CHAPTER TWELVE

APPROPRIATING GOD’S GRACE

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are —yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

HEBREWS 4:15-16

Several years ago a friend approached me about taking a new assignment in The Navigators. I was quite happy in my existing situation, and the prospective job did not appeal to me at all. However, I told my friend I would consider it and pray about it. As I sought God’s guidance, I assumed He would agree that the prospective ministry was not appropriate for me.

To say the prospective job did not appeal to me is actually an understatement. As I considered all the pros and cons of making a change, I listed five major reasons on the con side and none on the pro side. The more I thought about my friend’s request, however, the more I had an uneasy sense that God wanted me to accept it. At the same time, the more I thought about the new job, the more I shrank from it. I found myself in a not uncommon dilemma of not wanting to do what I thought might be God’s will for me. What was I to do?

The inner struggle between my personal desires and what I thought might be the will of God continued for several days and, in fact, grew in intensity. One evening I told God I wanted to do whatever His will for me was, but that I simply did not have the spiritual ability to say yes. I told Him I had reached the limits of my commitment to do whatever He asked me to do. I could go no further unless He enabled me to do so.

As I continued to wrestle with this dilemma, the words of John 12:24 in the King James Version came to mind, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” The passage seemed appropriate for the occasion, for, to me, this prospective assignment would indeed involve a “dying” to my own desires for my family and ministry.

But the verse also reminded me of a biblical principle: “Dying” is a prerequisite to fruitfulness. Furthermore, Jesus actually assures us in the passage that if we “die,” we will produce fruit. As I thought about the truth Jesus was teaching, I gained the spiritual strength to say yes. I was able to say, “God, the prospects of this assignment only look grim to me, but You have promised that if I ‘die’ in this situation, I will bring forth ‘much fruit.’ I don’t see how this could possibly happen, but I believe Your promise and so I say yes.” As it later turned out, that assignment was not God’s will for me. Apparently He simply used that exercise as a means of spiritual growth I needed at the time.

My purpose for recounting that personal incident, however, is to illustrate how we appropriate God’s grace —that is, God’s power —to enable us to respond to the various circumstances and challenges that constantly come to us. Perhaps the idea of appropriating the grace of God is a new thought to you, and you’re not quite sure what I mean. The basic meaning of the word is “to take possession of,” and that is what we do when we appropriate God’s grace. We take possession of the divine strength He has made available to us in Christ. To use an analogy, we draw on an inexhaustible bank account, the account of God’s grace. Now there are times when the Holy Spirit works in a sovereign way in our lives, apart from any appropriating activity on our part, but more often He expects us to act to appropriate His grace. To this end, He has provided four principal means of doing so: prayer, His Word, submission to His providential workings in our lives, and the ministry of others.

THE THRONE OF GRACE

The first avenue of appropriating God’s grace is simply to ask for it in prayer. In the above situation, as I realized I had reached the limits of my commitment, I ceased asking God for guidance and began to ask for the grace —that is, the spiritual ability —to say yes to what I thought was His will. In Hebrews 4:15-16, we are invited, or more accurately, we are encouraged to go to God in prayer asking for the grace we need. The passage says,

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are —yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

The throne of grace is a figurative expression for God seated on His throne as the God of all grace. It is obviously not the throne itself but God on the throne who will give us His grace in time of need. In Revelation 6:16-17, God is portrayed sitting on His throne as the God of wrath and judgment. The people who see Him in that setting will call for mountains and rocks to fall on them to hide them from His face and His wrath.

The prophet Isaiah saw God seated on His throne as the God of infinite majesty and holiness. Isaiah was awestruck and cried out, “Woe to me! . . . I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty” (6:5). But in Hebrews 4:16, we see, not a throne of wrath, nor even a throne of infinite majesty and holiness, but a throne of grace. We are encouraged to come to this throne, not with terror because of His wrath nor with awed fear because of His holiness, but with confidence because of His grace. God is indeed the infinitely holy God, high and exalted as Isaiah saw Him, and He will one day manifest Himself as the God of wrath to those who have spurned Him. But to us who are His children, He is the God of grace seated on His throne of grace.

