One of the quotes I’ve heard a lot around LifeSpring is “The longest foot is the distance it takes from something to get from your head to your heart [paraphrased].” Lately, I’ve found that to be true as I’ve been experiencing a lot of what I intellectually know, but haven’t internalized.
Let’s take a common phrase: “the Grace of God” – which can be translated to “God’s gift and favor to us that we didn’t and couldn’t earn.” It has been used to describe our salvation through Jesus, His forgiveness of our sins, and so much more. I’ve heard this phrase so many times, and I think you have too. However, I didn’t really grasp what it meant until a couple of weeks ago
I usually do daily devotions/quiet time with the Lord. It has definitely grown my faith in God and my knowledge of the Bible, and I’ve come to expect that when I spend intentional, consistent time with God, I will be closer to Him. But what happens when I don’t intentionally, consistently spend time with God? It would make perfect sense for me to grow farther away from God.
To no one’s surprise, that’s what happened. I, due to some challenges in my life, was unable to maintain regular (or even semi regular) devotions and Bible reading. As a result, I felt farther away from the Lord in this time and simply accepted it as the natural order of things.
However, in the midst of this huge spiritual low in my life, I somehow received what I believe was a prophetic image/word from the Lord. I was also sitting right next to someone who is quite involved in prophetic ministry, and they didn’t see or hear anything(that they told me about).
It still blows my mind that this happened. Usually, when you’re in a spiritual low, you typically don’t receive a lot of words and things from the Lord (or maybe that’s just me). It made more sense in my brain for the prophetic ministry person to get the prophetic image, because I assumed they were in a better spiritual place than I and were more practiced in this than I.
I ended up mentioning this to Gabe, and he simply said “We are where we are today by the Grace of God. Nothing else. And we don’t have to be a certain way or do a certain ritual or routine to receive things from God. We can’t earn God.” I didn’t even think of that. It’s one thing to know that you can’t earn grace, and it’s quite another thing to experience it like that.
In the end, I learned that although it is good to intentionally seek out and spend time with the Lord, sometimes the Lord will see you in your mess and start the conversation instead. God has so much grace for all our mistakes and messes, and it is such a blessing.
And with that, I’d like to end with this Bible passage:
“…Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
– 1 Corinthians 12:7-10