Received—And Given

Those who most need grace from us are those who see us at our best—and at our worst; the people who share houses, schools and cubicles with us.

They sleep on the other side of the bed, or in the bedroom down the hall. They are the parents who seemed never to believe in us, or relatives who expect us to give endlessly. They work in the corner office, behind the counter, or any of a hundred places where expectations sometimes clash. They differ on food choices, paint colors, politics and faith.

In short, they’re near enough to know if grace has left its mark on us, if gospel values of forgiveness and reconciliation really fill the spaces of our lives. They see the choices that we make—to hold our tongues; to apologize when needed; to not hold grudges; to release our claims on vengeance. And they measure our religion, not by creeds or preached theologies, but by the cold cloth on a feverish night, and the love that has no need to shame.

Grace can’t be sought from everyone, but can be shared with anyone. “Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another” (1 Jn 4:11). “Put things in order, listen to my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you” (2 Cor 13:11).

This is the sum of practical religion—adding grace, subtracting faults. Live the gentleness of Jesus.

And stay in grace.

-Bill Knott

Grace Without Fear

Those who fear that a rich embrace of grace always leads us to be careless about following Jesus only illustrate how fear distorts reality.

Grace is not—nor ever was—permissiveness. In the center of the story, Jesus dies upon a cross—because the Father’s perfect law required every sinner’s death, or the death of the only One who could atone for them.

Grace is not—now or ever—forgiveness without consequences. Lashed and beaten, Jesus bore the punishment we earned, the wages of our sin. “He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed” (Isa 53:5).

Grace is not—nor ever will be—a declaration by the Father that rebellion doesn’t really matter. If nothing less than Jesus’ sacrifice could make us whole, trust me—no, trust Him: nothing matters more.

 It’s the deepest proof of the Father’s unfathomable affection for us that He whose law was terribly offended also offered us the way to be restored to Him. And it’s the greatest evidence of our sanity that we choose Jesus, healing, and renewal.

Grace is what God says it is—love defeating brokenness.

So stay in grace.

Grace While We Wait

If red lights linger more than 60 seconds, we blame bureaucrats who don’t understand real-world traffic patterns.

If checkout lines at the local market are 10 shoppers deep, we grumble at inattentive managers who make us needlessly wait.

When wounds won’t heal and pain endures, we wonder why God doesn’t act as quickly as we need, or chooses not to intervene. We weren’t wired to wait, we say, even though each day, each week, requires we do more of it.

It takes great grace to learn to wait. We’ve made our plans as though each traffic light will always be green, each errand will flow seamlessly, each scar will quickly disappear. We count the hours we spend waiting as something less than fully living—an exasperating gray zone between what we’ve imagined and when we think it should occur.

But waiting well is time in grace, a window to reflect on God’s long, unfolding calendar where “in everything God works for good with those who love Him” (Rom 8:28). The same grace that waited patiently for us to come home, through all our sins and misadventures, now holds us as we wait the end of separation, loss, and pain. “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Psa 90:12).

Grace waits. And so do grace-filled people.

So stay in grace.

Grace Reaching

An old—and unworkable—policy from the Chicago trainyards once declared: “When two engines approach each other on the same track, neither can move until the other moves first.”

It reads like an all-too familiar description of what happens when we find ourselves in conflict with someone. We stay put; we sit tight. We wait for the other to make the first move toward apology or reconciliation. Just as soon as our wounded pride is soothed and our correctness underlined, we’ll become—we promise—the forgiving persons we’ve pledged to be.

It’s marvelously fortunate for us that the Father doesn’t act that way—that He takes on Himself the responsibility for moving toward us when we’re stuck in shame and brokenness. “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation” (2 Cor 5:19).

Grace always moves toward pain and guilt and bitterness. It doesn’t pause to grind in wrongs, or tally all infractions and offenses. It seeks the peace for which we were created, the friendship that’s infinitely more valuable than the sum of others’ failures.

“Be kind to one another,” the Scripture says, “tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you” (Eph 4:32).

And you will stay in grace.

