God Is Happy for Us to Regift His Gifts Part 1
Regifting! How often have you done it?
Some say it is sensible: If you already have it, or don’t need it, share it with someone else. Some say it is inappropriate: It shows lack of appreciation for the person who gave it to you.
God says He deeply desires for you to regift his foundational gift to you: Grace.
Hebrews 4:16 invites us: “Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” His throne is made of grace and he offers us grace in our time of need, which is all the time.
But what is grace?
Grace is always hard to define—a little nebulous, imprecise, jello-like.In the dictionary, it is defined with words such as favor, goodwill, kindness, forgiveness, charity, love, mercy, clemency, pardon, leniency, reprieve.
In a biblical lexicon we see this: Favor of merciful kindness by which God, exerting His holy influence upon souls, turns them to Christ, strengthens them, increases them in faith, knowledge, affection, and kindles them to the exercise of Christian virtues.
Grace is God’s avenue for presenting gifts to us. Scripture tells us that gifts have been bestowed on us by the grace of God, delivered by the Lord Jesus and are continually poured out on us and in us by the Holy Spirit. Some of these “grace gifts” are: mercy, redemption, sufficiency for every need, incomparable riches, encouragement, strength, growth and the very abiding, indwelling presence of God’s Holy Spirit.
Do we experience grace as a way of life?
Worship leader Josh Bales recorded a song I love called “Only the Sinner.”
It’s a song about grace.
“Only those who have no alibi...only those who cannot hide their sin... Jesus saves.”
You see, grace is a gift. It was paid for with the incomprehensible price of the death of the Son. Then it is offered freely to you, to me, to everyone.
We only access that grace as we see our need for it. It is a gift that must be received. If I offer you a gift, it becomes yours only when you accept it, receive it.
If we keep offering alibis—reasons that we are worthy, proof that we are good, excuses for our little sins, with no admission of our utter neediness—then God’s grace is still inaccessible, out of our reach.
It is often hard to come before our God, admitting our weakness, our need, our impurity, our unworthiness, our vileness.
Yet it is that humbling of ourselves, confessing our sin, and turning from our own way, that releases the outrageous, abundant, lavish, FREE grace of God to cover us, fill us, sustain us, free us, lift us, encourage us and strengthen us.
Hard as it is, I often have to bring my alibis to the feet of Jesus. When I finally give them to Him, He pours His grace all over me.
His grace flows through us
He extends unending grace. He loves us and accepts us and keeps His welcoming arms open to us.
But the gift is not like the trespass. For if by the one man’s trespass the many died, how much more have the grace of God and the gift which comes through the grace of the one man Jesus Christ overflowed to the many. (Romans 5:15) This amazing gift of grace is our to keep—and to give away. As we live in that grace, it overflows to many. As we regift it to others, day by day, moment by many, the joy and freedom will multiply in our lives and in the lives of those we share it with.
May God’s abundant grace flow through you lavishly.
What about you? How could you regift the grace of God?
C2017 Judy Douglass
In two weeks we will look at some ways we can regift God’s grace.