Book: God’s Amazing Grace

“In a sense, the grace of God is one of life’s mysteries. It is something you need more than you will ever need anything else. You have to have it or you’ll die, and yet you don’t deserve it and never will. It’s free, but it costs something. If you’ve never experienced it, you probably don’t even know you don’t have it. Once you receive it, you need more; but you’ll only get more as long as you realize it’s a gift. If you try to pay for it, you can’t have it; if you try to work to pay it back, you lose the joy of having received it. It is one of the supreme expressions of God’s nature, but only He determines when and if and to whom He gives it away. When He does, it is often to those you and I wouldn’t choose.”

1- God does not need anything from us, yet we feel compelled to do things for Him. What is the difference between doing something out of obedience and doing something to earn favor? Why is it often hard to accept grace?

2- Why is it necessary to realize who we are before we can receive grace?

3- One of Russell’s definitions of grace is this, “Grace is all that God is, providing all that God does for someone who has no right at all.” How has God provided all that He does for you?

4- Why does it break the heart of God when we think that we deserve to be saved?

5- What is the difference between “saving grace” and “enabling grace”?

Key verse: For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God not of works, lest any man should boast. (Ephesians 2:8,9)

“The only way to understand grace is to take a trip to Calvary. Calvary is grace defined. Unless you come to understand, or at least begin to understand, the price God paid that day for your sins and for mine, grace can easily become something we take for granted. To really understand grace, we must come to understand that it wasn’t free to Him. That, Beloved, is an understatement. He looked down at this world that was encrusted with sin, afire with rebellion, asea in hypocrisy and literally dying in its own iniquity, and He loved it. He loved us so much that it never entered His mind to do anything but call for the bill and pay it out of the storehouse of His own goodness. There is no other explanation, but the love of God.”

1- How would this world be different if God had created salvation based upon works? What difference would it make in how we relate to others?

2- Why is it important to realize the magnitude of His sacrifice for us? Do you think part of our ability to worship depends on our remembrance of His sacrifice? Why?

3- Do you think the Pharisees operated from a view of “relative righteousness”? Why is it impossible for us to see ourselves as more righteous than anyone else?

4- Of the seven groups represented at the cross, which ones can you relate to? How could each of these groups have been impacted if they had grasped the reality of the Cross?

Key verse: But God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinner, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)

“It is not our sterling character or our potential to use our supposed God-given talents to aid the kingdom that interests God. He is interested in taking seemingly useless clay, fashioning it in the hands of the Master Craftsman, and making something out of nothing. He is the God of creation, the only one capable of bringing something out of nothing – and that’s what He has done with us. We were dead in trespasses and sins; we were deserving of nothing but hell. Enter grace. If you see yourself and your value to God any differently than that, you do not yet grasp the glory of grace. You are still seeing grace as something you get more of than you deserve. That’s not true. You do not deserve any of it and never, ever will.”

“He is omniscient. He knew before He chose to adopt you all of the dirty diapers of sin that would have to be changed; He knew all the times you would have to be bottle-fed, even when you should have been taking solid foods; He even knew the incredible cost of that heart transplant for which He would receive the bill in full. He knew. And yet, He chose you. He walked through the nursery of eternity, looked at beds full of babies-to-be and said, “Whatever the cost, I’ll pay it. I want that one to be My child.” Beloved, that’s grace. Was it because you were so beautiful? Oh, dear God, no. You were covered with a rash of sin, screaming and kicking your legs in rebellion, shoving aside the bottle of His Word, demanding to make your own decisions, run your own life, and do your own thing, even before you were born. Pretty? Not hardly. No, Beloved, He saw your need.”

“He has adopted us. He has accepted us. He adores us. I know, to the natural mind it makes no sense. It is inconceivable. God knew it would be. So He invented something called grace. And in the marvel of His plan, for some unknown but wonderful reason, He included us.”

1- What were Paul’s credentials for obtaining God’s grace? When we begin to think we deserve God’s grace, what happens to the grace?

2- As a recipient of God’s grace, we receive his blessings. What kind of blessings are these? How have many Christians misconstrued the idea of “blessings”? Does it mean that God does not bless physically? How can our lives be full of grace regardless of what is happening around us? Can you think of people that are full of grace amidst difficult circumstances?