All of Grace

On our best days, we just can’t save ourselves. And on our worst, the story is the same.

When all our words are moderate and cheerful; when every deed is generous and sweet; when all our weaknesses recede, and all our strengths are trending up—we need God’s grace to save us from unholy satisfaction with ourselves. 

And when we’re stuck in bitterness and hurt; when we’ve got nothing good to say about ourselves or any of our peers; when we seem chained to old, destructive habits like prisoners to a wall—we need God’s grace to save us from dejection.

The acts that save us all belong to Jesus. We offer nothing—deed or word, good or ill—that makes us more entitled to His love, or threatens His affection for the broken and the lost. “For there is no distinction,” the Word of God reminds us, “since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom 3:22).

Remember now the great unchanging, undeterred, and undeserved love of Christ. And stay in grace.

Trusting What is True

Is grace, at heart, believable?

‘Of course,’ you say.  Why not believe?  It’s the noun that always follows “Amazing,” the tune the bagpipers skirl at dawn; the soaring hymn a tenor lifts into a vast cathedral.

For some, it may be what the sermon is about, or what we learned in Bible class.

But is grace believable at the baseline of our fears—in those tough places in the soul where shame and memory combust to make us cringe again, again?  Does grace reach down below the intellect, the wonderful idea, and heal those wounds we so much never want to show the world?

At its heart—and in our hearts—grace offers us what no one else is giving.  Redemption is for real—for all those moments and those years we’ve blown it big and ruined all our future.  “All we like sheep have gone astray. We’ve turned every one to his own way.  And the Lord has laid on Him”—on Jesus, the only righteous one who ever lived—"the iniquity of us all” (Isa 53:6).

It seems too good—too kind; too merciful—to be true.  And so we linger in the half-light of our fears, humming a tune we dream might yet be ours.

The hymn has outlived every copyright.  God’s grace is clearly in the public domain. 

Make this song yours.  And stay in grace.

Morning has Broken

These hours between midnight and dawn test the patience of the world. We stumble through the hallways of dark houses. We seek companionship in all-night TV channels and books that used to put us to sleep. We hide from pain or grief that won’t let us close our eyes.

Why must dawn wait? Why must the hope of day stretch out so far away? If we could, we’d reach out and pull the first gray light of morning toward us–wrap ourselves in a little bit of hope and cheer. But dawn isn’t within our grasp.

Only one man in all history could bring the morning. Just one man could rightfully claim, “I am the light of the world.” Only Jesus could split the prison where we were chained in shame with the marvelous good news of grace and pardon and power and peace. Only He could triumph over death and hell, because only He had experienced—and broken—their power.

This hurting world of ours desperately needs the story of His resurrection. This dark planet, racked by war and ravaged by disease, cries out for the good news of that amazing sunrise.

Morning has broken, and goodness has won.

Celebrate the new life you’ve been given. And stay in grace.

When I'm Afraid

We wouldn’t ridicule a child who said to us, “I’m really scared. Please hold my hand.”

We wouldn’t taunt a hurricane survivor, “Snap out it. Get on with life.”

Because we’re human, we know fear. Hurt and pain may come our way; events may spin beyond control; we could lose those that we can’t live without.

When all the world is afraid, let’s honor those who own their fear with honesty. It is no sin to be afraid. The fault lies only when we let our fears erode what heaven says we owe each other—grace and truth and gentleness. There’s no just cause for hate or hoarding, prejudice or wounds. Our worry need not make us lose our wits.

A hundred times the Bible says, “Don’t be afraid,” or as the better versions have it, “You can stop being afraid now.” There’s just one thing that calms our fears—the truth that we aren’t left alone. “Peace I leave with you,” the Lord who calmed the storms declares. “My peace I give to you” (John 14:27). Wherever He is welcome, fear declines, then disappears. The grace that saves us also soothes us.

Hear the voice above the storm. Take the hand still offered you.

And stay in grace.

Alone, Not Lonely

We were created for community, and nothing so upsets us as required isolation from the people who bring color, warmth, and hope into our lives.

