Sneak Peek

Sara and I head out today for a little weekend getaway to celebrate our one year anniversary.  It's been a great first year and I look forward to a great weekend in Austin.  Sara is such a blessing in my life.  I can't imagine sharing it with anyone else.  As I mentioned earlier, here is a little sneak peek into the sermon I preached last weekend on Real Life Grace: 

What does grace in real life look like?  I think 1 Peter provides us with ways in which the grace of God can be “fleshed” out in our daily lives.  We participate in and become dispensers of the grace of God when we pray with and for people, when we love each other deeply, when we offer hospitality without grumbling, and when we use our gifts that God has given us to serve others.  However, by no means are those intended to limit the abundant and overflowing grace of God.  Real Life Grace takes many forms.

Grace in real life might be a family caring for a one year old with a catheter and double diapering during his six week recovery from surgery because his pregnant 24 year old mother has only been out of prison a few months and lives several hours from the hospital.  It’s sharing life with a loving spouse who is patient and understanding even when you feel undeserving.  Grace is experiencing the miracle of birth or looking down in response to the tugging on your pant leg only to find the huge grin of a child and the words “I love you daddy” or “I love you mommy.”  It’s loving people…regardless of situation or circumstance, regardless of background, race or economic status.

In reality, we receive and dispense the grace of God in so many ways, more ways than we can count.  To live as a people marked by the grace of God means that we are called to pour out that same life giving grace into the lives of others on a daily basis—in our words and in our actions.  As Christians, it’s who we are.  We can’t separate life in Christ from living out the grace of God because by his very grace we are given new life in Christ!  To live as the redeemed is to break forth into a fallen world with the message of redeeming grace.

Have a Blessed weekend!