Precious Grace
Grace is so amazing that most unbelievers and believers can't believe it! :-)
For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. Romans 1:16, The Christian Bible
Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound)
That sav'd a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
-John Newton
“There but for the grace of God go I.”
"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." 2 Corinthians 12:9-10
"For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone be found boasting. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." Ephesians 2:8-10
"That is the mystery of grace: it never comes too late. -François Mauriac (1885-1970)
"For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men." Titus 2:11
“The burden of life is from ourselves, its lightness from the grace of Christ and the love of God.” -William Bernard Ullanthorne (1806-1889)
“The growth of grace is like the polishing of metals. There is first an opaque surface; by and by you see a spark darting out, then a strong light; till at length it sends back a perfect image of the sun that shines upon it.” -Edward Payson (1783-1827)
“The law detects, grace alone conquers sin.” - Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430)
“Grace isn't a little prayer you chant before receiving a meal. It's a way to live.” The law tells me how crooked I am. Grace comes along and straightens me out.” -Dwight Lyman Moody (1837-1899)
“The motive and purpose behind the law ... is to make it clear exactly how much you must do and no more. Grace refuses to put a ceiling or a floor on concern for the neighbor.” -Joseph Fletcher
“To be able to live peaceably with hard and perverse persons, or with the disorderly, or with such as go contrary to us, is a great grace.” -Thomas À Kempis (C. 1380-1471)
“We cannot "psychologize" the grace of God. God's actions are outside and above our human sciences.” -John Powell
“When the mask of self-righteousness has been torn from us and we stand stripped of all our accustomed defenses, we are candidates for God's generous grace.” -Erwin W. Lutzer (1941- )
“A man can no more take in a supply of grace for the future than he can eat enough today to last him for the next 6 months, nor can he inhale sufficient air into his lungs with one breath to sustain life for a week to come. We are permitted to draw upon God's store of grace from day to day as we need it.” - D. L. Moody See: Deut 33:25; Psa 46:1; Heb 4:16
“Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.” –Bible, Galatians 5:4
“Grace is given to heal the spiritually sick, not to decorate spiritual heroes” –Martin Luther
“Grace is but glory begun, and glory is but grace perfected.” –Jonathan Edwards
“God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that can be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish one from the other”
-Reinhold Niebuhr (American theologian, 1892-1971)
“Grace is available for each of us every day - our spiritual daily bread - but we've got to remember to ask for it with a grateful heart and not worry about whether there will be enough for tomorrow.” - Sarah Ban Breathnach
“We're all stumbling towards the light with varying degrees of grace at any given moment.” -Bo Lozoff
“Grace be with you, mercy, and peace, from God the Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love.” -Christian Bible
“Grace is free sovereign favor to the ill-deserving.” -Benjamin B. Warfield
“The grace of the spirit comes only from heaven, and lights up the whole bodily presence. - Charles Haddon Spurgeon
For sov'reign pow'r reign not alone,
Grace is the partner of the throne;
Thy grace and justice mighty Lord,
Shall well divide our last reward.
- Isaac Watts
“The mother grace of all graces is Christian good-will” -- Beecher .
“God appoints our graces to be nurses to other men's weaknesses.” -Henry Ward Beecher
“God is no faultfinder, always looking for things to condemn in us. He estimates us at our best, not our worst.”
“God's grace turns out men and women with a strong family likeness to Jesus Christ, not milksops.” -Oswald Chambers (1874-1917)
“Grace is the good pleasure of God that inclines him to bestow benefits upon the undeserving. It is a self-existent principle inherent in the divine nature and appears to us as a self-caused propensity to pity the wretched, spare the guilty, welcome the outcast, and bring into favor those who were before under just disapprobation. Its use to us sinful men is to save us and make us sit together in heavenly places to demonstrate to the ages the exceeding riches of God's kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” -A. W. Tozer (1897-1963)
“Grace is given of god, but knowledge is bought in the market.” -Hugh Clough
“Lord I crawled across the barrenness to you with my empty cup uncertain in asking any small drop of refreshment. If only I had known you better I'd have come running with a bucket.” -Nancy Spiegelberg
“Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue. -Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (1888-1953)
“Men may flee from the sunlight to dark and musty caves of the earth, but they cannot put out the sun. So men may in any dispensation despise the grace of God, but they cannot extinguish it.” -A. W. Tozer (1897-1963)
“The grace of God is infinite and eternal. As it had no beginning, so it can have no end, and being an attribute of God, it is as boundless as infinitude.”