The world has quickly grown uncomfortably, unhappily too small. We huddle with our loved ones and thank God that we seem healthy. But each of us knows stories, now coming dangerously close, of illness, fear, and existential panic.

Suddenly, we miss the colleague who so regularly annoyed us; the relative who made inconvenient, unannounced visits; the friendly patter when we met our neighbors in the market or the street. The sights and sounds, the rhythms and routines of life a month ago were oddly comforting when we could safely take them all for granted.

And time—there seems to be too much of it; open, unplanned, unsure hours when thoughts turn endlessly to wondering: What if? What outcome? And what then?

“I will never leave you nor forsake you,” the Father said to Israel (Josh 1:5). “Remember, I am with you always,” the Son promised His disciples. (Matt 28: 20). “You know Him,” Jesus said of the Spirit, “because He abides with you, and He will be in you” (John 14:17).  Eternal love still holds us.

There is no better company than Father, Son, and Spirit. Held and healed, warmed, enlightened, we can weather any crisis, any quandary, any virus.

So stay in grace.

Glad to Pray

“Lord, teach us to pray.”

The men who urged Jesus to educate them about prayer weren’t immature or novices.  Each of them had prayed—in penitence; for safety; for a good night’s catch—as part of a life story that led them to careers in fishing, tax collecting, and even political activism.

But they had heard from Jesus—from time in close with Jesus—a whole new way of praying, one that began with an entirely new view of God.  Gone was the angry, frowning deity of their imaginations, the God who was always disappointed with them.  For they had heard their Master call this God His “Father”—even “Daddy.”  The grace they found in Jesus opened up a whole new way to pray.  And they were hungry to know more, learn more, pray more.  Grace made them passionate about prayer.

So it will be with us.  When we discover what has always been true—that we are loved and held as closely as a parent holds us; that we were truly, eagerly embraced before we had a righteous thought—we unclench our bodies and our minds.  Our prayer becomes an easy, reverent conversation warmed by love, and all our fears diminish.  The Father who loved this world so much that He gave Jesus to us (John 3:16) rejoices when we trust Him, welcome Him, and tell Him everything.

Grace leads us first to gratitude, and gratitude to prayer. 

So stay in grace.

Growing Green

In desert canyons, ferns will flourish, sprouting from the bone-dry walls. None of them is kept alive by current rainfall: little ever reaches them. But rain that cooled the mesa 500 feet above 20 years ago seeps down through sedimentary rock to deliver needed moisture. The source is slow, no doubt, but savingly it keeps the green things growing.

So it is with grace in us. The saving wrought by Jesus’ sacrifice began a flow that still is watering whatever’s dry in us. We may have been “saved” in a moment, but the slow water of deep holiness seeps down to the stony layers of relationships and attitudes and deserts we’ve never even hoped to water.

One day, we give up grudges, half-surprising ourselves—and certainly surprising those who wounded us. Weeks later, we begin to reach beyond our comfort zone to love the unloved and the graceless. Our most important relationships—our friendships and our marriages—begin to shift: we hold our tongues; we listen more; we offer comfort where we once doled out our wit or scorn. The grace that saves us always changes us—sometimes at once; more often slowly, imperceptibly.

This is as fully Jesus’ work as blazing, noonday turnarounds. “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil 1:6).

Allow what’s dry to grow toward green. And stay in grace.

The School of Grace

When our hearts are full of warmth and we feel in control, it’s easy to be gracious to the ones who give offense. “Forget about it,” we advise them. “It’s no big thing. No worries!“ Forgiveness seems within our reach. We give our grudges to the wind.

But when we’re powerless and cold; when we’ve been wounded by deep malice or contempt, we cling to the only weapons we have left—our anger and our memory. We have no grace for villains or the haughty. We pray they get what they deserve.

And then we hear again the strange new urgings of the gospel: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt 5:44).

Against our narrative of righteous indignation, grace tells us stories that seem impossible. The Lord who urged us to forgive forgives the sins we love to hate—adultery, betrayal, cruel violence, and greed.

