God Knows You
We often don’t seek the grace that we need, yet we receive the grace that we don’t deserve.
The entire story of scripture and the cosmos is the story of God. It is about the God who doesn’t abandon people, but instead the God who closes the gap. He is God who wants to be known.
The story of Abraham is about knowing God, and knowing that God knows you. Growth in the Christian life is about growing more and more convinced – not only that God exists; not only that you know Him, but that He knows you; that He loves you and cares for you.
Through his victories and his failures, Abraham is coming to know the character of God, and is being convinced that God knows and loves him.
The Spiral Staircase
We all have sins that seem to reappear over and over again in our lives, but though the struggle and the failures, we are coming to trust God’s grace more and more.
The goal of the Christian life is victory in the midst of struggle. It is through the victories and failures coming to know God; coming to trust in His mercy; coming to know that He loves you; to know that He is at work in your life.
God is shaping your life like a potter shapes clay.
God has given you a new life and a new nature. And it may sometimes feel like you are going in circles, but instead you are climbing a spiral staircase and God is making you more and more into who He has made you to be.
Opportunities to Trust
You are loved by the God who will never let you go; the God who fulfills his promises to you even through your failures; the God who doesn’t deal with you according to your iniquities; the God who remains faithful even when you’re faithless.
Don’t waste your failures – use them as opportunities to place your hope, trust and confidence in God’s mercy.
God loves you so much that He loves you just the way you are, even with your failures and faults. But He loves you so much that He doesn’t leave you there. He has a plan and purpose for your life to shape and form you more and more into the image of Jesus.
Real change first happens, not at the level of behavior, but at the level of affections.
God’s promises to each of us are not fulfilled because we are faithful or worthy; God’s promises are fulfilled because of His unmerited grace and favour.
The clearest picture of God at work in your life is not seen in your successes, but in your failures.
God’s Grace Is All You Need
When God wanted to show who He was, He didn’t come as a mighty, conquering hero; He came and put himself on a cross – a place of brokenness and seeming loss. He’s the God who used the death of His Son to redeem the world, so of course He’s going to use the brokenness in your life to show his glory.
If you are feeling broken and weak today, consider that that might be a good thing. When God is all you have, God’s grace is all you need.
Watch as Ray David unpacks Genesis 20 and shows us the Gospel through the life of Abraham.