“A man is never so truly and intensely himself as when he is most possessed by God. It is impossible to say where, in the spiritual life, the human will leaves off and divine grace begins.” -William Ralph Inge (1860-1954)
“A man must completely despair of himself in order to become fit to obtain the grace of Christ.” -Martin Luther (1483-1546)
“A state of mind that sees God in everything is evidence of growth in grace and a thankful heart.” -Charles G. Finney (1792-1875)
“Abounding sin is the terror of the world, but abounding grace is the hope of mankind.” -A. W. Tozer (1897-1963)
“All men who live with any degree of serenity live by some assurance of grace.” -Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971)
“As heat is opposed to cold, and light to darkness, so grace is opposed to sin.” -Thomas Benton Brooks (1608-1680)
“As mercy is God's goodness confronting human misery and guilt, so grace is his goodness directed toward human debt and demerit.” -A. W. Tozer (1897-1963)
“Christ is no Moses, no exactor, no giver of laws, but a giver of grace, a Savior; he is infinite mercy and goodness, freely and bountifully given to us.” -Martin Luther (1483-1546)
“For grace is given not because we have done good works, but in order that we may be able to do them.” - Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430)
“Grace tried is better than grace, and more than grace; it is glory in its infancy”
-Samuel Rutherford
“Grace binds you with far stronger cords than the cords of duty or obligation can bind you. Grace is free, but when once you take it, you are bound forever to the Giver and bound to catch the spirit of the Giver. Like produces like. Grace makes you gracious, the Giver makes you give.” -E. Stanley Jones (1884-1973)
“Grace can pardon our ungodliness and justify us with Christ's righteousness; it can put the Spirit of Jesus Christ within us; it can help us when we are down; it can heal us when we are wounded; it can multiply pardons, as we through frailty multiply transgressions.” -John Bunyan (1628-1688)
“Grace does not destroy nature, it perfects it.” -Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)
“Grace grows best in winter.” -Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661)
“Grace is a certain beginning of glory in us.” -Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)
“Grace is an energy; not a mere sentiment; not a mere thought of the Almighty; not even a word of the Almighty. It is as real an energy as the energy of electricity. It is a divine energy; it is the energy of the divine affection rolling in plenteousness toward the shores of human need.” -Benjamin Jowett (1817-1893)
“Grace is God himself, his loving energy at work within his church and within our souls.” - Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941)
“Grace is love that cares and stoops and rescues.” -John R. W. Stott (1921- )
“Grace is the central invitation to life and the final word. It's the beckoning nudge and the overwhelming, undeserved mercy that urges us to change and grow, and then gives us the power to pull it off.” -Tim Hansel
“Grace comes into the soul, as the morning sun into the world; first a dawning, then a light; and at last the sun in his full and excellent brightness.” -Thomas Adams (1612-1653)
“Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. From that divine tear and from that human smile is derived the grace of present civilization.” - Victor Hugo
“I do not at all understand the mystery of grace - only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.” -Anne Lamott
“Grace is the love that gives, that loves the unlovely and the unlovable.” -Oswald C. Hoffmann
He giveth more grace when the burdens grow greater,
He sendeth more strength when the labors increase;
To added affliction he addeth his mercy,
To multiplied trials, His multiplied peace.
