GRACE

“And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.” - 1 Peter 5:10.

I am by no means a perfect man. Some days it would be hard to call me good. I have my daily struggles. Some days I come out on top of those struggles, some days I don’t. But by the grace of God, I am able to get up every morning and start another day anew.

How I have come to know Christ hasn’t been very spectacular. There haven’t been any near death experiences, any major crises that opened my eyes to the Lord. It has been more of a slow build up. Like God has always been there, just waiting for me to make the turn toward him. And I believe that he has always been there, watching me make mistake after mistake, seeing me miss clue after clue. Each time he has shown me the kind of grace that can only come from the Lord himself.

Like it says in 1 Peter, “…after you have suffered a little while…” we will be restored by his grace. Like I said before, I haven’t had to suffer very much. I have been incredibly fortunate to be brought up in a home with loving parents who are still together. I am happily married to the love of my life and my best friend. Life has been pretty good to me. So the suffering that is talked about in that verse, at least for me, has been internal. I’ve always known about God. I was raised in the church. But I had never really known him. And at a certain point in my life, I think I was about 21 and getting close to graduating from college, I could tell that something was missing. I would come home on weekends and go to church with my parents and just sit there thinking, “Why do I feel like this? Why do I feel empty?” And after struggling with these feelings for months, God showed up in the form of a guy. This guy had come to our fraternity chapter meeting saying that he worked for the campus ministries program and he wanted to start a small bible study with anyone in my fraternity who was interested. Needless to say, this had “work of the Lord” written all over it. So I decided to jump in. And when I did, it was like my eyes had been opened for the first time. He told us that being a Christian is more than just going to church, being a nice guy, and following the rules. To be a follower of Christ means having an active, fulfilling relationship with him, and that the Lord wants us to pursue him and to love him as he pursues and loves us.

And it was then that the void that I had began to fill. I realized that no matter how much I screwed up, he will always love me. That if I would confess my sins to him, he would forgive me. And to know that there is someone who loves me that much, someone that shows me that much grace…it makes serving him on a daily basis that much easier.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I am not a perfect man. None of us are. And we must strive to become more like him every single day. We must strive to be better friends, better husbands, better fathers, and better men. And without the grace of God, we’re dead in the water. It is a daily struggle, but with the Lord on our side, there is nothing that can defeat us.

How did you come to know Christ?

Was it a slow build or a sudden jolt?

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This was a guest post by Caleb Reeves. 

Caleb lives in Spanish Fort, AL. He spends his time with his beautiful wife and two dogs, doing as much fishing as possible and living life one day at a time. He is taking each day as an opportunity to become a better man of God.