Dear
Brothers and Sister in Christ,
Our life in Christ is a continuous learning process. Our heavenly
Father wants each of us to be abundantly blessed by receiving the
realities that his Son has obtained for us through Cross. He doesn’t
impart these realities to us all at once though. In his word we are
admonished to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus
Christ.” (II Peter 3:18) This teaches us that we need to be
progressively growing in the things of God. Now we may be familiar
with the concept of growing in the knowledge of Christ through his
word but do we also know what it means to grow in his grace? Since
God has admonished us to grow in his grace as well then it must be
extremely important to our spiritual lives.
The grace of God is multi-faceted and therefore can mean different
things. It means that God imparts to us his:
1. undeserved and unmerited pardon
2. favor
3. divine empowerment
The one I would like to focus on right now is the first one. The Gospel
declares that God gives salvation to us as a free gift of his grace.
(Ephesians 2:8-9) This means that we haven’t done anything to
deserve salvation and that we can never earn it. Our salvation however
consists of so much more than receiving eternal life in the hereafter.
God has given us a complete salvation package that consists of many
blessings. These blessings are those things that pertain to or accompany
our salvation. (Hebrews 6:9) These are the blessings that God promised
to Abraham long ago. God has made good on his promise through his
Son Jesus and these blessings are now given to us by grace and through
faith in him.
Although I’m not minimizing the priceless gift of eternal life,
you and I know that there are many things that we need to help us
in our lives in the here and now. No one knows this better than the
Lord and he has already made provision for every need in our lives
both now and in the future through his victory on the Cross nearly
2000 years ago. Unlike some religious folks may lead you to believe
though, we don’t have to wait until we get to heaven to receive
these wonderful blessings of salvation, we can receive them today.
(II Corinthians 6:1-2) How? We receive them from God as free gifts
of his grace. We do this by having faith in the person of Christ and
his all sufficient sacrificial atonement.
Just as we are saved by grace we are also healed by grace. Since healing
is part of our entire salvation package, it too is a free gift from
God. The problem is that many Christians today don’t know that
they can just simply receive healing as a free gift because legalism
teaches them that they must earn it by their own works. The truth
is that we can’t work for the gifts of God because he freely
gives them to us by his grace. Still some other believers may feel
as though they don’t deserve a healing due to some fault or
sin of their own. When we have a revelation of God’s grace however
we will understand that he extends his forgiveness to us and blesses
us even though we did nothing to deserve it. All of this is what makes
his grace so amazing!
For the last few decades the Church has taught heavily that we are
healed by faith. Although this is true it is only half true. Some
believe that having faith is all that’s required to receive
healing but having faith without receiving God’s grace can be
toxic to our spiritual lives. The whole truth is we are healed by
grace through faith in Jesus Christ. We need both in order to have
the right spiritual balance that the Lord desires us to have. I will
be dedicating both November and December’s Keepin’ It
Real to the subject of receiving healing by grace through faith in
Christ. The first article is called Healed by God’s Amazing
Grace. To read it just click on the link below. Our prayer here at
Truth and Spirit Ministries is that you will receive all the blessings
that God intends for you to have. Oh, and one more thing: Always remember…the
reality is found in Christ. (Colossians 2:17)
God’s Grace to You,
Denise Bostic
Healed
by God’s Amazing Grace
