Grace defined

One thing I love the most about Power to Change, the missions organization that we work for, is the focus they have on the people and giving them time to invest in their relationship with God as a higher priority than getting things done! Such a priority is set that we have to take a "day with the Lord" every month where you can do no work and it's just unstructured time to connect with God, the reason we do all that we do! In all honesty we all do better when ministry and talking about God is an outflow of our love for God and not something we are just doing! We are blessed!

We had one this past Monday and my favourite thing to do is to get out of the house, away from my family and list of things to do and hang out at Starbucks with a great drink, music in the background and the ability to just focus on reading and writing!

My goal was to read all of Ephesians and focus on the family relationship part at the end and do a little study with that, but...I didn't get that far. I was once again struck by the idea of grace and the gift from God! So I never got past chapter 2!

I encourage you to go read Eph 2 it's so full! I started doing some studies on some of the words and co-relating verses. Here is a highlight of what I was struck by.

First off here's the dictionary definition of grace

Grace
noun

1.

elegance or beauty of form, manner, motion, or action: Wewatched her skate with effortless grace across the ice.Synonyms: attractiveness, charm, gracefulness,comeliness, ease, lissomeness, fluidity. Antonyms: stiffness,ugliness, awkwardness, clumsiness; klutziness.

2.

a pleasing or attractive quality or endowment: He lacked themanly graces.

3.

favor or goodwill. Synonyms: kindness, kindliness, love,benignity; condescension.

4.

a manifestation of favor, especially by a superior: It was onlythrough the dean's grace that I wasn't expelled from school.Synonyms: forgiveness, charity, mercifulness. Antonyms:animosity, enmity, disfavor.

5.

mercy; clemency; pardon: He was saved by an act of gracefrom the governor. Synonyms: lenity, leniency, reprieve.Antonyms: harshness.

One highlight was that I ended up going to Rom 2:4 which talks more about God's kindness (grace)

"Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?"

Wow! That hit home! I take God's grace, kindness, patience and character for granted!

This is what my ESV study bible had to say on the passage "Do you presume" is probably directed against the Jews who thought that their covenant relationship with God would shield them from final judgemet. After all, they had often experienced "his kindness and forbearance and patience". They thought such blessings showed that they were right with God and had no need to trust in Christ, but Paul says the opposite is true: God's blessings should have led them to repent of their sins.

That I meditated and prayed on for awhile and that I wanted to share!

It's a small glimpse of my study that I may go into more later, and I am working to do a larger study on grace. I'm excited to once again be so in awe of God that I am led to repent and strive to be the best I can be!

Interesting fact: Hannah's name means grace. It is special because while pregnant I was learning another real lesson on how great God's grace is and well what a special meaning for a name!