Hi, my name is Kristen and I'm a gracaholic.
I have a confession to make, I am addicted to grace.
What is grace? The best explanation I've heard: a gift that costs everything for the giver and nothing for the recipient.
I am beginning to take on a new obsession, an obsession over grace. Grappling with understanding it, identifying it, receiving it, walking in it and expelling it to those around me.
So here I am on my little blog using my fingertips to wrench out some of my thoughts regarding grace. One of the first thoughts I have is more of a question or pondering over why there is an apparent notion that many Christians or church-goers, for whatever reason, assemble in an attempt to deny this addiction. This is one addiction we should all find unity in confessing regardless of age, race, education, gender, marital status, sexual orientation, socio-economic class...etc. right? But instead it seems that to be Christian or spiritually elite; one must act like they have been sober for a long time. Sober from falling back onto needing grace that is. Feeling a need to portray an image that one has it all together or is well on their way of having it all together independent of God's grace..or only having needed it a long time ago, before they were "saved".
Okay, so I guess I'm using "lingos" that would be more understandable to one that is somewhat in the "church going sect". Not my intention, but I guess we speak as we are regardless.
As I was saying..I am addicted to grace. I depend on grace and no matter how much I struggle to get away from this need I feel it there. The more I'm realizing about my encounters and experiences with this thing called grace, the more I want it...then comes the guilt afterward. Why the guilt? Because I think a huge part of my brain has been subjected to faulty programing leading to the conclusion of buying into the lie that I should not need THAT much grace from God, and that I should be self-sufficient. Of course not perfect all the time, but good enough on my own compared to "those people"..defined rather subjectively depending on your baseline I suppose. These messages come to us from all sorts of avenues, some more subtle and some very blunt. Our culture admonishes one to be sober from needing God's grace..or needing it THAT much, but unfortunately so do many churches or Christians.
Why should I feel guilty from what is real and from what is unavoidable, depending on God's grace? Depending on the gospel of grace? It's like shaming a baby for being born when they were born..they had no say in the matter. We were designed to depend on God and His grace and that is a good thing my friend. And the problem is not with our design..it's with our think tanks buying into this pervasive lie that we should be ashamed of that, and that we do not need to be that dependent on grace.
The One who came to us..full of grace and truth was Jesus Christ. And the addiction to this One is a good thing..it's being in sync with how you were programmed by the Original Programmer Himself.
If you're not addicted to grace, than you're just trading that addiction in for something else...like the addiction to denying your need for grace. We are all addicts in one way or another, wake up to that fact. Thank God that He made us to be addicted to something good and satisfying..Himself. And that He does not withold what can satisfy..Himself and His grace.
hallelujah.
