Lavish grace requires unyielding trust

Does the God who lavishly provides you with his own presence, his Holy Spirit, working things in your lives you could never do for yourselves, does he do these things because of your strenuous moral striving or because you trust him to do them in you? Don’t these things happen among you just as they happened with Abraham? He believed God, and that act of belief was turned into a life that was right with God. (Galatians 3:5-6 MSG)

God's grace is provided in lavish amounts - because we need all we can get! His presence comes as we say yes to him, so we are entering into a new relationship that needs to be developed just like any other relationship. The difference is that we don't 'work' our way into his presence or into his grace as we might with our earthly relationships. In our relationship with Jesus, he draws us to himself, shows us exactly who he is, tells us clearly what he likes and dislikes, and then he provides all we need within that relationship - not in limited ways, but lavishly.

All our strenuous moral striving really amounts to a hill of beans when it comes to our relationship with Jesus. Yes, we should make wise choices. Yes, we should resist the pull toward sinful life habits and hangups. But...we don't do this life change all alone - Jesus helps us with it - through grace. Believe God with your life change and you will see change happen a whole lot quicker and more effectively than you will if you ever will by just trying to bulldoze your way through it on your own.

The act of belief is all that is needed - God turns our belief into a life that becomes right with him. We might be asked to take steps of obedience, but that is not us striving for righteousness. It is us showing we love and trust Jesus enough to do as he says - the trust part being the hardest part for us. We appreciate his grace, but we have a hard time trusting him to do what needs to be done in our lives. We take it out of his hands so many times, then we wonder why it feels like the desired change doesn't happen. Could it be that we demanded control and stalled God's work in our lives?

If we realize God's work seems to be 'stalled', maybe we need to have a conversation with Jesus about it. It is not a conversation that says we need to have him do more - it is likely a conversation in which we admit we need to be doing less! Trusting him to do what needs to be done might mean we do less of what we think needs to be done. Listen to his voice, truly hear what he has to say about where he wants us to move and where he wants us to stay put. Then 'do' only what he asks and trust him with the rest. That change we so desperately desire could be just around the corner if we'd just let go of our need to do it our way! Just sayin!