We need to remember that it was God Himself who presented Jesus as the atonement for our sins, as the One who satisfied the justice of God and by that satisfaction turned aside God’s wrath from us. And because of Jesus’ atoning sacrifice, God’s throne is no longer a throne of judgment and wrath for us, but it is now a throne of grace.

God, whom Paul described as living in “unapproachable light” (1 Timothy 6:16), now encourages us to enter “the Most Holy Place,” His very throne room, and “draw near to God” (Hebrews 10:19-22).

This invitation is a striking contrast to the restrictions that existed under the Mosaic dispensation of the Old Testament. Under that system, only the high priest was allowed to enter the Most Holy Place of the temple, and then only once a year and never without the blood of the atonement (see Hebrews 9:7). Now all believers may enter the Most Holy Place in heaven, at all times, through the blood of Jesus, which was shed once for all (see Hebrews 10:19). Not only may we enter, we are encouraged to enter, to come into the very presence of God, and to come with confidence because we come by the blood of Jesus.

When we come to God’s throne, we need to remember He is indeed the God of all grace. He is the landowner who graciously gave a full day’s pay to the workers who had worked only one hour in the vineyard. He is the God who said of the sinful nation of Israel even while they were in captivity, “I will rejoice in doing them good” (Jeremiah 32:41). He is the God who remained faithful to Peter through all his failures and sins and made him into a mighty apostle. He is the God who, over and over again, has promised to never leave us, nor forsake us (see Deuteronomy 31:6, 8; Psalm 94:14; Isaiah 42:16; Hebrews 13:5). He is the God who “longs to be gracious to you” (Isaiah 30:18), and He is the God who is for you, not against you (see Romans 8:31). All this, and more, is summed up in that one statement, the God of all grace.

As we approach the throne of grace, we find that Jesus, our Great High Priest, has gone before us and is, even as we come, already interceding for us (see Hebrews 7:24-25). Jesus is described by the writer of Hebrews as being able to sympathize with our weakness. The double negative, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses” (4:15), is equivalent to a very strong positive assertion: “We do have a high priest who can sympathize with us.” As Dr. John Brown, a nineteenth-century Scottish theologian wrote, “The truth is, He not only can be touched [with our weaknesses], but cannot but be touched. The assertion is not, It is possible that He may sympathize; but, It is impossible that He should not.”[73]

Jesus can sympathize with our weaknesses because He “has been tempted in every way, just as we are —yet was without sin.” The word translated as sympathize means far more than the popular meaning, to feel sorry for. It is the capacity for sharing or understanding the feelings of another person. This feeling can be felt only by a person who has experienced the same or similar trials and who, consequently, understands what the other person is going through and has a desire to relieve the other’s distress.

Dr. John Brown said,

It is pity; but it is something more than pity: it is the pity which a man of kind affections feels towards those who are suffering what he himself has suffered. . . .

The Son of God, had He never become incarnate, might have pitied, but He could not have sympathized with His people. To render Him capable of sympathy, it was necessary that He should become man that He might be susceptible of suffering, and that He should actually be a sufferer that He might be susceptible of sympathy.[74]

I suspect, however, that many of us, especially when we are experiencing physical or emotional pain, question whether or not Jesus suffered in the same way we are suffering. After all, He never experienced prolonged unemployment or had a child die in an auto accident or endured the debilitating effects of a crippling disease or watched a spouse die slowly and painfully from cancer. The biblical text does not assert that Jesus suffered in all these ways. It says, “We have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are —yet was without sin” (Hebrews 4:15, emphasis added). That is, Jesus was tempted, or tried, in all the various ways human nature is afflicted. He was born into poverty and experienced rejection from His own family, reproach by the leaders of His day, desertion by His friends, and excruciating physical pain on the cross. And the absence in Scripture of any reference to Joseph after Luke 2 leads to a reasonable inference that Jesus lost His legal, earthly father before He was thirty.

