Pastor David Sincock
"Life By Grace"
Exceptional Grace Series
Due to first half of the message not recorded because of technical difficulties, we have typed some of the notes here so that you do not miss some important points of the message, and also use for your reference in preparation for the next Group Group session.
Introduction: "One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are" ~ Ann Voskamp (pp.11-12)
"When you talk about this grace thing, could you explain what it means to 'live by grace'? I don't understand that. My life doesn't seem to work that way.
"At the grave's precipice, out feet scuff dirt, and chunks of the firmament fall away. A clod of dirt hits the casket, shatters. Shatters over my little sister with the white-blonde hair, the little sister who teased me and laughed; and the way she'd throw her head back and laugh, her milk-white cheeks dimpled right through with happiness, and I'd scoop close all her belly-giggling life.
"They lay her gravestone flat into the earth, a black granite slab engraved with no dates, only the five letters of her name. Aimee. It means "loved one." How she was. We had loved her. And with the laying of her gravestone, the closing up of her deathbed, so closed our lives. Closed to any notion of grace. Really, when you bury a child - or when you just simply get up every day and live life raw - you murmur the question soundless. No one hears.
"'Can there be a good God? A God who graces with good gifts...'
"...when a crib lies empty through long nights, and bugs burrow through coffins? Where is God, really? How can He be good when babies die, and marriages implode, and dreams blow away, dust in the wind? Where is grace bestowed when cancer gnaws and loneliness aches and nameless places in us soundlessly die, break off without reason, erode away? Where hides this joy of the Lord, this God who fills the earth with good things, and how do I fully live when life is full of hurt? How do I wake up to joy and grace and beauty and all that is the fullest life when I must stay numb to losses and crushed dreams and all that empties me out?"
Notes:
- We wake up every morning to the love and mercy of God.
- Lamentations 3:19-23
- God will give me what is best, not what is pleasant and easy.
- Hebrews 12:9-11
- We live in a fallen world with the pain and difficulty it brings.
- Job 5:6-7
- Sometimes what is best for is for us to deal with the natural challenges of life.
- 2 Corinthians 12:7-10
- Sometimes what is best for us is for God to pour out His grace and deliver us.
- 2 Corinthians 9:6-8
