Grace Is More Amazing Still: A Sermon Correction

So this blog post is a bit embarrassing and humbling. Correction usually is. It is one thing to be a juggler and to drop a ball. That is embarrassing. But when you are leading a juggling instructional course on not dropping balls and you then drop a ball, that is really embarrassing. That is what this blog post is like. In my sermon that spent much time on understanding grace, I misspoke about an aspect of grace.

So what happened? The third point of my sermon this last Sunday was entitled “The Mystery of Grace.” In that point, I gave 4 different situations that people can find themselves in: ministering in persecution or ministering in revival, physical sickness or physical health, few spiritual gifts or many spiritual gifts, and few rewards in heaven or many rewards in heaven. My basic premise was that the determinative factor in each situation was whether God gave grace to one person and not to the other. The problem is that is not true for all of them.
A simple definition of grace is undeserved favor. God is giving a person something undeserved. God may give much grace, God may give a little grace, or God may give none at all. Based upon that definition, two of the above situations fit, but two of them don’t. The giftings that God gives someone, and the ultimate rewards someone receives, are all rooted in the amount of grace that God gives. Much grace = much gifting. Much grace = much reward. But the other two situations of persecution/revival and sickness/health do not fit. They are not a matter of much or little grace.
What happened is I slipped into confusion between the wisdom of God and the grace of God. There is interrelatedness between the two, but they are distinct as well. It is the wisdom of God that determines if He is going to put a person into a place of ministry hardship or into a place of ministry harvest. It is the wisdom of God that determines if a person has much physical sickness or much physical health. But these situations are about God’s wisdom and not God’s grace. In both scenarios God may still give abundant grace.
Remember the situation in 2 Corinthians chapter 12? Paul was greatly burdened by a “thorn in the flesh.” I happen to believe that this was a demonically empowered person within the Corinthian church who was opposing Paul in severe and effective ways. Paul fervently and repeatedly prayed that this thorn would be removed. It was not. But what did God say? “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” So here is a terrible situation, yet it wasn’t happening because Paul was given little grace. Quite the opposite. God’s wisdom chose this for Paul, but through it all God was giving Paul abundant grace.
We all enjoy grace when it is manifested in cheesecake, children, and spiritual abilities. But we are far more inclined to think that grace has been removed when we can’t eat cheesecake, we have no children, and our spiritual abilities are despised. Yet the reality is we can still receive much grace in ways and for reasons we never anticipated. God may be graciously working in us to produce a growing endurance (James 1:2-3), an increasing discernment (Heb. 5:13-14), and a great reward for labor (1 Cor. 3:8) that pleases God even though spurned by man.
It turns out that grace is more amazing than we all understand, including the ones like myself who are speaking about it. I fell back into that simplistic, worldly-wise way of thinking that imagines God has given more grace to those who have better experiences. But grace is more amazing than that. Grace is at work in the dull, painful, and confusing places as well. Yes, God does give to one person and not to another. But the true determiner is not necessarily the situations we find ourselves in, but instead what is happening in us. So if you don’t like where you are or what is happening, be prayerful and alert. God may be already setting you up to receive grace for purposes that you didn’t expect. His grace really is sufficient, amazingly sufficient, even for us fallible preachers.