3- How does the adoption of a child require even greater forethought than planning for a natural childbirth? How is the commitment even greater for adoptive parents. What did God give up to adopt us and what does He promise us as His adopted children?

4- As parents, what are some ways we can model the grace of God?

Key verse: According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. (Ephesians 1:4-6)

“God, living in our hearts, actually begins to release in us and through us the same incredible power that raised Christ from the dead. That power, set free in us by grace, begins to do things we cannot, could not, and will not ever be able to do on our own. As He does it instead of us, something else happens. Our faith grows; our hope changes from that which self can accomplish to that which only God can accomplish. Our perspective changes. Heaven matters; Earth doesn’t. Spiritual things are primary; temporal things slip down the ladder of importance. We are being changed as we receive – grace.”

“We are His workmanship, and once that thought totally captivates our hearts, we will begin to see, not only our character changing, but our ministry changing as well. The reason will be that even the transforming of our nature will not call attention to itself or to us, but to Christ alone. As that happens, the grace that flows in us and through us will be like a beacon leading people to Christ and to the fullness of dwelling in Him.”

“The ultimate question, I believe, and the key to releasing God’s divine energy in all of its fullness may well be this: Are you truly willing to become the canvas upon which God paints, or will you continue to insist on helping with the painting?”

“He will, you see, have in His precious heart a picture of what He desires to have when the work is done. It will be beautiful, Beloved, so beautiful that men will look at it and actually be able to see the reflection of the Artist by looking at you.”

1- How is grace expressed in a life? What part do trials and the pressures of life play in both establishing grace in our lives and exhibiting grace in our lives?

2- How does receiving grace change our perspective of the world around us? What things become important?

3- In what way is grace tied together with doing the will of God?

4- Russell says, “We are to simply let the light shine.” What does that look like in your life?

5- In what area of your life are you tempted to paint your own canvas? What do you need to do to give the Lord control of that area of your life?

Key verse: For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:10)

“God’s plan is so different from man’s. God sees strength as internal. Man sees it as external. God sees power as spiritual. Man sees it as physical. God looks at the size of a man’s heart. Man looks at the size of his bank account. God had to do something to bring life back into perspective, so He invented something called “grace.” Grace was a way back to reality. It was a commodity that exercised itself in proportion to a person’s weakness, rather than his strength. It only began to function when man couldn’t. It only did what man couldn’t do. It only worked when man knew he was without strength. The stronger a person thought themselves to be, the less grace they were able to receive, and the more they thought they deserved it, the less they would be able to appropriate it.”

“God does not need us to build the kingdom, Beloved. The kingdom is God’s to build, not ours. The problems are God’s to solve. The church is His, not ours. Until we come experientially to grasp that His is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, we will labor relentlessly and build man-made houses for Him to dwell in, man-made programs for Him to work through, and man-made glory for Him to share – and He will have none of it.”

“The Bible, Beloved, is a single book. Its message has not changed. Man stepped in and intruded on God’s plan. God created an alternate plan which was locked in His heart even before the foundation of the world. It was called “grace.” It needed one thing to work. It needed man to be nothing more than an image, a reflection that mirrored the will of the One who made Him. As long as man would allow God to be the source and thus the power, man would be successful, joyful, and peaceful in his endeavors. At any point where man deviated from the role of a responder or an image, God would let him be his own god until, through weakness, man came to the end of himself, cried out for God to empower him again, and surrendered. Each time he did, God’s love overpowered and man was renewed again.”

“The key has always been weakness. As long as we think we can, we can’t. As long as we have one ounce of spiritual pride left in us, we quench His Spirit and deny Him giving to us the level of grace He desires.”

1- Why is receiving harder than giving? What does it require to receive God’s grace? Why do so few of us freely accept it?

2- How have you seen grace shine through weakness?

3- Do you think allowing God’s grace to shine though weakness would at times give God more glory than healing or taking away the area of weakness? Why?

4- How does the process of aging reflect the grace principle of building strength out of weakness?

5- How do you handle weakness? Do you think that weakness should be fought against or embraced? What difference does your response to weakness make?

Key verse: And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. (II Corinthians 12:9)

“Like a doorway into the inner chambers of God’s sanctuary, this one word “holy” ushers us into a realm of spiritual depth that opens up the heart of God to sinful man, yet also tucked within is an aura of mystery. Without this thing we call “grace,” true holiness is far beyond our reach. Grace is ours for the asking, but we tend to shy away from holiness because the mystery surrounding it makes us uncomfortable about seeking it.”

