What Grace doesn't do

When you've been taught your whole life that you walk the line or end up in hell, it's easy to be skeptical of a crazy thing called Grace. Many people are. And do some who don't really understand it, try to abuse it? Of course! But that's not the purpose of Grace. In the end, God looks on the heart... and I know Who mine belongs to.

"But, Kindall, if Grace really covers everything, past, present, and future... then you have the freedom to sin and get away with it! That's wrong!"

I know it can be confusing. Heck, I argued it too when I found out what a gift I really had in Grace! Here's the truth about my newfound freedom...

Grace doesn't give me the freedom to sin.

Grace gives me the freedom to break out of my old patterns, habits, and beliefs about myself and live in a way that pleases God, not because I'm scared He is going to punish me, but because I am so overwhelmed by the fact that He didn't... because of His love for me. <3

Grace doesn't give me the freedom to intentionally fall.

Grace gives me the freedom, when I fall, to stand up, dust myself off, and move forward without the self-loathing that I used to feel every time I messed up... which was all the time.

Grace doesn't give me the freedom to be nonchalant about God's Word.

Grace gives new meaning to the words "repent and confess" and makes them a part of my everyday life as I turn towards Jesus in every situation and say the same things He says about me. (He says some pretty awesome things about all of us!)

Grace doesn't give me the freedom to look down on others.

Grace shows me how others are hurting and what I can do to help. It breaks my heart for the things that break His heart. It is hard to understand grace and watch someone suffer without it.

Some would say that, as a believer in Grace, I have the freedom to do anything I want... but because of Grace, all I want to do is change people's lives the way mine has been changed, by the love of Jesus.

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 

By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. 

Romans 6:1-4