By the grace of God I am what I am.

I’m wondering if those could be your words . . . indeed!  Do stop and consider those words carefully.

‘Guess it all depends, Friend 

By the grace of God are you who you are?

Do you understand the import of the grace of God?

Paul did.  It changed him from a hard-hearted, bigoted, judgmental man to a man whose heart broke with the things that broke the heart of God. 

Does your heart break with the things that break God’s heart?

Grace humbled Paul.  Grace made him great.

It is given freely

         but must be taken a hold of firmly~

Do you walk out a life of grace?

  Paul did.  He realized he didn’t have to earn his salvation, and yet, because

  of what he had been given, he served God with all of his being.  I guess you

  could say he ‘loved the Lord with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength and

  loved his neighbor as himself.’  Yeah, you could say that. 

A prayer for grace:  Heavenly Father, please teach me about your grace.  Slow me down to learn from you.  Remind me to sit in your presence.  Transfer your grace to me, Lord God.  Amen.

Popeye said, ‘I yam what I yam and that’s all that I yam.’ He owned that, but he also let us know we couldn’t expect too much of him, since he was, after all, just Popeye the Sailor Man.   Oh, let’s not settle . . .

As Paul grew in grace, he wrote, “We are God’s ‘poiema’” – a Greek word that means ‘workmanship’ or ‘work of art’.  Soren Kierkegaard prayed, “Now, with God’s help, I shall become myself.”  We will not be the self we were intended to be without walking in the grace of God.

"Earth’s crammed with heaven,

    And every common bush afire with God,

       But only he who sees takes off his shoes—

          The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.”  Elizabeth barrett browning

Grace allows us to see.

Well, that statement of Paul’s came within the context of several verses:

"For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.  But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect.  No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.  Whether, then, it was I or they [who preached], this is what we preach, and this is what you believed."1 Cor. 15.9-11

And so we see that Paul was moved to humility because of who he had been, and what he had done.  He ‘owned his stuff’, and then accepted God’s grace and forgiveness.  He learned to walk in the grace of God, and it changed him.  And as we know, he gladly worked, and worked hard(!) to advance the kingdom . . . all because of grace.  Is it possible that we do not ‘get’ the grace of God until we give it away?  ‘Until we serve others with it?

Take a moment and think about your grace walk.

Are you who you are meant to be with regard to the grace of God in your life? What a powerful notion!

By the grace of God I am what I am, Paul said.  Are You?

Christine