“Holy? Blameless? I think not,” you mutter under your breath. Oh, Beloved, I think so. I don’t think God teases His children. I don’t think He tells us in His Word that He wants us to be something we can’t be. The key is not that we are to labor to become holy; the key is that we are holy, and He wants us to experience it. The quality itself is built into the new nature. We don’t have to manufacture it; in fact, we can’t. We only have to let God be Himself, and we will discover that, in Christ, we indeed are holy.”

“We could never experience true holiness without His indwelling life in us. Holiness is an imputed quality. You cannot look at God and imitate His holiness. Man has tried that for centuries. The cults have pretended to do that. The imitation looks good on the outside and impresses the unbelieving world, but true holiness is not behavior that changes character; it is character that changes behavior, and character can only be changed by God from the inside out.”

“Holiness is not a badge you wear, it is a privilege you bear. It is not a source of personal pride, but an invisible magnet drawing you to humble repentance and deep recognition of personal sin: not in others, but in yourself.”

“God will never allow holiness to become something you do to gain recognition. It will always be an unconscious outpouring of who He is, and the recognition will go to the One who sent His Holy Spirit to be Holy in us. One reason we do not understand holiness is that we do not understand grace. The ultimate degree to which holiness flows through your life will depend, not on your determination or your moral diligence, but on your willingness to yield to the nature of God in humble surrender. You possess no holiness apart from God.”

1- Our schools and our government are beginning to see the importance of character. Is it possible to teach character and at the same time exclude God?

2- How can we be considered holy even if our actions at times do not show it? How can holiness be revealed in our lives? What is the relationship between grace and obedience?

3- What is the difference between a form of holiness built on legalistic structures and holiness which comes from a heart yielded to God?

4- To what degree does the manifestation of holiness in our lives depend upon what our lives are focused upon? Should our focus be to stay away from certain things or to focus upon getting to know God, or both?

5- Why are weakness and humility keys to the grace of holiness? What should be our motivation to be holy? What is holding you back from receiving the grace of holiness?

Key verse: For thou art a holy people unto the Lord thy God, the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto Himself, above all peoples that are upon the face of the earth. (Deuteronomy 7:6)

“To the [religious] hierarchy, [Jesus] didn’t seem to understand or grasp the meaning of the word “holy”. To them, holy meant uncontaminated. Seeing that wounded man by the side of the road meant don’t touch him or you’ll be unclean. Not so with Jesus. He lived and died for dirty, common folks, many of whom had no place in society at all. He loved lepers, and nobody in his right mind loved lepers. He spent the bulk of His time visiting sick people, dying people, outcasts and rejects; people the religious leaders would not so much as allow into their supposedly uncontaminated presence.”

“As we begin to possess the holiness that is ours, things that used to be acceptable to us now break our hearts because they break God’s heart. The closer we get to God’s heart, the more sensitive we become to sin.”

“As society allows moral values and family values to plummet, the church scrambles to redefine absolute holiness based on what it construes to be “reality,” when, in reality, it is only defying the plan of God and breaking the heart of God. God’s standards of moral purity have not moved one inch since they were formed in His heart of holiness, and they never will. Thou shalt not commit adultery has always been an absolute and always will be. God will not change His Word to adjust to a degenerate society. He will rather let that society reap what it has sown and destroy itself; but God’s elect, His set apart ones, must become increasingly holy as the world’s concepts of holiness decline.”

“When morals decline, God is calling His people to repent and be renewed in the spirit of their minds. It is His clarion call to holiness.”

“We are to draw near unto God, and He will draw near unto us. We are to resist the devil, and he will flee from us. It is to be a constant, consistent process. We must not be satisfied that we are not losing ground, either. We are to be growing, in ever increasing splendor, from one degree of glory to another. That means that there ought to be a tenderness towards sin and towards people in our hearts today that was not there a year ago, a month ago, a day ago. With every passing hour, Jesus ought to be more real to us and more dear to us. If He is anything less than that, we are not allowing the Holy Spirit to continue the process of making us more holy.”

“When we get to heaven, the issue will be to what degree did we allow the grace of God to pour the holiness of God in us and through us to a lost and dying and hurting world. Were we faithfully bathed in His holy presence?”

