Accepting Grace

When I first actually became a Christian, between the summer of my sophomore and junior year of high school, I struggled a lot with forgiveness. I had done some pretty messed up stuff and I was living in a world of guilt and shame because of it. This started affecting every area of my life - my relationships, my school work, and ultimately my view of myself. I couldn't get beyond the guilt. I thought of myself as an unclean person, someone that didn't deserve forgiveness or love from anyone, especially not from God. I felt like I had let my Father down and I felt unworthy of His grace.


In his book, Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller writes about a similar story of his struggles to accept grace. He writes:

"I would hear about grace, read about grace, and even sing about grace, but accepting grace is an action that I could not understand. It seemed wrong to me not to have to pay for my sin, not to feel guilty about it or kick myself around."

After a youth group service one night, I laid my heart out to my small group leader. I told her all about this inability to love myself, to accept the forgiveness that I had been longing for, and to move on with my life. After talking for a while, she simply looked up at me and said, "Courtney, God has already forgiven you more than you could imagine. Why can't you just forgive yourself?" Suddenly, it hit me. I was putting myself above God. I was being entirely selfish by thinking that I had more power to forgive than He did. Since that time, I have been able to open my heart and mind up to something bigger than my own selfishness and accept God's wonderful grace. I can now live a life confident of His unending love and full of His wonderful mercy.


"The ability to accept God's unconditional grace and ferocious love is all the fuel we need to obey Him in return. Accepting God's kindness and free love is something the devil does not want us to do. If we hear, in our inner ear, a voice saying we are failures, we are losers, we will never amount to anything, this is the voice of Satan trying to convince the bride that the groom does not love her. This is not the voice of God. God woos us with kindness, He changes our character with the passion of His love."
          - Donald Miller