Empowered to Live Beyond Ourselves

CONSIDER
Grace from heaven moves the heart to calm tranquility. When our core needs are addressed, the issue of well-being is resolved, the crisis of the day is settled, the intricacies of interpersonal relations are solved, and the prospect of pleasing God is complete God’s peace pervades. When will that ever happen? When we access God’s grace. There are two access points from which we may qualify to enter into God’s grace. The first is faith, believing what God has said. The second is obedience, doing what God has said. Navigating these pathways will enable the Christian to negotiate all of life’s challenges and experience Jesus Christ as relevant to every area of life.

BIBLE TRUTH

So we have not stopped praying for you since we first heard about you. We ask God to give you complete knowledge of his will and to give you spiritual wisdom and understanding. Then the way you live will always honor and please the Lord, and your lives will produce every kind of good fruit. All the while, you will grow as you learn to know God better and better. (Col. 1:9–10 NLT)

HOW DOES THIS APPLY TO ME?
As surrendered followers of Jesus Christ who live in desperate dependency upon Him, we are empowered by God to live beyond ourselves. The power to live Christ’s life on earth cannot be manufactured by our own efforts. We are not even capable of conceptualizing the process. Human beings on a quest for their own best interest usually resort toward self-indulgence or self-promotion, thinking self-empowerment is somehow the solution to their powerless condition. Seeking within our own strength to create our own grace always leads to some form of illicit dependency, addiction; some inappropriate behavior, deviance; some undesirable state of being, mental illness; or some irreversible consequence, death. Thus grace must come to us not through us. In God’s economy we are the recipients of His grace not the progenitors of it.

PRAYER
God, I must admit I have a difficult time comprehending that You have given me everything I need for living a godly life. But I choose to trust that by Your divine power, You have given us everything we need for living a godly life. . . . (2 Pet. 1:3)


(excerpts from Desperate Dependency by J. Kirk & Melanie D. Lewis)


We would love for you to POST A COMMENT about the insights you have received on your journey toward desperate dependency.