade), I was thinking to myself "self, what's so amazing about grace?" Really though. It doesn't sound that special.

HOLY COW. What a joke. 

I get so desensitized to the fact that I am showered in grace by a good, precious, and loving Father that I don't always remember that grace is THE COOLEST THING EVER. Jesus loves us the way God intended us to be. Not for how we turned out: sinful and flawed. He sees through the filth and crust of degeneration...He sees the divine original within us - the rawness that God created us as.

When we embrace this grace, we are changed! God can change ANYONE... as Trip Lee would say, He can CINDERELLA you! When we are changed, we are given new eyes with which to see the world. Instead of offering a judgmental eye to those in sin, what if we saw a REAL person who our Father loves. Instead of identifying others with their sin, what if we saw the sin as something ALIEN, something that doesn't belong to them?

Jesus was able to love because He loved right through that nasty layer of mud. No matter how thick. Can't we do that too?

Luckily for us, God dispenses gifts, not wages. But what does that mean, really? It means that there is nothing we can do to make God love us MORE - no amount of spiritual workout or repenting, no amount of knowledge gained, no amount of crusading on behalf of righteous causes and righteous living. This also means there is nothing we can do to make God love us LESS - no amount of lies or racism or pride or adultery or lust or even murder. Grace is darn near the coolest thing ever.

Hope you enjoyed my VERY FIRST BLOG!! That's right...I'm a blogging virgin! Well..not anymore I guess =]

Over and out.