WHAT GRACE REQUIRES

Does grace ask nothing of our lives? Are we, as some believers think, released from all that God expects of us? There’s one great obligation placed on us when we accept the grace of Christ—that we give up the tight-wound management of us; that we allow the Love that will not let us go to work according to His pleasure. We’ve made a wretched mess of things: we’ve done the worst and left the best undone. So grace requires we open our clenched fists—let go our grip on all we’ve called our holiness, and give the Saviour time and space to make us over in His image. His plans for us are gentle, patient, full of hope. Christ knows our frame: our frame is dust. And He reshapes old dust into new lives where imitating Him is all our joy and all our work. So stay in grace.