We’ve often heard grace defined as the unmerited favor and blessing of God, yet I believe grace is much more than this. In my opinion, grace is everything that Christ is to us in our times of suffering — power, mercy and love — to see us through our afflictions.
At a moment when Jesus was physically vulnerable, the devil brought his first temptation. “When he had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward he was hungry. Now when the tempter came to him, he said, ‘If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread’” (Matthew 4:2-3, NKJV).
There’s no sin in being hungry. So, what’s the issue here?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian, pictured the Christian like someone trying to cross a sea of floating pieces of ice. The Christian cannot stand anywhere too long, otherwise he sinks. He cannot rest anywhere while crossing except in his faith that God will see him through. After taking a step, he must watch out for the next. Beneath him is the abyss, and before him is uncertainty, but always ahead is the Lord firm and sure!
I believe in healing. I believe in affliction. I believe in “healing afflictions.” Any affliction that keeps me from going astray, that drives me deeper into God’s Word, is healing. As Psalm 119:67 says, “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word” (NKJV). God’s most gracious healing force spiritually and physically can be afflictions.
I want to talk with you about the word ‘unrelenting.’ It means undiminished in intensity or effort, uncompromising. To be unrelenting is to stick to a determined course and to not be persuaded by arguments.
“Hezekiah prospered in all his works. However, regarding the ambassadors of the princes of Babylon, whom they sent to him to inquire about the wonder that was done in the land, God withdrew from him, in order to test him, that he might know all that was in his heart” (2 Chronicles 32:30-31, NKJV).
Over the years, I have read many pitiful letters from believers who are still bound by sinful habits. Multitudes of struggling Christians write, “I can’t stop gambling… I’m in the grips of an alcohol addiction… I’m having an affair, and I can’t break it off… I’m a slave to pornography.” In letter after letter, these people say the same thing: “I love Jesus, and I’ve begged God to free me. I’ve prayed, wept and sought godly counsel. But I just can’t break free. What can I do?”
When the Lord takes up residence in us, he brings with him all his power and resources. Suddenly, our inner man has access to God’s strength, wisdom, truth, peace, everything we need to live in victory. We don’t have to cry out to him to come down to us from heaven. He’s already in us. Paul tells us just how powerful we are in Christ.
After Jesus was taken up to heaven, the apostle John received a magnificent vision of glory. He said, “I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light” (Revelation 21:22-23, NKJV). In other words, the only temple in heaven is Jesus himself.
In a confusing and contradictory-seeming passage, God gave the Old Testament patriarch Abraham the land of Canaan “for an everlasting possession” (Genesis 17:8, NKJV).