6 More Amazing Things We Should Know About God’s Grace

Thank you for joining us for the Sunday Sermon blog and podcast: Arise & Stream. We are continuing our spotlight Bible Study of the five wonderful gifts of inheritance from God. We are discussing ‘The Gift of Grace, Part II.

Have you heard Amazing Grace lately? According to Ramy Inocencio, CBS News the song is estimated sang over 10 million times a year. It’s 253rd anniversary will be New Year’s Day 2025. It was written by John Newton from a tiny English town of Olney, some 60 miles north of London. That would make the lyrics older than that of the USA Declaration of Independence.

Mr Newton, a former slave trader who nearly died in a shipwreck and another near death experience at sea prayed for God’s intervention both times and got it. His conscience began to bother him and he gave up the slave trade. He eventually became a minister and penned the famous words of Amazing Grace for a sermon for his 1773 New Year’s service at the church of St. Peter and St. Paul. But it wasn’t published for another 50 years.

In fact, Mr Newton is recorded to have been a childhood mentor/minister of William Wilberforce who worked tirelessly among Abolitionists and Parliament to end the slave trade. Once Mr. Wilberforce asked for his thoughts while considering ending his political career and working for God as a minister. Minister Newton by then advised, why not work for God in the Parliament? The rest is history, Wilburforce often giving passionate speeches in Parliament of the horrors and cruelty of slavery and its transporting to and the Americas. After a long strife ridden struggle of debate and deliberation, Slavery trade was abolished in 1807 by the British Parliament and House of Commons.

Amazing grace how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost but now am found
Was blind but now I see

‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear
And grace my fears relieved
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed

The few bars above bring back fond memories if you have Christian upbringing. If not, here’s a bit of back story on the writer of the over 250 year old hymn. During the time that it was written it was not put to music it was sort of chanted. Modern day times it has been set to music and sang by everyone from Mahalia Jackson to President Obama including top Country music artist, Pop King Elvis Presley as well as Soul/Gospel singers Aretha Franklin alike.

REVIEW

The first six were: SAVING GRACE, ABOUNDING GRACE, PERFECTING (MATURING) GRACE, HELPING GRACE, GRADUATING GRACE, RECOMPENSING GRACE

7. RULING GRACE – Romans 6:14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace; 1 Corinthians 15:10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.
8. REDEEMING GRACE – Titus 2:11–14 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.
9. STRENGTHENING GRACE I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. Then there are several things BY GRACE worth mentioning to help us know the Father better and better. The better we know him then the more we know about his faithfulness. When we go through things and He doesn’t answer as fast as He used to do for you. We get to learn patience (perseverance), perseverance brings character, and character brings hope. We begin to discover that when things are difficult, and you realize you are not smart enough, rich enough, strong enough for some challenges, you can also know you’re on the journey to another level in Christ. It’s a mystery but God says His power is made perfect in weakness. Not many have reached this level of maturity in Christ. But, the Apostle Paul said it was why he glorieth in weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities that the power of Christ may rest upon him.
10. EMPOWERING GRACE. – Acts 4:33 And with great power the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And great grace was upon them all.” Romans 5:2-5
    “And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope”. 2 Thessalonians 2:16–17 “Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word”.
11. CONFIRMING GRACE. Peter 5:10: The God of all grace will perfect and confirm those who have suffered. Another translation puts it like this: Peter 5:10 “And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.”

In closing, here’s what a friend of mine and I came up with about hope and grace.

My good friend and I were going back and forth, over and over again trying to come up with a solution for my problem. After more than several times, my friend said out loud what she had probably been thinking all along, “It’s hopeless. You have no choice but to give up!”

Suddenly, my faith rose up in me. The word of God that I had been storing up, for quite some time by then, burst forth and I said, “There’s always a choice. It’s not hopeless. We serve a God of miracles. There’s always a choice. We can choose hope or give up. I choose hope.

Father God is going to work this out for me. I don’t know how but He’s going to do something. A few minutes later, the phone rang. The person on the other end was a part of the solution, God sent. I didn’t know it. But I had just preached my first message on hope and expectation, to my friend and myself.

Now I can add to that. Father God gave humanity back in the Garden of Eden, starting with Adam, the power of choice. You see, he didn’t want robots. If he had just put a computer chip, so to speak, of obedience inside us, there would be no relationship. Instead, he gave us the power to choose. All of us, in humanity have this power.

Even though through Adam and Eve, we broke his heart and chose to disobey, forfeiting our rights to Satan. For the word of God says, Therefore, just as through one-man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned —Romans 5:12 We could say through one man’s choice, Adam, representative of humanity, sin and death entered the world.

But through another man’s choice, Jesus, Savior of the world, righteousness and life re-entered the world. Through our Lord’s choice in the Garden of Gethsemane, the second Adam, made the choice of not my will, but your will Father, not my way but your way Father…

It’s still a mystery to us, how a death could redeem the opportunity to choose. But it did, hallelujah! Of course, it wasn’t just any death. It was the death of our Lord, the Christ. Another place, his choice was evident was when in response to his critics Jesus responded as the Good Shepherd, “For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it again.

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