God’s Grace: Moving from Knowledge to Experience
Do you ever find yourself knowing the truth about something, but struggling to actually live it out in your everyday life? Many of us can relate to this experience, especially when it comes to our faith. We may learn about God’s grace and love, but until we submit to it and allow it to transform us, we cannot truly experience its power in our lives.
We may learn about God’s grace and love, but until we submit to it and allow it to transform us, we cannot truly experience its power in our lives.
If we don’t rest in His grace and allow it to penetrate our hearts and our deepest beliefs, grace will just become another great thing we have stored up in our brains that has no practical impact on how we live.” So how do we move from knowledge to experience when it comes to God’s grace?
First, we must learn about and accept the reality of God’s grace toward us. Know and believe what God tells you. But information is not enough.
We also need to allow God’s grace to change our understanding of God and our relationship with Him. It’s an unfamiliar word, but we need to “submit” to His grace. We need to allow God to love and forgive and accept us on His terms.
We need to “submit” to His grace. We need to allow God to love and forgive and accept us on His terms.
It’s easy to “believe” in God’s grace until we really need to believe it for ourselves. Some of us must remind ourselves that we are forever accepted in Christ, even when we feel like we’ve blown it one too many times. We must trust Jesus for this and submit to Him, even if our emotions tell us differently. Likewise, we are wise to submit to the truth that God is gracious and merciful to us in Jesus Christ, even when we feel like He’s mad at us.
As we grow in our appreciation of His grace, we also realize that mature people choose to do the right thing, even if they don’t have to. We don’t have to love or forgive or serve and obey in order to be saved or loved by God. We don’t have to do the right thing, but we choose to do it anyway.
Grace is a not license to sin but the opposite. If we truly believed we could forsake Jesus Christ and He would never turn His back on us, would that actually tempt us to leave Him and pursue sin? No, if we submit to His grace and love, the last thing our hearts would look to do is turn away from Him.
If we were truly convinced that God’s love is so devoted to us in Christ that we could do unthinkable things and still be loved and forgiven by Him, it is highly unlikely that this would motivate us to do those unthinkable things.
If we were truly convinced that God’s love is so devoted to us in Christ that we could do unthinkable things and still be loved and forgiven by Him, it is highly unlikely that this would motivate us to do those unthinkable things.
Instead, it would motivate us to live a life that honors and glorifies Him, out of gratitude for the grace He has shown us.
So let us not just know about God’s grace, but let us submit to it and allow it to transform us from the inside out. Mature in the grace and knowledge of Christ that we may live a life that reflects the transformative power of grace, and invite others to do the same. This may help to deepen your own understanding and appreciation of God’s grace, as well as help others to experience it for themselves.