Our family… The Day of Ralph’s Celebration of Life
“Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me,
YET not my will but your will be done.”
The day we said good-bye, this quote from C. S. Lewis kept running through my head…“When I am in the presence of God, it seems profoundly unbecoming to demand anything!” Luke 22:42 Christ said, “What shall I say? Father, save me from this hour? But for this cause I came to this hour. Father, glorify Your Name.”
My attitude toward every “fire of sorrow” and difficulty is, initially…please don’t let this happen! Then reality sets in and the truth comes blaring with its message. I cannot be saved from its flames, but I can be rescued into its divine purpose by His grace! There is no evading it, enduring it, denying it or asking, “why?” It is a fact of life that escapes none of us.
Grace, by my husband’s functional definition, is “God who works in you the will and power to do His will”. Phil. 2: 13 He always gave the five factors of grace as:
Grace is:
(1) Given to every person Titus 2: 11;
(2) Given freely Eph. 2: 8;
(3) If received, we are Given more II Pet. 1; 2;
(4) Grace can be resisted Heb. 12: 15;
(5) Given to the humble. Jas. 4:6
Oswald Chambers in “My Utmost for His Highest” this month directed our attention to making sure we saw this “fire of sorrows” from God’s point of view and realize that “the GRACE we had yesterday will not do for today”! We are to draw on the grace of God now, in this moment…in the trenches, in every conceivable condition we find ourselves in.
I love his checkpoint…”the proof that you are drawing on the grace of God is that you can be humiliated without manifesting the slightest trace of anything but HIS grace!”
With gratefulness I am drawing on the grace of God,
not presently…but NOW!
Will you join me?
~Jackie Johnson - I am a former tribal missionary to the Kuna Indians on the Colombian border in Central America. Fluent in several languages, my husband and I currently pastor a Spanish-speaking church in Southern California. My passion is mentoring and equipping dedicated young women for life, marriage, motherhood, and beyond. I am the mother of two daughters and the grandmother of three Princesses and four young Knights.
