Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Too Bad for Grace

Anonymous asked: Can you ever be too bad for grace: if you cut yourself, or if you don't eat or if you look at porn, or if your actions might have made someone have a miscarriage or something really bad like that stuff are you too bad?

Your question tugged at my heart!  You can never be too bad or too broken for grace.  If you read my testimony, you’ll see that I’ve struggled with one of the issues you mentioned above (cutting) and more.  I have dealt with self injury, depression, suicidal thoughts, anxiety, not trusting God, doubting Him, denying Him, jealousy, anger, and so many more things that made me feel like it would be impossible for God to ever love someone as broken and sinful as me.

Thankfully, it’s not up to my own righteousness to earn God’s grace, or I would never measure up to His holiness.  Because I can’t word things well enough on my own, I’ll share with you some of what the Bible says that immediately comes to mind.

Ephesians 2:8,9 says, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith- and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God- not by works, so that no one can boast.”

Titus 3:5 says, “He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.”

Romans 11:6 says, “And if by grace, then it cannot be based on works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace.”

Nothing you can do can be enough to make it into right standing with God.  Nothing you do can be enough to make God stop loving you.  NOTHING.  Remember some of the famous men and women in the Bible who were given grace?  Paul’s goal before he knew Jesus was to murder as many members of the Christian church as he possibly could.  David, a man after God’s own heart, committed murder and adultery.  Rahab was a prostitute.  Peter denied knowing Jesus three times.  All of these people were given grace because of God’s love for them and only because of God’s love for them.

Joel 2:32 says, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”  Romans 8:1 says, “Therefore, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

The only way to receive right standing with God is through faith in Him.  His grace is big enough to cover every sin.  And His love is so big that He longs to call you His own, to adopt you as His child.  He loves you.

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