“You and I are now the temple of God. The temple must be kept holy or the name of God is defiled. These temples of ours are now to be the place where the sacrifices take place. To be a living sacrifice, you have to die, and to die you have to humble yourself until you see sin as God sees it.”

1- What is the difference between positional holiness and possessional holiness? How does God view us as Christians? How do we deal with the gap between who we are in Christ and what we behave like now?

2- In our society today, everything is placed on a relative scale. Being honest with ourselves, do we see our selves as being “relatively righteous”? Why can we not compare ourselves to others?

3- If you are convicted not to do some things that others Christians do, does that mean you are better than they are or have a higher calling? Why are some Christians convicted of areas in their lives that they feel are not pleasing to God, when there are others that feel the same action is perfectly fine?

4- What is the key to growing in holiness? How does God reveal His presence to us?

5- How do we present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God? What does a sacrifice do?

Key verse: I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. (Romans 12:1)

“If we are appropriating His holiness by grace as we ought, several things will be characteristic of our lives: (1) We will be spending more and more time alone with God. (2) We will be hungering and thirsting for righteousness. (3) We will be increasingly sensitive to sin. (4) We will be growing more into His likeness every day. (5) Our hearts will become increasingly pure.”

“Every time you are confronted with truth, you have a decision to make. There are at least a handful of times in every man’s or woman’s life when he or she has to make the kind of decision that will alter the course of their spiritual destiny. Choose whether or not your God is going to be your copilot, or whether you’re going to move into the back of the plane and let Him fly. He may not take you where you want to go, but that’s not the issue. He’s the only one who knows where you need to go.”

“We thank Him for Who He is without actually contemplating Who He is. We read Scriptures without really being in awe that, at that moment, the Living God is speaking directly to us. We ask Him to open our eyes that we might behold wondrous things, but even as we ask, our physical eyes are barely open. Then we wonder why there seems to be no power as we leave the quiet place for the marketplace. There is no power, because though our bodies were there, our souls never made it to the Throne.”

“When people really pray, they spend quality time in the presence of God until their hearts are one with His. That is, in effect, a definition of prayer. Prayer is not giving God a laundry list of things you want. Prayer is approaching the throne of grace with such awe that all you want is what God wants, and you want to stay there until you know what He wants. Prayer is the process of fellowshipping with God until your heart and His beat as one. It is not a casual experience; it is spiritual warfare.”

“We’re not naturally holy, but God is. And He now lives in your heart and in mine, and He longs to release the grace we need to become holy, in ever increasing splendor from one degree of glory to another. The key is asking and knowing what to ask for, and in order to do that, you have to spend time with Him. Lots of time. Quality time. Precious time. Sometimes painful time. Remember, this is war.”

“No, you can’t do it. Yes, you’ve tried and failed. Praise God. Those two statements prepare you for the greatest adventure of your life: the adventure of grace. It is the process by which you stop trying to do what only God can do and cry out for Him to do it. He is willing. The question is, are we?”

1- What spiritual decisions have you made that have changed you life? What did Joshua do when he felt like the Lord was leading him to make a certain spiritual decision? How do we know if our commitment is one that exalts God or exalts ourselves?

2- Can you name three things that you are committed to? How many times do you spend involved with these things?

3- Have you ever taken an extended time alone with the Lord? What was the result?

4- How much do you listen to God? How would you convey to a non-believer what prayer is? How is prayer a relationship?

5- As we spend time with Him, we will also be convicted of our sin. Why is it important to name our sin?

6- Now that we have studied the grace of holiness, what is the relationship between grace and holiness?

Key verse: And the people said unto Joshua, the Lord our God will we serve, and His voice will we obey. (Joshua 24:24)

“The miracle of agape grace: It always brings about two questions: (1) How can God command us to love someone? (2) What if I’ve tried, and I just don’t feel any love for them?“

“God expects us, as believers, to demonstrate His love to everyone we meet, not just those who deserve it, not simply those who return it, and not only those who are loveable. In fact, we will see that the less loveable they are, the more we are to love them, because the less loveable they are, the more grace is required; and the more grace, the more glory to God. No, we are to love every single person God sends across our path with exactly the same love God has for us; and to put it in terms we can understand, we are to be willing to give to them anything we would take for ourselves.”

