David Murray has written a helpful little book entitled, Reset: Living a Grace Paced Life in a Burnout Culture. I would commend his reset approach as you begin the new year. We enjoy learning about the grace of God, and singing about the grace of God, but when it comes to living by grace, we are, as Robert Robinson’s well known hymn puts it, “prone to wander Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love”.
And yet, we must be careful that we do not try to “repay God’s grace”, by a life of self-commitment, but rather realize that grace has paid all debts, and is itself the energizing life of God in Christ that empowers us to live for his glory (Gal 2:20).
Murray identifies five areas where grace often seems lacking in our lives, and then shows how to address these “grace deficiencies” in the rest of the book. The five areas include:
1. The motivating power of grace is missing so that we find ourselves absorbed and exhausted by self-effort instead of (to cite John Piper), “living by faith in future grace”.
2. The moderating power of grace is missing which results in our failure to deal realistically with the limitations of our sinful humanity and misses the necessary dependency upon Christ’s sufficiency.
3. The multiplying power of grace is missing, so that we drive ourselves into the barrenness of a busy life, without resting in Christ and finding the necessary balance that living by grace brings to our life.
4. The releasing power of grace is missing, which causes us to become controlling people and angry people (anger is almost always an indicator that we are trying to control others or life itself). Grace allows us to pray for what we desire in others and in life, and to take responsibility for trusting God to do what only he can do in this life.
5. The receiving power of grace is missing, so that we ignore the ordinary means of God’s enabling grace such as good food, exercise, healthy sleep patterns, and all of the spiritual disciplines which are designed for our progress in godliness.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Heb 12:1-2)
