The Best From Heaven

The Best from Heaven

by Rocky Fleming

 But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you …”  2 Corinthians 12:9 (ESV)

In my book, An Orphan No More, I wrote it specifically to capture the intimate characteristics of the relationship that we with God as His children.  Since it coincides with the Enlightened series of The Journey, I tracked the essence of the series using the allegory that I’ve used in all books pertaining to The Journey.  As I wrote this particular book, as often happens, the Lord revealed to me things that I didn’t consider before.  There were specifically two new things that I feel God wanted me to write into the book.  The first, and most obvious is the “orphan spirit” that many of us have.  This perspective of our self is a major deterrent with moving closer and deeper into our intimate relationship with Christ. It is unnecessary and in fact needs to be removed by accepting our identity as God’s son or daughter. 

The second revelation that came to me and was written into the book is a better understanding of God’s grace.  In fact, I illustrated it as the foundation of our relationship with God, and all things that come to us flow from His grace.  Our relationship with Him starts with His grace and continues with it.  All of the intimate characteristics of God are founded on His grace to us.  His complete acceptance of us is built on the foundation of His grace.  The detailed knowledge of us is founded on His grace to us, if not, we could not escape the condemning scrutiny of our sinful actions and thoughts that He would know about us.  Basing our relationship on the knowledge and acceptance of God’s grace removes our fear of being punished or excluded.  This acceptance of His grace makes a passage like this one below come alive with understanding:

 “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.” 1 John 4:18 (ESV)

Would you like another description of grace?  Perfect love.  Do you see the connection?  Only God’s grace is perfect love, and perfect love casts out fear of punishment.  Do you see how important it is that we understand the grace that our Father has established our relationship on?  Though He knows everything about us, the good, the bad and the ugly, His grace prevents Him from using it against His child.  Instead, He uses it to help us overcome that which causes us to stumble in sin.

In the passage above God tells Paul that His grace is sufficient for whatever he faces.  To me this says that all that God can do and is willing to do comes from His grace, rather than the fact that we deserve to be treated fairly.  If any of us lived in a relationship with Holy God that was based on fairness and justice and we get what we deserve, we would be condemned from the beginning and all through our relationship with Him, for we could not measure up to the perfection required to enter and stay in a relationship with God based on our personal goodness.  Nothing new about that.  It is called the gospel.  But many, if not most believers do not understand how far-reaching God’s grace is to our lives, and this in itself causes us to live with uncertainty and so much self-condemnation.  I understand it for I lived with it myself most of my Christian life, until I embraced the foundation of grace that my relationship with God is based on.  When I embraced it, the orphan spirit was shown the door and released by me.

What does this do for God’s child?  It begins a new journey with Him that then takes giant steps toward the intimacy with Him that we seek.  This deeper intimacy then reforms us in so many ways.  It reforms our perspective of God, our self, and others.  This deeper intimacy begins a transformation process that others see and feel, as they see that there is something better about us … more Christ-like.  So, you can see why God told Paul that His grace is sufficient for him.  It is because with God’s grace … we get the best heaven has to offer.

I ask you to take a deep dive into understanding how far-reaching God’s grace is to you.  As your heart is opened up to see what you might be missing, I think it will cause you to love Him more, for you will accept more of His love to you.