“GRACE IS NOT ALWAYS GOOD “
God’s grace that sustains us, because of the meaning associated with the word grace, is often thought of in light of God’s goodness and love. Well, of course, God is good. Everything He has ever done has been called good. Even after each day of creation, God said what He had done was good.
However, there’s a difference between what is good and what is good for us. Candy tastes good but there were times when I didn’t allow my three daughters to have candy because too much of it was not good for them. In Romans 8:28, the Bible reads, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who the called according to His purpose.” What God affords us through His grace is good, and it is up to Him to decide if things are good for us.
All the things in my life have worked together for good. Now, that’s a lot of years and decisions and choices and ups and downs and growth and decline and even more. All of that works together.
You know when you make a really good biscuit, you have to have all the ingredients. Each ingredient in and of itself is not that tasty. As a matter of fact, some of the ingredients are down right distasteful. But, if you mixed all of these together, all of the ingredients together, you have one good tasty biscuit.
Each experience of life in and of itself can be quite distasteful, even sickening; we must consider the ultimate outcome of God’s grace. What is His purpose for us through this experience? How is He applying His grace to my life? What attitude should I implore for this one ingredient of grace?
Several years ago, my husband had a routine colonoscopy. When he awakened, the doctor was there to tell him he had cancer, stage four colon and liver cancer. Now, there’s you a potent ingredient. Within an hour, Jerry was in surgery. At the time, we were actively serving God in full-time ministry. The surgeon removed several inches of Jerry’s colon, four-fifths of his liver, twenty-seven lymph nodes, and his appendix. Jerry says that I said the doctor removed his heart, too, but that’s just hearsay.
You can imagine how traumatic this ingredient was to swallow. Suddenly, Jerry is having chemo treatments, eleven in all. He had numerous CAT scans and PET scans. He was constantly having blood work. He wore on his side a chemo pump for forty-eight hours after his treatments while he taught his high school and college English classes.
You see, Jerry and I were walking right in the middle of God’s grace; and it wasn’t exactly beautiful. In those moments, considering we were powerless to do anything about the situation, we had to totally depend upon God to make it all good.
Today, Jerry is totally healthy. We both are active in God’s work. We have eight grandchildren. We learned so much from that one ingredient of God’s grace, and today, we can look back and enjoy a dose of fresh preserves and butter on God’s hot-and-ready biscuit. Now, it’s good.
Excellent, Norma! Thank you!