Practical Christianity-Fact/Fiction

Is Gods Grace Really Free?

Yes Matthew 7:7-8 tells us so "Ask and it will be given to you;seek and you shall find;knock and the door will be opened to you.(8)For everyone who asks receives;he who seeks finds;and to him who knocks, the door will be opened."

It is one of my favorite passages it tells us God's grace is there for the taking all we need due is ask.

Personally when I went to war with God in 1991, he did not withdraw his grace from my life. Instead he heaped blessing upon blessing on me, after 5 years I called a cease fire. It took 5 more years for me to return his love. Never did he withdraw from my life no matter how I cursed him or went against him, he stayed true to me as now I stay true to him.

Yes! You illustrate the point I'm trying to make.

I believe most of us as believers have far too narrow a view of grace--only "super Christians" really get grace, God only gives grace to people who earn it through overt Christian behavior, there's a big part of me I must keep hidden because if I show it to God, He'll run away or condemn me. Attitudes like these are what keep us from experiencing the full grace of God, I believe.

Anne64, you let God slather you with His grace at a time when, by many people's standards, you should either have been burning in Hell or crawling on your hands and knees crying for forgiveness.

From what I've seen in the parts of the Body of Christ I've experienced, we as believers like to pay lip service to grace but not many of us fully surrender to it. (I include myself in this group.)

Surrendering to grace is a terrifying thing because it means we surrender control of our economy of values. This means our entire human-based system of reciprocity ("I do for you so you have to do for me," i.e., a contract instead of a covenant.)

Your five year war with God should have earned you a mighty kick in the ass from God, yet He did not, and loved on you instead. There are those who can't handle this because they have locked God into a box.

Surrendering to grace means we approach God on the same level as the worst sinner we can imagine, that none of our good works and righteousness mean squat.

You're misrepresenting God's word. We don't "ask" for grace. Your own words below bear that out. When you were "warring" with God, did you ask for His grace? And He gave it anyway? How totally unlike Him if you are required to "ask" for it.

"GRACE" IS NOT FREELY GIVEN IF YOU HAVE TO ASK FOR IT.

I do not believe I was misrepresenting God's word. I did not say the only way to receive God's grace was to ask. I merely said ask and it will be given. Maybe a better way of saying it should have been to misquote Matthew and say ask and you will know.

As for when I was warring with God, no I did not ask for His grace nor did I accept it.His grace is always there but we DO have to reach out and take it and sometimes the reaching is the hardest part.

You are right I should have receive a swift kick and supposed Christians are put off when I give testimony as to his work in my life.

When I say war that is what I mean. I left Church taking my children with me.I cursed God and all his ways that I thought were cruel and unjust. I never could bring myself to denounce him but I could sure rail against him. But he just kept on loving me. I was that 1 lost sheep that he left the other 99 safe in the pasture to go and find.They say he never gives you more than you can handle and I have learned that is true because when he saw I was not using the tools I had to cope and that I was destroying myself and my family he used His love to bring me back.

He blessed me with a new husband, two more beautiful children that we were told it would be next to impossible to have.The youngest of which was delivered on the 5th anniversary of my late husbands death. I say delivered because he was still born and my heart stopped on the OR table. Yet against the odds that the Doctors said were 2% of 2% we are both here and my son has no brain damage and above average IQ despite doctors telling us over and over again to expect braindamage due to how long he was without oxygen.

It took me 5 more years to surrender to Grace and to His will. I am no better than a any other sinner God knows this and still he loves me. He sees that I struggle will surrendering my will to "THY will be done" through his love I have learned to bend my knee and accept His grace and guidance in my heart and my life.

I swear sometimes I think I am living in a lunatic asylum. For me the words God, grace, salvation, sin, heaven, hell are imaginary concepts signifying nothing at all.

I don't mean this unkindly. I am NOT an atheist. I believe in a creator God whatever that means, but not a God who can or would interfere in it's own creation.

Whenever I hear, read words spoken by loving people who attach such powerful feelings to God, Jesus, heaven, grace, I am thrown for a total loss.

I don't get it. What are you talking about? These are just abstract concepts. Of course, I know you can devote your life to abstract concepts. Billions of humans have done it and are doing it.

I was baptized, educated, married as a Catholic. I never once recall having faith. I had/have experience and my personal relationship with experience has nothing at all to do with a personal God.

My wife and I have a library of hundreds of books on Christianity. I have read them all. I simply don't get it. In order to be a Christian one must at least believe in the resurrection of Christ, the Son of God. That for me is a stopper right there.

People like you (about 2 billion) and people like me (billions counting most in China) live in two different worlds to say the least.

I am NOT saying you are wrong at all. I just don't get it.

Grace, to me, is receiving a gift you don't deserve. If someone were to take the time to pick out a very expensive, unique gift that you would really want, and if there was no way for you to ever repay that person even if you could, well, that's grace. God thought enough of each one of us to provide a gift for us to be saved from an eternity of separation from Him, and all we have to do is accept the gift. There is no way to repay the gift, and there is no repayment required anyway. We accept the gift with gratitude.