Enabling Grace, the wherewithal to live the Christian life I

"You've got to do the best you can”, my friend told me. “Sometimes my best is not good enough” was my reply. The picture I have of this is, of a village suffering severely from drought as the river dries up. Way back up stream there is a dam holding back much of the water. The keeper of the dam is aware of the problem. He has a hand pump which he is working furiously to try and pump the water over the top of the dam to supply the village. “I am doing the best I can” he says. “No one could pump harder than I am, no one”. True or not, the point would be mute if there was an electric pump he could turn on to solve the problem! We may fail to tap into resources beyond ourselves because of ignorance of their existence, or because of hurt or pain or stubbornness, but we will certainly be much less than we can be, if we do not learn to tap into His power to live the live He calls us to live. The Scripture tells us “We have not because we do not ask” (James 4:2). God will not impose His enabling grace on us, we have to come to the place where we admit our best is not good enough, and then we need to turn to Him and ask for Him to fill up what we cannot do.

This bears repeating, so let me say it again. When we have tried everything, done the very best we can and failed, there are two things we need to do. We need firstly to admit that we need His help, and secondly we need to come to the foot of the cross in humility asking Him for the help to do what we know is pleasing in His sight, and which without Him is impossible. Let's make no mistake about it, His standards are so impossibly high that we really cannot live up to them without His help. “The Law is our tutor to bring us to Christ” Paul tells us in Galatians 3. We know deep down that His standards are right, but they are so out of reach at times. But when He tells us “All have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God” (Romans 3:23), it is not to condemn us, it is to help us see we need His help, His solution. If we think otherwise we are fooling ourselves and are likely to have a touch (or more) of self-righteousness.

It is said that there is no place that has more potential to generate anger, than a marriage. I believe this to be true. This being the case, there is no other relationship where sooner or later we will need His help if we are to deal with what needs to be dealt with, in a way that honours God and each other. These things are tests. Will we demonstrate that we are “mere men” (1 Corinthian 3:3), or will we with God's help (Grace), prove to ourselves and the World that there really is something to this Christianity stuff, that the Christian has something beyond him or herself?

The way it seems to work for most of us that that it is only when we come to the end of ourselves that we even start to do our part in taking hold of the resources God has made available to us through the Cross. And even then it is far from automatic. I have come to realize that these times are crossroads that we all come to sooner or later. In a marriage relationship it seems more often than not, to work this way: the things that attracted us to each other in the beginning become the very things that make us throw up our hands when the honey moon is over. I have seen it over and over, it is diabolical, and I mean that quite literally. The Evil one, the one whose agenda is to kill steel and destroy, intends it for our harm. But God intends it for our good, for our growth and the furtherance of the Kingdom. We can't do it without Him, I cannot!

They tell me that if you put an eagle chick with the turkeys they will never learn to fly. Apparently in teaching them to fly, the mother eagle will push the young ones out of the nest. When they do this, the young ones drop like a stone, well because they have not yet learned to fly. The mother will then swoop down and catch her chick on her wings, and she will do this over and over until the chick learns to spread its wings and fly.

I can't imagine that the chick enjoys this very much, well not at least until it learns to fly. I can't imagine the chick would understand what its mother was doing, at least in the beginning. What if it never learned to trust its mother, what if it never spread its wings as it fell? There are examples all over the Bible of the crossroads the trials and temptations of life bring. Some, in these examples, took the way of the World, others took the road less travelled (His way). Some grumbled against God, others poured out their complaint before him (see Numbers 11, and August posts). There is a big difference. In the Numbers passage, the children of Israel in their grumbling cut themselves off from God, choosing not to trust Him. They wanted to go back to Egypt where they had been slaves. Essentially they were saying to God “We were better off without You”. They said “This is too hard, we are going back to the old ways”. Moses reaction looks at first sight to be the same. He said “This is too hard, I cannot bear it” (11:14), but He said this to God. God was angry with the people, but He provided for Moses. He has promised to provide for us too. We are told in 1 Corinthians 10:13 that “No trial or temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tested beyond what you are able, but with the temptation (test) will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it”. In relationship with Him, He gives us the ability to do things that we cannot do without Him. It is His intention that we learn to “fly”, for “those who wait and hope and trust in the Lord will find new strength, they will rise up on wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31). The trials and temptations and difficulties are, as I say, crossroads. Peter tells us “Therefore let those who suffer .... commit their souls to Him ...., as to a faithful Creator” (1 Peter 4:19). He will bring us through if we let Him. What will we do in times of trial? Will we turn to Him and find Grace to Help in time of need (Hebrews 4:16), or will we turn from Him go the way of the World? More to come.