There’s no rousing of our will that can teach us to forgive like this. Grace is the gift of Christ—from Him to us; from us to them; from them to others still unloved and unforgiven. The sequence is repeatable.

When we’re forgiven, we learn grace. We’ll never lack for opportunities to practice what we’ve learned.

Remember now how much you’re loved. And stay in grace.

Increasing Your Net Worth

We measure the worth of things by their apparent scarcity. Gold, caviar, Maseratis—all increase in value when we think supply is limited. Much of the joy of ownership is the awareness that others don’t—or can’t—enjoy them.

And in our poorest thinking, we sometimes foolishly imagine that the grace of God has been reserved for wise and careful people like us. We pretend God’s kindness is a reward for faithfulness, rather than the cause of it. If grace is freely available, won’t its value be diminished?

But the old hymn said it well: “The love of God is broader than the measure of our mind.” “He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt 5:45). Grace is that rarest of things that becomes more valuable as it is more widely available and more fully embraced. When you love God, my joy is doubled. Heaven has no finite space restrictions, nor is the grace that leads us home reserved for just a few.

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life”(John 3:16).

Embrace the Lord who embraces everyone. And stay in grace.

First Light

Good news is only good because the other news isn’t good. It’s the contrast between light and darkness that makes us glad for everything that’s lit and bright and warm.

And the Bible is unsparingly honest about our real condition—about the bad news—of our lostness and our darkness. We got what we deserved: we reaped what we sowed. The news couldn’t get any worse. We were the people sitting in darkness.

But then a great light dawned.

The gospel of the Father’s unending, untiring affection for us is seen in everything Jesus did to bring us healing, joy, and abundance. “He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, will He not also give us all things with Him?” (Rom 8:32). 

Jesus is the proof of heaven’s favor, the certainty that we are still loved—have always been loved, will always be loved. In Him, we learn the news we didn’t know: that our lives can be free, and fun, and filled with meaning. “He is able to save completely those who come to God through Him, because He always lives to intercede for them” (Heb 7:25). Grace headlines every day’s edition.

“Now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1). “His life brought light to everyone” (John 1:4).

Enjoy the news. And stay in grace.

The Struggle to Forgive

Of all the sins to which we fall, none makes us feel so smug as vengeance. When we’re the injured ones, the hurting ones—acknowledged victims of some sin—we live a perilously long moment of unexpected power. The voices of our culture ring too loudly in our ears: “Retaliate. Require groveling. Make certain that they’ll never hurt you—or anyone—like that again.”

And sometimes in our weakness, we savor the imagination of how much pain we could inflict—all righteously, of course. We picture those who hurt us getting stings that we’ve endured. It’s grimly satisfying on some scale of “eye-for-eye.”

But then the gospel pierces through our fog of pain, and we hear again the words that once changed everything for us: “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8). “In Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them” (2 Cor 5:19).

Only people who have been forgiven every truly forgive. The memory of our undeserved redemption pushes through our injury, and we recall how we were once where our abusers are. The grace we give is built on memory of how we’ve been released, and how our hearts have been renewed.

So we lay down the lance; give up the sword. We offer others peace and healing Jesus is still giving us.

This is His way. So stay in grace.

The Pace of Grace

Humility is not in vogue—either in the magazine or in the culture. It’s an age of self-assertion, self-promotion, fueled by surging expectations that we should win an ever-larger share of likes, or votes, or ratings.

And so we miss a central pillar of the “law of Christ”—that we should bear each other’s burdens. For the secularist, this makes no sense, for all of life is deemed a competition for vanishing resources—money, spouses, power, or fame. That we would slow our sprint to walk beside a weaker brother or sister—that we would take on wounds or weight not our own—is proof that we have “lost our edge,” and couldn’t be leaders of the pack.

But still, humility is vital to the life of faith—before our God, and yes, before each other. I may say I’ve humbled myself before the Lord, but I’m then both observer and observed. Only grace received and grace enjoyed allows us to pick up the burden we don’t deserve, pray for the sin we didn’t commit, and stop to hold the one who so much needs a friend.  Humility isn’t a label we award ourselves: it requires an “other” with whom we patiently obey the word of Christ.

