Accepting Grace

I’m pondering aloud now. Here goes.

When the smart and intellectual think that getting ‘A’s mean that they have trusted God throughout their exams… were they really trusting God…? They can already achieve that by their own strengths… So does it really take trust in God for them to achieve that kind of results…? I won’t say that takes trust, but they must be thankful to God nonetheless, for that kind of talent everybody would love to have, me included.

How about when students start thinking that only when they get straight ‘A’s does that mean that God is blessing them… are they really trusting God…? What if the straight ‘A’s never came… are they going to lose faith and become disheartened…? This thought is a dangerous one… It limits what God can do through a person’s life… It limits God to just the dimension of the person’s academic progress… Or worse, limit God to a piece of result slip.

How about when one shoulders everything on oneself to the point that s/he gets immobilised by stress… was that person really trusting God…?

Trust is an amazing word… It can only happen if 1) It’s beyond our natural capabilities, 2) We’re willing to allow God to do things His way, 3) We’re willing to let go and let God.

I’m not saying that God doesn’t want us to work hard and score our ‘A’s… I’m just thinking… Those times when I subjected myself to all the stress of doing well, and I started taking things into my own hands, forgeting to slow down to hear from God, but instead push myself to finish what I thought needed to be done… Was I really trusting God in those times…? The error wasn’t in working hard… the error was in my failure to let God take over. I was often too anxious.

Something a loved one said left me pondering for days… When we shoulder everything on ourselves, try to do things our way and forget/refuse to let God in, that is pride… His yoke is easy, His burden is light… Imagine the picture of a girl, shouldering huge burdens on her shoulders, bent forward, inching forward slowly, and Jesus patiently walking beside her, offering to help carry her load, but she says seemingly politely, “It’s Ok Jesus, I can do this.” I didn’t realise that was what I did when I was so consumed trying to finish studying for last semester’s exams… I thought I was doing my best, trying to live out the ‘excellent spirit’. Yet in the end, I got so stressed out and anxious that I would breakdown and cry almost every single day. I need to learn to withdraw, take a step back, and let God come into my situation. When He comes, He comes with peace, strategies, ideas, focus, strength, capacity, power, wisdom, vision… there’s an ease. That is the grace of God – an empowerment to overcome, an empowerment to live out His will.

Pride is not just when we deliberately leave God out of our lives, but it’s also when we find it hard to let God into our situation…

I love the lyrics that go “No longer will I forfeit grace, I’ll follow You and live by faith”. After I thought about all the above, this line just became so much more meaningful to me. All too often, I forfeited the grace of God and took things into my own hands. Inevitably, I ended up tired, burnt out. Trusting God is living by faith. Living by faith requires us to accept grace. When we’re too proud, wanting things to be done our way, too anxious to let God in… Grace cannot come in… When grace can’t come in, that’s when things start to fall apart. We build and we build and we build, only to realise in the end that this was not the tower God had meant for us to build… That would just be tragic!

I don’t ever want my efforts to be wasted. That’s why we need to keep praying. I want my time, from now on, to be spent on building the tower God wants me to build. I don’t want to build any other towers in this lifetime, just one tower for God, a couple more if that’s what God wants. haha… Anyway, you get my point No longer will I forfeit grace, I’ll follow Christ and live by faith. Amen!

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