Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Space for Grace

One of the ladies at the church the hubs and I have been attending invited me to an inter-denominational Bible Study being hosted by another local church. When I heard it was a Beth Moore Bible Study, I jumped at the chance! If you haven't had the opportunity to go through a Beth Moore study, I would definitely recommend it. God has really given her a gift for teaching.

Her newest study that we're doing is:


One of my favorite parts of the first session was Beth Moore talking about how we all need to make space for grace. She uses Paul for an example. ] In 1 Corinthians 15:10, Paul says, "But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them-yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me." Paul had regret for his past and his past actions. In the passage in 1 Corinthians, the Greek word that is translated into, "without effect" means something along the lines of empty, useless, or hollow. Instead of letting his regret consume him, he let God into that space that his past wrongs took up so that space would not be hollow, but full of grace.

That's pretty encouraging to me to know that when we have regrets, things we've done wrong, and just those moments we wish hadn't happened that we can not only ask God's forgiveness, but we can give it all to him and let him fill those parts of heart with grace instead of leaving them hollow.

I don't know about you, but I'd much rather have a grace shaped space in my heart than a hollow one.