"This was grace!"

Pastored by Titus

I've just finished leading an inductive Bible study on the book of Titus. It is a book that God has sovereignly written upon my heart over the past four years. A book in which I've been swimming during different seasons in my life. I've been drowning, taken by the waves like a great whitewater trip in it over the past three months.

The richness of God's plan of redemption,

Jesus' initiative,

and the regeneration of the Holy Spirit have made me worship and treasure the transformative Good News during some raw, "I need the gospel!!!" places.

Chapter two of Titus has one of those rushing river of grace lines that is shaping the stony banks of my heart.

"For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldy desires and live godly, righteously, and sensibly in the present age"

As the Lord sovereignly directs my life down the river of His sovereign grace, these verses have allowed me to boast in Jesus and find my rest in Him.

His grace instructs.

His grace, nourishes and disciplines.

His grace enables.

His grace restrains.

This grace forms, chips, molds my heart through the course of rough water.

Some questions:

What is your circumstance?

What is your situation?

How is the Lord forging instruction and discipline in your life?

Do you see it as burdensome? Are you recognizing it as grace?

What, what? Are you serious? I can recognize the good things in my life as grace... I get that. Yet, am I supposed to view the rough water, the tough stuff as grace as well? How in the world? What does it look like to recognize everything that happens in my life as a child of God as grace?