Grace gives us strength to walk with others in this great and human race.

Christ won the race. So stay in grace.

A Place at the Table

What Christians call the “fruit of the Spirit”—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control—is food the world needs. It’s not a banquet to which only believers are invited.

These are all relational graces: each is only meaningful when there’s a lack of it. We’re never called to dine alone—to only private holiness.

We learn these graces at the table from those who have themselves learned patience, peace and self-control in other times, at other tables. In community, in time we spend together, we practice the kindness the world needs.

Your gentleness will teach me to be gentle: my faithfulness in staying with you may be the prompt to loyalty you need. In grace, we build each other up—and all for those who hunger to experience the goodness shown to us.

This is no private dinner club: Grace always sets the table for great sharing.

Come to the meal at which all hungry souls are filled.

And stay in grace.

The Best News

What we call “the gospel” is an announcement of our true standing before a holy God because of the saving work of Jesus, in whom we place all our confidence.

It’s not the same thing as how we feel about ourselves, or an estimate of our progress in living a good life.

Our emotions—including our assessments of our spiritual experience—are subject to the vagaries of weather, backaches, or what we ate too late for dinner last night. There are days on which for reasons we can’t fully articulate, we don’t feel “close” to God. That doesn’t mean anything more substantial than that we may be limited by arthritis, sports injuries, or indigestion.

There must be—there is—a constancy about the gospel and its grip on our lives that isn’t changed by even our powerful emotions. “By this we shall know that we are of the truth, and reassure our hearts before Him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and He knows everything” (1 John 3:19-20). 

Jesus is more trustworthy than our feelings about ourselves. His word about our reconciliation to the Father is more true than any word we think or say. In living faith, our lives are hidden with Christ in God.

From this deep certainty grow life and joy and peace and healing. 

Believe His word. And stay in grace. 

Learning to Walk Again

It’s certainly part of God’s unfolding grace to not reveal how little we’ve understood until we’re further down His road.

At first, we catch stray glimpses of ourselves—ungainly; sometimes tripping over stones; embarrassed, not repentant. We judge that we can quickly find our stride—that we can overcome our slowness by more practice.

And then we learn that more is broken than we knew—that all that looked like confidence and legs was our attempt to fool ourselves, defend our pride, and keep our running reputation strong. We cancel all our marathons.

At last, we learn how much we’re like that man beside the pool—the paralytic Jesus lifted from a life that hadn’t moved in years. Unless His grace renews our legs and hope, we’ll always miss the road the Saviour longs to share with us.

If we knew all our weaknesses at once, and all up front, we might despair that even grace could lead us home. So it’s a mercy that we learn our ignorance and arrogance in pieces Jesus lets us know, accompanied by gentle, quiet laughter.

His grace, just like His love, is always patient and kind. 

So stay in grace.

A Psalm of Grace

Deliver me, O Lord, from cool and graceless places where the righteous cluster often to adjust their reputations. Save me from gatherings where no pulses ever quicken, where no tears are ever shed, where sinners are not swallowed up in oversized embraces. Keep me from walking into snares where theology is scrutinized, but no one wants to hear of Your tenacious love for me.

Surround me, God, with those who know the pain of brokenness—and know how rich Your healing is. Encircle me with men and women unafraid of dirt—with those who know the words of hope. And do not let me stray from them.

Appoint my steps to walk beside—among—the hurting and disheartened, for I will call to mind Your grace each time I recognize their pain. Anoint my lips with silence when I’m tempted to compare myself to those who just began their journey.

Your grace is how I seek to live—to laugh, to weep, to learn, to grow—among the many You are saving. I want no better friends than those who pray with humbled heart: “Be merciful to me, a sinner.”

Then my lips will sing Your songs: my heart will strike a higher key. Among those ransomed by Your love, my voice will be both loud and clear:

“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me;
Bless His holy name.”

So may I always walk with You, and stay in grace.