Amazing Grace

Amazing Grace

2 Corinthians 8:7 KJV

1. God’s Amazing Grace for Spiritual Warfare

We are engaged in a great spiritual battle. Satan’s cannot outright defeat us, but he will work on us until we lose our first love if we allow him.

Great sorrow can stun, and it can make you forget the best source of consolation. A little blow can cause great pain. Extreme distress can rob you of your wits and make you forget your source of relief. Pain is remembered and the healing promise is forgotten.

Has your ear grown dull through grief?

Has your heart forgotten because of heaviness?

Does your affliction seem more real than God?

Does the black sorrow that covers you eclipse all the light of heaven and earth?

Let me remind you that God is still with you. It is written, “We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose” (Rom. 8:28). He will keep His Word!

He has also said, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, nor shall the flame scorch you” (Is. 43:2).

Depend on it; He will sustain you. Brush those tears away, anoint your head, wash you face, and be of good courage (2 Sam. 12:20). The Lord will strengthen your heart.

The truth is this, victory is ours through God who renews, refreshes, and empowers his children with grace.

2 Cor 8:7 KJV

Therefore, as ye abound in every thing, in faith, and utterance, and knowledge, and in all diligence, and in your love to us, see that ye abound in this grace also.

1. Understanding God’s Amazing Grace

A. Essentially, grace is a gift. It is unmerited favor. It is something which we have not earned but is given due to the benevolence of the giver. There is an acronym, which I have seen which is a good way to think of grace.

G- God’s

R-Riches

A-At

C-Christ’s

E-Expense

B. Grace releases divine power from God.

C. Breaks The Chains That Bind your Life Through the Power of Jesus Christ!

D. The grace of God is glue that mends Man’s broken life’s.

2. Grace Gives Life

Great Christians are not the ones who achieve the most, they are the ones who receive the most, from Grace

Renewal, empowered lives, maturity, and growth

A BIG GOD

A little girl, on the way home from church, turned to her mother and said, "Mommy, what the preacher said this morning confuses me." The Mother said, "Oh? Why is that?" The girl replied, "Well, he said that God is bigger than we are. Is that true?" "Yes, that’s true," the mother replied. "He also said that God lives within us. Is that true too?" Again the mother replied, "Yes." "Well," said the girl. "If God is bigger than us and. He lives in us, wouldn’t he show through?"

3. Danger

1. Grace is taken for granted, A hog will eat acorns under a tree day after day, never looking up to see where they came from. Some people are like that

B. Cheap Grace Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, without church discipline, communion without confession.

C. Blocked by indifference

An estimated 500,000 tons of water rush over Niagara Falls every minute. On March 29, 1948, the falls suddenly stopped. People living within the sound of the falls were awakened by the overwhelming silence. They believed it was a sign that the world was coming to an end. It was thirty hours before the rush of water resumed.

What happened? Heavy winds had set the ice fields of Lake Erie in motion. Tons of ice jammed the Niagara River entrance near Buffalo and stopped the flow of the river until the ice shifted again.

The flow of God’s grace in our lives can be blocked by cold indifference.

D. FLESH FIGHTS BY INNER STRENGTH ALONE.

Many a person after years of struggle, comes to a point in their lives where, desires resurface, the old nature revives. Sin surfaces. They fall victim to Satan’s suggestions.

Why? Man uses his inner strength instead of God’s empowering grace

Gal 3:3 NIV

Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?

4. God Abundant Amazing Grace is available to all

Electricity like grace cannot be stored

First, huge shovels dig house-sized scoops of lignite coal. Pulverized and loaded onto railroad boxcars, the coal travels to a generating plant in east Texas, where it is further crushed into powder. Superheated, this powder ignites like gasoline when blown into the huge furnaces that crank three turbines.