Grace, Grace, God's Grace

"I was talking to a friend the other day about you. We were amazed at how you manage to juggle everything you do! From being a music major to accompanying and HeartSong, how do you do it?" This is what a friend of mine said to me sometime early December, when I was my busiest. Never before in my life has someone said this about me; I have always been the one amazed at other people for being involved in so much and managing to keep their heads above water. Looking back at this semester, I am amazed at myself! How in the world did I do it?

There are two ways to answer this. One is positive: because of the grace of God, because He provided me with so many things I did not deserve and the energy and strength to conquer all the things that in my human folly I committed to doing, I was able to emerge at the end of the semester with a successful junior recital and a 3.7 GPA. Because of the mercy of other people, of my professors and my friends, I was able to get by.

The other way to answer this question has a negative spin, and it's the way I answered my friend when she asked. I survived this semester by putting only a mediocre effort into everything I did, by barely getting by with my HeartSong and accompanying responsibilities, by sacrificing my time of rest and my time with God. As I talked with my friend, I began to realize that spiritually, I was in the worst place I had ever been. I felt far from God and far from His pleasure, knowing that He had faded into the background of my life. All the "selfless" things I did were driven by selfish motives, not motivated by the grace God had given me at all. And I was fooling so many people! It became so easy for me to put on a front, although I am sure more of my true emotions were coming out than I was realizing.

One afternoon I was walking back to my dorm, reflecting on some situations that had happened in my life over the summer and the past semester that I had never recovered from. I came to the humble realization as I was walking that the reason I was still suffering from this was because I was bitter, not willing to forgive some people for things they had done. I pushed that realization aside as I came to my dorm and prepared to work on homework. As usual, I checked my Facebook quick before starting my homework, and saw a video that my friend and former teammate Will had made with his friend for a school project. It was called Trainwrecks, and here is the link to it on Vimeo:

http://vimeo.com/33381715

In summary, Will compares the human race to a train, and in sinning we have fallen off the tracks and have become a wreck. God is the only one strong enough to put us back on track and redeem us from our sin. As I watched the 5-minute video, my heart slowly broke, going from being bitter and hard to being soft and receiving of Will's message. The climax of the video for me was a quote that I will always remember, that says:

"We've all wrecked our trains. We are responsible for the messes that we're in, the relationships we've broken, the people that we refuse to forgive."

On the edge of tears, my heart melted to the message God was delivering! I knew I had become a horrible train wreck this semester, if not on the outside definitely on the inside. I was the only one responsible for the mess that was this semester; my sin was standing in the way of my willingness to forgive.

The quote continues:

"But God, because He is both loving and just, takes our blame, and our shame, and our guilt, and He takes us from a point of being dead, unable to move, and puts us back on the right track."

I begged God for the grace to keep moving. I begged Him to take away my guilt and to put me back on track. I begged Him to draw me close to Him once again.

When I was in high school, I shared some wisdom with a friend who was feeling far from God. I knew that wisdom had to be from God, because the next hour I had completely forgotten what I said and felt like I had nothing to offer her. A few months later, she told me that what I had said to her that day had changed her life, so I asked her what I had said! The wisdom that had bypassed my mind and gone directly into my mouth was this: You're not far from God. He's been following you the whole time; you just haven't looked back in a while. I reflected on this bit of wisdom in that moment. I felt so far from God, so out of His will and separated from Him. But my loving and just God saw me through the eyes of Christ, loving me not for what I did, but because of who He is.

Beyond a shadow of a doubt, there is no way I could do anything, much less do anything well, without the grace of God to constantly take me from "unable to move" to "back on the right track." This semester's successful moments only existed by God's grace, and this next semester's successes will only come from His grace as well. I pray that I will never again lose sight of that and become so self-absorbed that I miss the chance to thank Him for all the grace He gives in every moment. I hope to have more time to reflect and to share what God will do this semester. May my life be only by His grace and for His glory. May I have a love that only comes from Him.

Grace, grace, God's grace
Grace that will pardon and cleanse within
Grace, grace, God's grace
Grace that is greater than all my sin