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Don't Fall Short of His Grace


           Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees.  “Make level paths for your feet,” so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed. Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.  See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.  See that no one is sexually immoral, or is godless like Esau, who for a single meal sold his inheritance rights as the oldest son.  Afterward, as you know, when he wanted to inherit this blessing, he was rejected. Even though he sought the blessing with tears, he could not change what he had done. (Hebrews 12:12-17)

          The way we’re to make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy is to see to it that no one falls short of the grace of God. What does this mean? If God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, and His grace is sufficient, how can someone fall short of it? The first piece of the answer is that the problem isn’t with God or His grace. The problem is with us.
          God’s grace is available, but it’s like my truck. I can make my truck available to you, but if you don’t use it, if you insist on walking everywhere because you can do it yourself, you have fallen short of what you could do with it. Further, if you abuse it, you’re likely to have your use of it restricted.
          Those represent the two bad habits we tend to fall into. Either we reject the grace, preferring the Law, or we reject it preferring license. Some reject salvation by grace through faith. We all want to earn our way to heaven, but some people never give up their works. As Paul said, those who live by the law and fail in one thing, fail in the whole. Read the first several verses of Galatians 5.
          To make sure no one falls short of God’s grace, we need to make sure that all know that they can receive God’s grace. That’s evangelism. And once a person is saved, we need to make sure that they don’t return again to works as the source of their relationship with Jesus. There are works, but they are the fruit of God’s grace and our faith, not the means to them.
          But the folks who either depend on their works for salvation, and those who think they must work or lose their salvation, and those who abuse grace by going off and living as they choose aren’t the only ones who fall short of grace. Most days, I end the day with a sense of having failed. No doubt, I have failed, but instead of going to God with the failure and asking for His grace, I chalk it up to proof that I’m a failure. Instead of accepting His grace, I mourn my humanity. I know others who shrug their shoulders and say that Scripture has little or nothing to say about how we live today. Neither is correct.
          Don’t miss out on God’s grace because of your sin, or your guilt, or your freedom.

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