A New Look at Grace

I came across this quote recently in a book entitled Spiritual Formation as if the Church Mattered by James Wilhoit.  "Grace is God's sustaining and transforming power."  We Methodists talk a lot about grace. We've even given it a bunch of first names, (pervenient, justifying, and sanctifying). United Methodist Women has a great outline of what we mean by grace on their website. http://gbgm-umc.org/umw/wesley/walk.stm/. They explain grace as God's gift, freely offered to humankind, with us from birth, with us when we enter a new life in Christ, and with us as we try to live out that new life.

I always thought of grace as sort of a gift from God that forgives my shortcomings. Wilhoit brought a new picture to mind, grace = power. He says in the Book of Acts grace essentially equals power. Those people who were full of grace were also full of power to preach and work mighty miracles. If I think this way, when I gratefully accept God's grace, I also accept that God has given me the power to live gracefully in the world and share that grace and power with others. Musing on this, I remembered something from the confirmation service language and looked it up in a hymnal. One of the questions is, "Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?" Through this sacrament, God is offering me freedom and power. The question wasn't do I believe it, the question was, do I accept it. I must have answered "I do." My name is on the rolls. What does this mean to me today as a Christian steward?

As a Steward, I am set free from whatever restraints might hold me back from doing God's work - and I have been given the power to do what needs to be done. The Bible is full of stories of people with all sorts of reasons to think they couldn't do what God asked, and some seemed by earthy standards to have failed (like that inconvenient crucifixion). In today's world where fear and protectionism dominate the public psyche, God's stewards are called to act with courage. Fortunately, we have been given the power to do that. We access that power through faith, but also through the practices and disciplines that sustain that faith.

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