"Growing In Grace Together”

That’s not a bad way to characterize grace. One of the best-known definitions of grace is only three words: God’s unmerited favor. A. W. Tozer expanded on that idea by saying, “Grace is the good pleasure of God that allows him to bestow benefits on the undeserving.”

The key word in what have said is this, “UNMERITED” – grace, completely undeserved and therefore it leads to the conclusion that grace is in essence a free gift given to us by God through Christ.

ILL: A man visited a woman he knew to be in great financial need. He visited with a generous gift to help her with her expenses. He knocked at the door. She heard the knock, panicked and hid so no one would know she was there. The next weekend he told her about his visit. She said, "I heard you knock, but I did not realize it was you. I thought it was my landlord collecting the rent I could not pay!"

Let that sink in for a moment. The man came desiring to give, but she mistook him for someone coming to take. So often God is mistaken as one looking for something from people, when the fact is that he is the one giving gifts to people.

So many religions in the world today are geared to think, "Here is what you must do for God." In Christianity, that is turned around. Our message is, "Here is what God has done for you!" That's grace.

LET’S PRAY

Let’s read Ephesians 2:4-9

4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, lest anyone should boast

HERE ARE SOME CRAZY STATS ON GRACE

1?How many gallons of water are in the ocean?

Answer: 3.519 x 10²º gallons of seawater in the ocean. That is 3.612 x 1 with 21 zeros.

2?How many stars are in the known universe?

Answer: 70 sextillions (7 followed by 22 zeros) was calculated by a team of stargazers based at the Australian National University.

3?How many grains of sand are in the world?

Answer: 7,500,000,000,000,000,000, or seven quintillion five hundred quadrillion grains of sand. 75 with 17 zeros...

Even if some of these answers are a little off, here is my point: God’s grace is much much bigger than all these numbers!

EXAMPLE OF GOD’S KIND OF GRACE

ILL: If I borrowed Bill Gates’ credit card for just 24 hours. I had both his and mine in my pocket. Visit a fancy store with some restraint(his), Town center Mall(his), local car dealer (HIS), buy a second home (for sure HIS). Someone might stop me in the middle of all this madness, ‘Boy you sure are rich!’. Not at all but you are seeing are someone’s riches on display.

HERE IS ANOTHER GREAT DEFINITION OF GRACE

ILL: George Stanberry to a group of Bible college students: "If you leave this service today and see a needy person on the street and give him a dollar, that is unmerited favor. He did nothing to deserve it. But if you leave here and go to your car and find a man breaking into your car to steal your radio, and you give him a dollar, that is grace, because that is the opposite of what he deserves."

That is what God is interested in: His riches on display in our lives.

What better time as Christian then right now. To display this kind of Grace under these kinds of circumstances. If ever there was a time to display God’s grace these days are it. (cookies to neighbors)

Let’s look at three kinds of grace.

1. Growing Grace

The Apostle Peter tells us of our need to grow in God’s grace so we don’t fall into the error of sin. How do we grow in God’s grace, I think the Apostle Paul speaks to this the best in his letter to the Ephesian church?

Eph 2: 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, lest anyone should boast

So how can we grow in grace....

YOU GROW IN GRACE WHEN ----

?WE FEEL SAD & depressed but WE CHOOSE JOY

?WE FEEL FEAR but WE CHOOSE to have FAITH