-Annie Johnson Flint (1862-1932)
“He who has not felt what sin is in the Old Testament knows little what grace is in the New. He who has not trembled in Moses, and wept in David, and wondered in Isaiah will rejoice little in Matthew, rest little in John. He who has not suffered under the Law will scarcely hear the glad sound of the gospel.” -R. W. Barbour (1900- )
“I need thy presence every passing hour; What but thy grace can foil the tempter's power?” -Henry Francis Lyte (1793-1847)
“If God wants you to do something, he'll make it possible for you to do it, but the grace he provides comes only with the task and cannot be stockpiled beforehand. We are dependent on him from hour to hour, and the greater our awareness of this fact, the less likely we are to faint or fail in a crisis.” -Louis Cassels (1922-1974)
Words on an epitaph:
“As Copernicus, the great astronomer, was dying, a copy of his great book, The Revolution of the Heavenly Bodies, was placed in his hands. But it was not his brilliant work that was on his mind. Instead he directed that the following epitaph be placed on his grave at Frauenburg: "O Lord, the faith thou didst give to St. Paul , I cannot ask; the mercy thou didst show to St. Peter, I dare not ask; but, Lord, the grace thou didst show unto the dying robber, that, Lord, show to me." There is no one who cannot come to God under those terms.”
One man wrote of John Calvin after he had discovered the importance of Jesus' death on the Cross: He was no skeptic, no heretic, no immoral man, but as far as we know, a pious Roman Catholic until the brighter light of the Reformation burst on his mind from the Holy Scriptures and showed him a more excellent way. "Only one haven of salvation is left for our souls," he said, "and that is the mercy of God in Christ. We are saved by grace -- not by our merits, not by our works." See: Eph 2:4-5; 2 Tim 1:8-9
The negro boy down in my Southland years ago, wanted to join a church. So the deacons were examining him. They asked, "How did you get saved?" His answer was, "God did His part, and I did my part." They thought there was something wrong with his doctrine, so they questioned further, "What was God's part, and what was your part?" His explanation was a good one. He said, "God's part was the saving, and my part was the sinning. I done run from Him as fast as my sinful heart and rebellious legs could take me. He done took out after me till He run me down." My friend, that is the way I got saved also. - J. Vernon McGee, Romans, Vol. 1.
But for Grace, my soul had perished,
Withered as the desert sand;
Gone to shadows, and tormented,
But for Grace's perfect plan!
But for God's unceasing Mercy,
But for Calvary 's sacrifice;
I had wandered, blind and thirsting,
Fell to Satan's grim device.
But the blessed blood of Jesus,
Shed upon that cruel tree;
Called me from the ling'ring shadows,
Saved my soul, and rescued me!
But for Grace, O Grace perfected,
But for love's undying flame;
I had never hoped in Jesus,
Ne'er had even known His name!
-Carlos C. Beam See: Rom 5:15; Eph 2:8
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Lyrics to Amazing Grace by John Newton (1725-1807)
John Newtonwas the captain of a slave ship. On May 10th, 1748 returning home during a storm he experienced a "great deliverance." In his journal he wrote that the ship was in grave danger of sinking. He exclaimed "Lord, have mercy upon us!" He was converted, though he continued in the business of slave trading. However, he demanded that the slaves he transported be treated humanely.
Newton wrote the song "How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds" while waiting in an African harbor for a shipment of slaves. Later he renounced his profession, became a minister, and joined William Wilberforce in the fight against slavery.
Lyrics to Amazing Grace
Amazing grace how sweet the sound!
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear,
The hour I first believed!
Through many dangers, toils and snares,
We have already come;
'Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.(Lead me home!)
The Lord has promised good to me,
His word my hope secures;
He will my shield and portion be,
As long as life endures.
Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease;
I shall possess, within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.
The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun forbear to shine;
But God, who call'd me here below,
Will be forever mine.
Some versions of the hymn include an additional verse added by Harriet Beecher Stowe as it appears in her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin:
When we've been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We've no less days to sing God's praise
Than when we'd first begun.
Some versions include the verse:
Shall I be wafted through the skies,
on flowery beds of ease,
where others strive to win the prize,
and sail through bloody seas.
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Grace is always a humiliation for the ego. Salvation is always a defeat for the ego; because I want to feel, "I've done something to accomplish this, haven't I?" That's the only way the ego feels satisfied and competent.
At some point, we must realize that salvation is absolutely, objectively, metaphysically, universally a FREE GIFT, and all we can do is RECEIVE IT. It's free for the taking, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with being worthy of it. Adapted from The Cosmic Christ
Pure Grace: One soul less than all saved isn't pure grace. Gary Amirault
One who thinks they are better than Hitler or Stalin has yet to drink deeply of the grace poured out by Jesus, the Chosen One. Gary Amirault