Grace That Is Greater Than All Our Sin – Sunday Thought For The Day

The late Christian apologist and author C.S. Lewis said: “After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. Very often what God first helps us toward is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again. For however important chastity (or courage, or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven.”

In his quote I read the depth of feeling and love for God that comes from a heart that has been redeemed and forgiven.  With that said, I know the well of thankfulness and joy his quote flows from.  I know, because: I bathe in the warm wash of redemption in the fountain of forgiveness every day.

This past week I was reminded just how special the forgiveness of God is, as I was reading and studying in the first chapter of the Epistle of James.  In this chapter James wrote: “Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.” (James 1:12 KJV)

To endure temptation is not the struggle or the failure.  It is the attitude with which we handle and grow from the struggle.  It’s too whom and where we look first during the times we stumble or when we are tested, i.e., tried.  Do we wrap ourselves in a blanket of anger, pity and/or failure or do we turn to our God; as the hymnist wrote: “Grace, grace, God’s grace, Grace that will pardon and cleanse within; Grace, grace, God’s grace, Grace that is greater than all our sin!”

READ:

James 1:2-4 (KJV)
2 My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations;

3 Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.

4 But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.