Below the Surface

When we add all our compliments to all the things we wish were true, there’s still so much we’re glad the world doesn’t know. 

Deep within, we know the truth about the real lives we live—the tempers that we can’t control; the people we’ve tried to control; the passions that seem far beyond control.  Our hearts are heavy with indictments. We break our vows; we hurt our friends; we fail to do the good we could. 

“There is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death?” (Rom 7:23-24).  

And from the vast abundance of His grace, the Father speaks to our distress. “I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart” (Eze 36:26).  

The promise of new life—within—brings all God’s goodness to us.  We cannot save ourselves, and Jesus loves to save us. We cannot fix ourselves, so He rebuilds what pride and lust have broken.  

Grace meets the fears we cannot speak, the brokenness we sought to hide, the self-accusing words we use to motivate ourselves. God’s heart of love will heal us yet. 

So stay in grace.

–Bill Knott

Beyond Self-Help

When we reduce our belief in God to moral tasks we should accomplish, we merely add another tedious volume to our unread self-help library.  

Praying for the sick; giving to the poor; exercising patience with exasperating colleagues; forgiving those who badly use us—these are all lovely behaviors—and of no lasting value without grace.   

The gospel isn’t an invitation to set our moral house in order, but a declaration that Jesus left His eternal home to live with us, die for us, rise for us, and—one day soon—return for us. “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And He gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation” (2 Cor 5:19).  

Before we lift a broken finger, or give a soiled bill, or try to move beyond our hatred for those who have abused us, we must hear the gospel’s kind yet thundering announcement:  “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph 2:8-9). 

Grace is what God has done. Gracious is what we may yet become —through grace.

So stay in grace. 

–Bill Knott

Grace Among the Hours

When hard rain rattles the window panes three hours before unwelcome dawn; when the first thought of the day is no brighter than the last thought hours before; when the staleness of unchangeable routine offers only more of the same, more of the rain—grace renews the mind. 

When we dread the icy comments in the cubicles or at the frozen water cooler; when the anger seethes while helplessness makes our haggard hearts grow cold; when the best thought of the day is that it will finally be over—grace renews the mind.  

Redemption isn’t only for those starlit hours when grand and beautiful change starts happening to us. God’s grace accompanies us in hundreds of quite ordinary hours when children fret and spouses quarrel and nothing in our world advances our fond hopes for love or comfort or success. 

And so the gospel urges and invites: “Let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect” (Rom 12:2).

Grace is for all hours, all challenges, all rainy days. There is no moment when God’s goodness and affection isn’t gladly, fully offered to us, for us, in us. “His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus” (Phil 4:7).

So stay in grace.

—Bill Knott

Healed—and Healed Again

So let’s admit it: we are afraid because bad things have happened in our past, and everything in us shudders at ever being hurt again. Life’s all about negotiating risk, we say, and so we bravely sanctify our fears with strategies to hide the dread that we might end unloved and all alone.

But Jesus says, “My grace is enough for you” (2 Cor. 12:9)—enough for all our hidden wounds and public failures, enough for all the times when we’ve concluded that we can be either well-loved OR well-known, but never both. 

Grace is a healing antidote to fear, repairing and rebuilding whatever sin has poisoned, blighted or corroded.

The worst that can be said of us turns out—amazingly—to be a gorgeous anthem to God’s never-ending, always-reaching love.

So stay in grace.

—Bill Knott