“That means that if, in a given situation, you would excuse yourself for certain behavior, you are to forgive the most unappealing person you know for the same thing. Otherwise, you are not loving them as much as you love yourself. If you think you deserve something based on your worth or your works, be careful. You must impute to everyone you meet a similar standard that leaves room for similar boundaries. Loving your neighbor is something we dismiss because we’ve heard it so many times, but we are missing the very essence of the Christian faith if we do not understand the gravity of failing to love anyone God sends across our path.”

“No, you are to love as God loves, because God lives in you. As He prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34), He sent shock waves into our spirits by demonstrating how God acts when He is misused, abused, and refused. He loves. Otherwise, Beloved, you would still be lost and on your way to hell, because that’s the way you treated Him before you became a Christian, and maybe since.”

“[God] intended for us to fall down before [Him] and ask for agape grace to flood our souls and for Him to supernaturally give us the power, minute by minute, day by day, to do what we cannot do naturally: love the unlovable. We are to love those who do not love us back, love those who do not appreciate our love, love those nobody else loves. Love is a gift. It was given to us when Christ came into our lives, and only His indwelling Spirit in us can love through us with agape love. It is a fruit produced by Him, not by us.”

“Get alone with God and ask Him for agape grace. Admit to him how helpless you are apart from Him. Name the people you know you need to love, but can’t. Confess your thoughts and your responses that violate His love. Spend time worshipping Him for the love He revealed at Calvary. Then, cry out and ask Him to send you people to love that only HE, in you, can love.”

1- How does the fact that God loves you change your life? How does God’s love effect those who have never known of anyone’s love?

2- Why is our need for love so great? Can we truly give love if we have not first received love? Why? What does it mean to receive God’s love?

3- What does it mean when the Scripture says, “love bears all things”?

4- What are you really asking for when you pray, “Bless, Uncle George”? What does it mean to bless someone?

Key verse: Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. (I Corinthians 13:7)

“From Matthew 25:31-46, there are six categories of people we are to show love to: (1) The hungry: They may be the homeless in your city who, for whatever reason, have no way to obtain daily meals… (2) The thirsty: This passage speaks very clearly of the responsibility of the believer and of the church to meet actual physical needs in order to open spiritual eyes, and it clearly says that by so doing, we actually are giving Jesus food and drink. (3) The stranger: It may be someone from another land who simply has no roots, or it may be someone… who is in need of lodging for a brief time… (4) The naked: … those who are virtually naked, who simply lack enough clothes to keep themselves clean and warm and acceptable… (5) The sick: Those who have no strength, physically. They may be weak from sickness, from deformity, from hunger, from age, but they are unable to physically perform life’s normal tasks… (6) The prisoners: [Jesus] was speaking of the everyday responsibility of the local church and the average believer to pray for, love, and reach out to the prisoner… The church now has a special calling to feed them spiritually and reach out to them, knowing they are longing for an inner freedom that supersedes the bonds of prison walls.”

“Oh, Beloved, the church needs to go to where the dirty people live, the hungry people live, the dying people live. We need to go as individuals and as a body. We need to become as vulnerable as Jesus was, or we will never become as effective as Jesus was.”

“I did not say “Are you able?” The question is “Are you willing?” For it isn’t natural. It has to be supernatural. It has to be of grace. God isn’t asking you to do what only He can do. He wants you to examine His Word, surrender to His will, and ask Him for the grace to do what He calls you to do.”

1- What is our responsibility to the poor? What are some ways that we could help the poor besides giving monetarily?

2- Why do think God is particularly sensitive to the poor, the prisoners, and the sick?

3- Who would the strangers be in our society? How can the church better show hospitality to these people?

4- More and more of today’s society is becoming elderly. Who should bear the responsibility for meeting their needs? How can we make sure these people do not become the most forgotten people in our society?

5- What preconceived ideas have you had about the poor, the homeless, the prisoners and the sick that you need to lay before the foot of the cross?

Key verse: And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me. (Matthew 25:40)

“The world has its leaders sit above the masses and exercise authority and be served, not so in the Kingdom. Those who would be greatest must don the cloak of a slave and do the most menial of things for the most undeserving they meet, or else they could not follow in the Master’s footsteps, for He was among them as One who was a slave, not a king.”

“The average Christian, even the more spiritually sensitive, still does not seem to grasp that Jesus, in us, wants to take what we’ve learned, lay aside our robes of spiritual self-satisfaction, and go into the ghettos of life, if need be, and love the unlovable.”

