Grace Received

Grace. We describe it with words like ‘amazing,” and it is! But what is grace? Grace has more than one meaning. It is beauty, favor, loving-kindness, empowerment, and mercy all rolled up into one word. It is God giving us what we need instead of what we deserve. It is blessings, gifts, Cross and goodness from God. It cannot be earned. It cannot be bought. There’s nothing we could ever to do deserve it. It’s freely given from the heart and hand of God to everyone. It’s God loving us before we had a thought of loving Him. It’s God providing for us whether we recognize Him as our provider or not. It’s God offering us forgiveness, life, peace, wholeness, relationship with Him. The Christian life all starts with God giving grace. We receive grace corporately, which is one of the things that happen when God’s people get together for worship. We receive grace through prayer, the preached Word, and through the sacraments of baptism and communion. We also receive grace personally, which is the reason Jesus-followers do things like pray and spend time reading the Bible every day. We do that because it puts us in a great position to receive grace from God, and we know we need it! At Grace Nazarene, the first symbol in our logo is a cross. This points to the greatest act of God’s mercy and grace ever shown. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. That’s grace. The Cross is a constant reminder that it all starts with God’s grace given to us. Everything else in the life of a Christ-follower is a response to this incredible, amazing grace.

Grace Shared

While the grace-full life is intensely personal, it is anything but private. The Christ-following life is lived not in isolation, but in community, a particular kind of community called the Church. The mercy, favor, goodness, and empowerment that God gives is intended to be shared among God’s people and to impact all of our relationships - at church, at home, and everywhere else. We are strengthened in our relationship with Christ when we take the journey together. The second symbol in the Grace Nazarene logo is a cup. It represents communion, or fellowship that we have with each other. The relationships we have in the church go beyond friendship. At Grace we talk about intentional, disciple-making relationships. That means we invest in relationships with each other for the purpose of becoming stronger and better followers of Jesus. It’s not just about each individual receiving grace. It’s also about us sharing grace with each other, and learning how to live in such a way that every relationship we have can be described as a grace-full relationship.

Grace Extended

It’s great to receive grace from God! It’s wonderful and enriching to see God’s grace at work in our relationships with each other. But the grace God gives us and enables us to share goes even further. Grace is also meant to be extended. Another way to say that is mature Christ-followers know that “it’s not about us.” The Christ following life isn’t just about us being blessed, or being happy to be together, it’s about us taking that great grace to the world. God’s gift to a needy and broken world is the church, and when the church gets it right, it always means going beyond ourselves and carrying the grace of God to the world around us. The primary way we do that is by serving. That’s the reason for the third image in our logo at Grace Nazarene. It’s a basin and towel and it represents love put into action by serving others. So if you come to Grace and ask what this life of following Jesus is all about, this is what you’ll hear: It’s all about God’s grace - received, shared, and extended!