I forgot what grace was.

No, really. I blanked completely. Like when you KNOW what a word is, and you're familiar with it, it may even be an easy word-- like "bull". I remember a particular incident when I forgot what the word 'bull' meant. Bull, like the big cow with horns!! But... grace. Grace just seems like it should be more important.

Here's my written journal entry. To set the scene, it was like 1 o'clock in the morning, I was reading in 1 Peter.

GRACE. GREAT.... GRACE… mercy… crap. I don’t even know the difference between them right now. It could be because I have not acknowledged them for a while… geez…

(an hour later)

I looked in the Bible for more references of grace and didn’t understand it still. I feel rather unchristian right now. I had to research it. Didn't want to get out my computer or out of bed to the dictionary or concordance... yay for phones with internet.

God, teach me to look for your grace, which accepts me despite my undeserving and sinful state, gives me a part of the kingdom of god through Jesus Christ, my savior, the Son of God—the pardon for my sin…=grace. By God’s mercy (Titus 2:11-12)—Grace teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions and living to self. GRACE TEACHES US TO LIVE. The connection between the “worldly” definition of grace, which means smooth, delightful, acceptable, airy, RIGHT… we say to live and walk with “grace” things are “graceful”… GRACE, in a spiritual and biblical sense, teaches us how to walk, how to succeed appropriately- the grace of God… God offers grace. It is what teaches us how to live rightly as a Christian with “grace”. Not only that, but without GRACE, we cannot live that life, because it is God’s grace that changes us. God gave us grace through Jesus’ substitutionary sacrifice. We say we have been changed by GRACE because grace is the agent which changes us and teaches us how to live. We cannot “say no to worldly passions” without grace, because grace is what overrides the SELF that is sinful.

We appeal to the mercy of the King to afford us some of His grace, through Jesus’ death and resurrection, so we can live with Him, “soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world”

“Grace: the divine influence upon the heart and its reflection in the life.” The divine influence is the gift from God. When you truly “stand on” grace, as the songs say, it ought to be evident in your life! When God influences a heart, it WILL be reflected in the way the person lives.

“By the grace of God” God’s grace is offered to everyone. We choose to obey or refuse it.

Titus 3:5, by his mercy He saved us (by his merciful character. God doesn’t just HAVE mercy, God IS mercy, he IS JUST… which is why in his mercy, he begot Jesus, the perfect sacrifice, to bear the weight of God’s wrath and JUSTICE… Thank God for mercy, and for the grace that was imparted to us so that we can continue to appeal to God’s mercy….)

The end!