“As you pray, do you ask God to deepen your compassion? It has to come from the inside. Christ lives inside. He who wept over Jerusalem can enable you to care. He can enable you to care for those He cares for, those you might be unlikely to want to touch or visit or love. It’s called grace. As you ask God to deepen your compassion, do you make yourself willing to become vulnerable so He can answer your prayers?”

“You can’t do it. That’s the reason for this study. We need to come to grips with the areas of our lives that are clothed in disobedience and recognize that the harder we try, the less fruitful we sometimes become.”

“All that is lacking is agape grace; believers taking God at His Word, and then crying out to Him for His Spirit to do in and through them what only He can do. It will amaze the world. It will encourage the saints. And it will please the heart of God, for as much as we will have done it unto the least of these, we will have done it unto Him. “If ye know these things, why don’t you do them?””

1- What attitude is required to wash someone’s feet? Why is this attitude essential in both receiving and ministering grace? Have you ever experienced someone doing something for you with an attitude other than humility? What attitude did they have and how did it make you feel?

2- Can you think of instances in the Bible when people served and did the right thing, but their hearts were not really with the people they were serving? What attitude did they have and how did it make you feel?

3- Who are the ones in our community that few people desire to serve? What is our responsibility to these people? Do you think the church spends the majority of its time ministering to one another or to those who are lost and hurting? How should our priorities change, if at all?

4- Why does Jesus stress servant leadership? In what ways did He exemplify a servant leader? In what ways could you become more of a servant leader?

Key verse: For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich, yet for our sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich. (II Corinthians 8:9)

“If you are a Christian, there lives inside of you something called “grace.” It lives in you because God lives in you. And when God came to live in you, He did an amazing thing. He forgave you for killing His Son. Not only did He forgive you, He actually accepted the responsibility for the crime you committed, offered to die in your place, and reached down and saved you from an eternal hell. That is forgiveness. Now He expects something supernatural from you. He expects you to allow Him to forgive every single person who has ever wronged you or ever will, the way He forgave you. He will do it, but you will have to ask Him to, and then allow Him to.”

“Forgiveness is an expression of kindness. It is an evidence of a tender heart, and it is motivated by one single thing: what God for Christ’s sake did for you. How did Christ forgive you? Think about it. That is the way we are to forgive others. His forgiveness was complete, permanent, unconditional, and undeserved.”

“I know. You’ve tried. “But,” you respond, “there’s just no way to erase the anger and the bitterness and the hurt that has been festering all these years.” I beg to differ. There’s no way for you to do it, but God has a package of grace just waiting for you, if you will stop today and begin to understand just how amazing that grace is, and just how available it is when you get desperate enough to want it. And the only thing that will make you want it is for you to see how grave a sin it is for you not to want it.”

“Taking Matthew 6:11-15, there is much about these verses that we do not understand. But if we focus on what we can understand, we know this much: (1) God’s continued flow of forgiveness in our lives is hindered by our unwillingness to forgive others. (2) When we truly forgive others, God is free to pour out His grace upon us and set us free from the burden of our own guilt. (3) It was written to believers and was a warning against their unforgiving spirits affecting their relationship with God’s forgiveness. It had nothing to do with their salvation.”

“Forgiveness is: An act of grace whereby you release, once and for all, and send away forever, any and every offense that exists between you and someone else, just as God in Christ has forgiven you, knowing from God’s Word that your failure to do so will affect God’s future ability to forgive you. When we ask for it and do not impede its actions, we can actually forgive others with the same grace God used to forgive us.”

1- Has there ever been a person in your life that you refused to forgive even for a time? What were the consequences? How did it affect you spiritually? Who suffered because of your refusal to forgive?

2- What does it mean to forgive a person? Should you only forgive those who specifically ask for your forgiveness? Why?

3- How is our forgiveness of others tied to God’s forgiveness of us? Who gives us the power to forgive?

4- Put yourself in the place of a mother whose son is killed by a drunk driver. How is it possible to forgive that person? Does forgiveness remove the consequences of the action? How then does forgiveness heal wounds?

5- Describe God’s forgiveness? Is there anything that anyone can do to you that is greater than what we have done toward God? Why does the lesson say that “an unforgiving spirit is a greater offense than the one you are holding against that other person.”

