Grace Is Not a Hammock

I've been on this gentle journey of discovering that grace isn't a hammock.

It wasn't given so we could weave something comfortable, lay back, and wait to punch a heavenly ticket.

Grace rescued me.

It freed me from the bondage of separation from God, a prison I didn't even know I was in.

And then grace said, Run.

Grace restores relationship. It puts us back on our feet, teaches us how to walk with Him, and invites heaven to be bound on earth through surrendered lives.

So why do so many return to building their own empires, living the very lives Christ freed them from?

"For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning."

2 Peter 2:20

I offer that question to you… and this one.

If grace leaves you unchanged, unmoving, and uninterested in intimacy with God… where do you stand?

"Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?"

2 Corinthians 13:5

I don't believe we will all experience eternity the same way. Paul answers the question about resurrection life when he writes:

"There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory."

1 Corinthians 15:41

That should make us pause. Eternity is a long time. This life is but a vapor. Getting there is not the only question worth asking.

Believers will indeed enter heaven and then stand before the judgment seat of Christ. He will then evaluate the life lived after grace was received.

"If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire."

1 Corinthians 3:15

Suffer loss… yet saved. As by fire. Ponder that.

Scripture also tells us:

"And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away."

Revelation 21:4

Why tears… if nothing was lost?

"Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain."

1 Corinthians 9:24

Grace puts you in the race.

How you run still matters.

Run it to win.

Gibbo