Seeking the Red Meat!

God’s Power Principle For Today:  My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in Weakness. “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness, so that Christ’s power is made perfect in weakness.”  2 Cor. 12:9-10

Hey Gang:  I keep looking for someone who will sit down with me and put some red meat around some of those big biblical terms such as sanctification, justification and glorification.  I have read definitions of each but, for some reason, when I come across these words it is like entering a "fog bank."  In my hillbilly bringing-up years I do not recall many words that were more than five or six letters and must admit that I am intimidated when I run into big words that other people seem to understand. 

As a little squeezer I frequently heard the word grace.   I really did not comprehend the true meaning of the word until I ran across the good news that it meant "God's unmerited favor".  Let me give you an example of grace.   While exulted ruler of Eagle Village, the staff felt they needed some sort of point system to help keep the kids in line and on track.  In my tenure of forty plus years in the child care treatment industry I never found a point system that was positive and, therefore, beneficial over the long haul.   One might say I had a great distain for such systems. 

Each week I would walk through the houses, when no one was there, to 

check the graphs that determined where the youngster was in the program. When I found a youngster floundering with an abundance of negative points, I would draw a line through the total and write “forgiven”. 

It certainly did not make the staff happy.  My question to them was two-fold: if the youngsters realized that grace had been applied to his case and he put his life together, would that not be the purpose of the program?  I also asked, if he does not change, how long would it be until he could pile more points? Most agreed that a happy contented child was much easier to deal with and our job was to encourage not to discourage. 

I must admit, I developed the Head, Hands and Heart Program so that I could bury the point programs once and for all.  I felt that it was a program that recognizes the strengths of the child and builds on a change from within.  God’s grace is indeed sufficient.

Sooo, my young friends, what is the reading on your Grace meter?  Where are you in God's program of Head, Hands and Heart? How much Grace do you offer others?  Jesus said in the same measure you apply grace to those around you, I will apply to you.  Whoopie

!

Blessings,

Gramps

P.S.  An old Dutchman said "The higher a man gets in divine grace, the lower he will be in his own esteem.