Grace Makes Us Valuable
July 20
One who loves a pure heart and who speaks with grace will have the king for a friend. Proverbs 22:11
We have a niece who is due to have a baby August 1. She Facebooked the other day that she was not going outside until the baby was born because 95 degree weather is no place for a pregnant woman! :) It is no place for a lot of us, so retreating to an air conditioned movie theatre is a great alternative to outdoor play. The movie The Tree of Life won the Cannes Film festival this year. Intriguing is a good word to describe this film. Two hours and nineteen minutes describes its duration and it certainly leaves you with a lot to talk about as you try to figure it out. I was captivated by some of the early lines on grace (lines were few in this film) by the female character, Mrs. O"Brien, who loses a son.
"The nuns taught us there were two ways through life-the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you'll follow."
"Grace doesn't try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries.
"Nature only wants to please itself. Get others to please it too. Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it. And love is smiling through all things."
"The nuns taught us that no one who loves the way of grace ever comes to a bad end."
"I will be true to you. Whatever comes."
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Check out these definitions of grace and relate them to your life.
Grace: unmerited divine assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification; a virtue coming from God.
Approval, favor; mercy, pardon; a special favor : privilege; an act or instance of kindness, courtesy, or clemency; a temporary exemption : reprieve
A charming or attractive trait or characteristic
I am not sure where I found the following passage on grace, probably an online devotional, but I liked it enough to file it away. It is an excellent summation of "grace". Whew,wee...I thank God for his grace each day!
"Grace is the most beautiful word in the Bible other than Jesus. Grace is why God loves us when there is nothing lovely about us. We are not loved because we are valuable. We are valuable because we are loved. 1 John 4:10 says, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” That, friend, is God’s amazing grace. We are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. I love Him for His grace. It is all Jesus. It’s not the church. It’s not good deeds. Amazing grace is in the Lord Jesus Christ. He loves you. He died for you."
The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you. 1 Corinthians 16:23
One who loves a pure heart and who speaks with grace will have the king for a friend. Proverbs 22:11
We have a niece who is due to have a baby August 1. She Facebooked the other day that she was not going outside until the baby was born because 95 degree weather is no place for a pregnant woman! :) It is no place for a lot of us, so retreating to an air conditioned movie theatre is a great alternative to outdoor play. The movie The Tree of Life won the Cannes Film festival this year. Intriguing is a good word to describe this film. Two hours and nineteen minutes describes its duration and it certainly leaves you with a lot to talk about as you try to figure it out. I was captivated by some of the early lines on grace (lines were few in this film) by the female character, Mrs. O"Brien, who loses a son.
"The nuns taught us there were two ways through life-the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you'll follow."
"Grace doesn't try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries.
"Nature only wants to please itself. Get others to please it too. Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it. And love is smiling through all things."
"The nuns taught us that no one who loves the way of grace ever comes to a bad end."
"I will be true to you. Whatever comes."
.
Check out these definitions of grace and relate them to your life.
Grace: unmerited divine assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification; a virtue coming from God.
Approval, favor; mercy, pardon; a special favor : privilege; an act or instance of kindness, courtesy, or clemency; a temporary exemption : reprieve
A charming or attractive trait or characteristic
I am not sure where I found the following passage on grace, probably an online devotional, but I liked it enough to file it away. It is an excellent summation of "grace". Whew,wee...I thank God for his grace each day!
"Grace is the most beautiful word in the Bible other than Jesus. Grace is why God loves us when there is nothing lovely about us. We are not loved because we are valuable. We are valuable because we are loved. 1 John 4:10 says, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” That, friend, is God’s amazing grace. We are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. I love Him for His grace. It is all Jesus. It’s not the church. It’s not good deeds. Amazing grace is in the Lord Jesus Christ. He loves you. He died for you."
The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you. 1 Corinthians 16:23
