The Gift I Never Could Have Earned — The Gift Of Grace

Yesterday, I shared one of the greatest misconceptions God had to correct in my life.

Without realizing it, I viewed God almost like a puppeteer. I believed that if I prayed faithfully enough, my prayers would somehow pull the strings and produce the outcome I wanted.

During my pregnancy with Joy, I prayed every single day for a healthy baby. Because I had faithfully prayed, I expected God to answer exactly as I had asked.

But when Joy was born with special needs, I came face to face with a painful truth.

God is not a puppeteer.

He isn’t waiting for us to say the right words or pray enough prayers so He will do our bidding. He is the sovereign, loving Father who always does what is right—even when we cannot understand His ways.

My prayers hadn’t failed.

God hadn’t failed me.

The problem wasn’t that God had changed.

The problem was that I misunderstood who He is.

Without realizing it, I had turned prayer into a transaction. I believed my faithfulness entitled me to a particular blessing.

But that isn’t how God works.

And that isn’t how grace works.

Grace isn’t God giving me what I’ve earned.

It’s God giving me what I could never earn.

Mercy isn’t God failing to answer my preferred prayer.

Mercy is God withholding the judgment my sin deserves.

Over time, I discovered that God’s greatest answer to prayer wasn’t always changing my circumstances.

It was changing me.

He was teaching me to trust His sovereignty—to believe that He always knows what is best for me, even when I cannot understand His plan.

That lesson became the doorway to understanding both His mercy and His grace.

Have you ever been given something so valuable you knew there was no possible way you could ever repay it?

That’s exactly what salvation is.

It isn’t something we earn.

It isn’t something we deserve.

It is God’s gift.

As I studied the Bible with my 96-year-old friend, Sara, I watched her begin to understand God’s mercy. She was beginning to see that because Jesus died in our place, believers will never receive the punishment their sins deserve.

Then another question naturally followed.

If God isn’t giving us what we deserve…what is He giving us instead?

The answer is grace.

The Bible teaches that every one of us has sinned.

Because God is perfectly holy, sin must be judged. Left on our own, every one of us stands guilty before Him.

If God gave me the justice my sin deserves, I would spend eternity separated from Him in the lake of fire.

Those aren’t my words.

They’re God’s.

Years ago, a Jehovah’s Witness came to my door. We spent nearly an hour discussing the Bible before he finally asked,

“You don’t really believe a loving God would send someone to hell forever for sins committed during seventy or eighty years, do you?”

I answered,

“Yes, I do—not because it’s easy to accept, but because my feelings don’t determine truth. God’s Word does.”

The Bible says,

“And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.”
— Revelation 20:15

Those words are sobering.

But that’s exactly why the cross is such wonderful news.

God loved us too much to leave us under His judgment.

He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to take our place.

Jesus received the punishment we deserved so that everyone who trusts in Him never has to.

That is mercy.

Mercy means God does not give me what I deserve.

But God doesn’t stop there.

He doesn’t simply remove my punishment.

He gives me blessings I could never earn.

Paul writes,

“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.”
— Ephesians 2:8–9

Did you notice what Paul calls salvation?

A gift.

Gifts aren’t earned.

They’re received.

Because of Jesus, God forgives every sin I’ve ever committed.

He declares me righteous because of Christ.

He adopts me into His family.

He gives me eternal life.

He prepares a home for me in heaven.

And He promises to walk with me every day until I see Him face to face.

That is grace.

Mercy is God not giving me what I deserve.

Grace is God giving me what I could never deserve.

Mercy rescues me from judgment.

Grace welcomes me into God’s family forever.

Both are possible because of Jesus Christ.

Watching Sara discover these truths reminded me of a season when God had to teach me these very lessons.

Joy was only nine-and-a-half years old, and I was in my mid-forties. Life had become incredibly difficult. If I’m honest, I had grown deeply disappointed with God. I wasn’t questioning whether He existed—I was questioning whether I could trust Him.

Looking back, I can now see that God was quietly answering a prayer I had prayed long before Joy was ever born.

Before He could teach me His truth, He first had to help me unlearn what I believed about Him.

Anyone who has ever coached a sport understands something called muscle memory. When an athlete repeats the same movement over and over it becomes second nature. But if the wrong technique is learned first, it has to be unlearned before the correct one can take its place.

Our spiritual lives can be much the same.

Sometimes we’ve believed something for so long that we simply assume it’s biblical. That was me.

Patiently and lovingly, God brought me back to His Word.

Little by little, He replaced my assumptions with His truth.

He taught me that He is sovereign.

He taught me that His ways are always perfect.

He taught me that I can trust Him because He always knows what is best—even when I don’t understand His plan.

Those truths changed everything.

That’s why I’m so passionate about sharing them with you.

I don’t want us to build our faith on tradition, popular opinion, or even our own experiences.

I want us to build it on God’s unchanging Word.

One step at a time.

Tomorrow we’ll lift the lid of one of the most sacred objects in all of Israel—the Ark of the Covenant.

Resting on top was something called the Mercy Seat.

To most people, it looked like nothing more than a beautifully crafted golden cover.

But hidden within that golden lid is one of the clearest pictures of Jesus Christ in the entire Old Testament.

Once you discover why God called it the Mercy Seat…

You’ll never look at the cross the same way again.