Grace

I have been thinking a bit about grace lately. I was at my cousins’ graduation party a couple of weeks ago and as part of the afternoon we sat down together in their living room and sang some worship songs. It was a very special to have the chance to worship with family, friends, and some of their friends that I had never met before. One song in particular spoke to me. We were singing one of the new versions of Amazing Grace when one of the stanzas grabbed hold of my mind. It is a song that is all about grace but there are two lines in it that have now taken a very special place in my heart.

“Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved.”

It struck me as odd that grace is spoken of as teaching our hearts to fear. I began to think about that. What did it mean? How has grace taught us to fear and how does that contribute to making grace so amazing? I thought back to a little book called the Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer. There is a portion of that book in which Tozer describes the process of following hard after God. One important aspect of this is that God sought us and loved us first. Without his prevenient drawing we could never find Him. God is so big that He can go completely unnoticed. I heard a guy once explain it by telling the story of an ant. Ants can’t really comprehend us; we are too big we don’t fit into their world. Therefore if I wanted to stop an ant from doing something that would hurt it I could not just put my hand out and say stop, the ant would not get the message, it would just continue on by crawling over my hand or going around it. If I really wanted to stop the ant I would have to become something the ant could understand, an ant.

God like wise speaks to us in words and ways that we can understand. Even to the point of becoming just like us to show us the relationship that is available to us and the danger that lies ahead if we do not enter into that relationship for which we were created. God teaches us to fear Himself, we no longer view God as this old man in the sky or as a myth or fable, we see Him in all of His glory and power and that is a terrifying reality for someone on the outside looking in. There are still times in my life that though I have embraced that relationship with Him, I still find myself living in fear of Him. His plans and purposes and power are so big and beyond our understanding that is it quite easy to begin to fear what He may do. His eternal perspective is so great that He could look at Job, a man who had lost everything for no apparent reason, and say Job who are you to question me? “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the world?”

Now I have never had all of my possessions mysteriously taken away or had children killed though I had sacrificed diligently for my sins and theirs. I haven’t even tasted the bitter loss of a loved one, but I can look at my life and see times when I wonder why. Yet God still calls me to trust Him and move forward and that can be scary at times. But that fear is a sign that I know God, His grace has taught my heart to fear, it has shown me Him and drawn me into a relationship with Him.

Now the second part of that stanza is so beautiful. While we must learn to fear God, a fear that is made possible through His grace, His grace also relieves that fear. I don’t live in constant fear of God, and at those times when I do find my self afraid of what He might be doing I look at the rest of my relationship with Him. I see how He has always been faithful and my fears are quieted. Like a small child being held in the arms of a parent during a thunder storm my fears are soothed in the loving arms of my savior. Grace is getting what we don’t deserve, at least that is the definition that you learn in Sunday school, and we definatlly don’t deserve to be comforted in the arms of a loving savior, but we are. His grace allows me to trust Him, to follow His leading, to take my fears and lay them at His nail pierced feat, and to step forward with confidence. Grace truly is Amazing.