Key verse: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you. (Ephesians 4:32)

“Comforting grace. It is that overwhelming, enabling power that takes over in a crisis and lifts you up into a sort of God-surrounded cocoon of spiritual protection at a time in your life when, without that protection, you would expect to come apart, either emotionally or physically. There is an uncanny kind of peace you cannot explain. You have strength to go without sleep, to make arrangements, to face people. It is as though someone had lifted you up for a brief period of time on a plane that is higher than that on which you normally live. It is as though you are lifted on angels’ wings and carried through that difficult period.”

“Comforting grace may differ from some other forms of grace in that it is often available even when we don’t ask for it. In fact, often when we don’t realize we are receiving it, we are.”

“Oh, the incredible, comforting grace of God. So profound is it that He actually named His Spirit “The Comforter.” So important a part of His silent ministry to believers is comforting grace, that He was able to say that He was “The God of all comfort.” Think about that for a moment. It means simply that all comfort comes from Him. The inner strength to endure suffering can only come from God.”

“He is comforting us, whether we feel comforted or not. How do we know? He told us so, and He doesn’t lie. He comforts us in all our tribulation, all our sorrow, all our times of trauma, persecution, grief, and despair. He is, at that moment, in the process of releasing comforting grace.”

“The deeper the pain, the greater the grace. The darker the sky, the brighter the grace. The more awesome the grief, the more awesome the power. God has different sized packages of grace. He knows the depth of our need and has a gift of grace exactly right for us.”

“The comforting grace of God. It is God-sized power in a heart-shaped box. It is a measure of eternal love applied to a world of broken hearts. It is supernatural energy translated into real-world encouragement. It is the power to be, when there is no reason to be, but God. It is available to every believer every time he or she passes through difficult times, and it is available in exactly the measure we need.”

“Your God is a load-bearing God. He is omnipotent. There is no load He cannot carry. He is perfect mercy. He understands the load you are under. He is perfect grace. He wants to carry it for you. Learn to pray for others when the weight of the load they are carrying seems to be more than they can bear.”

1- Can you speak of a time when you were comforted by God’s grace? Did He also give you an opportunity to share that grace with another person going through a similar circumstance? What does that tell you of God’s wisdom and purpose?

2- What does it mean to be comforted in “all of our tribulation”? If our comfort does not come from being taken out of our circumstances, what does it come from? Why does God not always take us out of our circumstances as a way of comfort?

3- How does the comfort that is given us help define our ministry? Have you seen that happen in your life?

4- How do we transfer our burdens to God? Why is this such a hard thing to do?

5- What is the difference between struggling with our tribulations and embracing them? Is it really possible to embrace them as we surrender them to God?

Key verse: Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. (II Corinthians 1:3,4)

“The Scripture seems to indicate that there is, in the center of the will of God, like the eye of a hurricane, a place of quiet rest where a man and His God can be such intimate friends that God is literally doing the living, and the man or woman is a wonder-filled, awestruck witness to the life that is being lived out in their body. Some call it the “exchanged” life. Others call it “Lordship.” I would prefer to call it “the normal Christian life.” It is of grace. We don’t deserve it. But it is of God, therefore, we don’t need to.”

“God’s peace is a free gift that defies circumstances. It is acquired by faith and requires keeping your heart focused on who God is, rather than on what you can see and feel and touch that is troubling you. There is no worldly equivalent or human explanation for it; it is that supernatural.”

“Beloved, enter into the rest of God today. The issue isn’t what God is going to do for you; the issue is Who God is. He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. You can trust Him with your life, and you can trust Him with your death. He alone knows what you need to mature in Christ, and nothing can happen to you without His divine permission.”

1- Paul introduces many of his letters with the words “Grace and Peace”. What is the relationship between these two words? What effect would it have had on those who heard them?

2- In Isaiah 26:3 what does the phrase mean “whose mind is stayed on thee”? How do we do that? Why is trust in who God is the key to perfect peace? How can each of our worries be tied to a lack of trust in who God is?

3- Why is it that one moment we can have a tremendous peace and the next moment become fearful? What happens when we become fearful or worried? Can you draw a parallel to Peter’s walking on the water and a time in your life when you were walking on water and all of a sudden took your focus off of God? What happened? How hard is it to regain our focus?

4- Often we have no peace because we do not want to relinquish control. What are some things that are hard for you to give over to God? What is your reason for keeping control?

Key verse: Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee. (Isaiah 26:3)