Living Springs

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound! I am reminded of the famous hymn. Grace is divine; grace is godly; grace is of God. I don’t think we have the words to explain what it means. Grace transcends human understanding. It is an attribute of God; the Trinity alone exercises and expresses grace to its fullest dimension. It is only the grace of God that brings salvation (Titus 2:11), and that grace reaches us through the one and only Jesus Christ (John 1:17). Grace justifies (Romans 3:24) us, and grace empowers us to endure life’s tribulations (2 Corinthians 12:9). It is the grace of God that lubricates life. When you are under grace, your life cannot be veered off track by any power of darkness.

Grace has made and continues to make history, for whenever or wherever the grace of God abounds, uncommon things happen: supernatural change takes place in situations confronting people’s lives. Grace has a track record of causing individuals to leapfrog. A frog does not walk; it leaps. To leapfrog means to vault over a hurdle; it means to make progress by large jumps, instead of in small increments. Leapfrogging leads to a change of location, from a lower place to a higher place. When the grace of God abounded towards the cripple at the gate called Beautiful (Acts 3), the Bible says the man jumped to his feet! All his life, this man had been crawling. Anyone who crawls can never compete with those who walk. Are you crawling in life? Behold grace! The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ caused the crawling cripple to jump to his feet and begin to walk. What a change grace brings!

When grace finds you, it transforms you: it changes your language; it changes your tastes; it changes your wardrobe; it changes your song; it changes your address; it leapfrogs you! The apostle Paul was a beneficiary of the power of grace. Hear him extol the manifold grace of God upon his life in 1 Corinthians 15:9–10: “For I am the least of the Apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle. … But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace to me was not without effect. … No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.” God’s grace qualifies those disqualified by humankind.

I can see the right hand of David the shepherd-boy raised up as if to say, “I also have a testimony.” The youngest of his father’s sons, and not considered fit by his father, Jesse, David, in order to be in Saul’s army, let alone be king of Israel, had been sent away from home on the day the prophet Samuel went to Jesse’s house to look for a prospective king among Jesse’s sons. Even though David’s own father dislocated him from the scene of coronation, the grace of God located him and brought him to the scene of coronation. The one considered unfit turned out to be the one chosen by grace to be king of Israel. By grace, David leapfrogged over his senior brothers to rule over Israel.

Another biblical character who was the recipient of God’s grace was Ruth. Ruth had arrived from the land of Moab with her mother-in-law, Naomi, to Bethlehem in Israel. In Israel at that time, Jewish prejudice against the Moabites, who had been traditional enemies of Israel, was rife. With her faith solidly invested in God, Ruth, as recorded in the book of Ruth, began life in Israel as a collector of leftovers of grain at Boaz’s farm. That identified her as poor, as the least qualified labourer on the farm, which already had “highly” qualified Jewish women at the forefront of the farming business. However, the underdog, Ruth, caught the attention of the farm owner, Boaz. When the grace of God comes upon anyone, it imparts distinction, making it impossible for that individual to be avoided or ignored. Boaz, therefore, could not avoid or ignore Ruth. He ordered her transfer from way back to the front line, where all the “highly qualified” women were harvesting the grains. As if that wasn’t enough, Boaz soon fell in love with Ruth and married her. What happened? Grace enabled Ruth to soar over the other “more qualified” women to win the love of wealthy Boaz. No sooner than later, she was being addressed as “Madame” by all the workers on the farm. Grace exalts; grace repositions one into a better status.

When the grace of God found Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, living in poverty-stricken Lo Debar and barely making ends meet, King David ordered Mephibosheth’s immediate transfer to the king’s palace in Jerusalem, with the full rights and entitlements of a prince (2 Samuel 9). Grace can make the poor rich. May God’s grace locate you and then relocate you to higher ground. A friend recently told me that grace is God’s answer to an unfair world. God knows how unfair many events and happenings in life will be, so He has prepared His grace to counter that and to pour on us favours we don’t deserve. May you find grace to help in your time of need, grace to leapfrog. And may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you.