Above all, He suffered the ultimate trial, which you and I will never have to experience: being forsaken by His heavenly Father (Matthew 27:46). Sometimes you and I feel forsaken in the midst of trial (David felt that way in Psalm 13:1), and that sense of divine abandonment is the hardest part of the trial. But Jesus actually was forsaken by God and knew it. Truly, He was “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3, KJV). So Jesus does fully understand and sympathize with us in our times of trials. We can be sure, whatever the nature of our hurts, they are not new to Him. Because Jesus can enter into our hurts and does sympathize with us, we can approach God’s throne with confidence, without being ashamed to lay our weaknesses before Him. He understands and He cares.

We are encouraged to come to the throne of grace where we have a sympathetic High Priest already interceding for us, “so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (Hebrews 4:16). We often use mercy and grace, as referred to God, interchangeably as synonyms, and some Bible commentators understand their use that way in this passage.

Though the two words are very close in their meaning, they are usually distinguished as follows: “[God’s] goodness, exercised toward the unworthy, is called grace; toward the suffering, it is called pity, or mercy.”[75] Louis Berkhof further elaborated on mercy as follows: “It may be defined as the goodness or love of God shown to those who are in misery or distress, irrespective of their deserts.”[76] Then, I understand the term grace in Hebrews 4:16 to mean that particular expression of grace we have been considering in the two previous chapters: divine enabling through the help of the Holy Spirit.

Thus, we approach the throne of grace needing first mercy, because we come as ones in misery or distress. God in His mercy then gives us grace —that is, divine enabling through His Spirit —to help us in our time of need. We are thus enabled to cope with whatever adversity, trial, or dilemma we face in a godly manner.

I have analyzed Hebrews 4:15-16 rather extensively because we need to understand how to appropriate the grace of God through prayer. I believe all of us need to grasp more fully what it means to come to the throne of grace. We need to grasp in the depth of our souls what it means that we do have a High Priest, Jesus, who is able and disposed to sympathize with our weaknesses. Above all, we simply need to go to the throne of grace to find the grace to help in time of need.

That is what I did in the incident I recounted at the beginning of this chapter. I went to the throne of grace and told God I did not have the ability to respond to what I thought was His will for me at the time. I asked Him for the spiritual strength to say yes to Him. The disciples went to the throne of grace when Peter and John had been commanded by the Jewish rulers not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. They prayed, “Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness” (Acts 4:29). They went to God’s throne of grace, and they asked for grace, specifically the grace to speak boldly for Christ in the face of tremendous opposition.

THE WORD OF GRACE

The grace we receive from God, then, is the aid of the Holy Spirit. We do not understand just how the Holy Spirit interacts with our human spirit, but we do know He most often uses His Word. That is, He brings to our mind some Scripture or Scriptures particularly appropriate to the situation. He may do this through one of our pastor’s sermons, through a Christian book we are reading, through the encouraging words of a friend, or through our own reading or study of Scripture. In my case, since I have memorized so many Scriptures over the years, He often brings to my mind a memorized verse. This is what He did when through John 12:24 I realized that only through “dying” to my own plans and desires would I be fruitful. Having called our attention to the right Scripture, He then enables us to apply it to our situation, as He did for me with John 12:24.

In Acts 20:32, Paul said to the Ephesian elders, “Now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified.” Earlier in verse 24, Paul had referred to the gospel of God’s grace, the good news of salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. In verse 32, however, he referred to “the word of his grace, which can build you up.” The reference here is to the ongoing use of Scripture in our daily lives to build us up in the Christian faith. But Paul specifically called it “the word of his grace,” the Word through which we come to understand and appropriate God’s grace in our daily lives.

The Bible is not merely a book about God; it is a book from God. “All Scripture is God-breathed,” said Paul (2 Timothy 3:16). The Bible is God’s self-revelation to us of all He wants us to know about Himself and His provision for our salvation and our spiritual growth. It is God’s only objective, authoritative communication to us.

If we are to appropriate the grace of God then, we must become intimate friends with the Bible. We must seek to know and understand the great truths of Scripture: truths about God and His character, and truths about man and his desperate need of God’s grace. We need to get beyond the “how-tos” of Scripture —how to raise children, how to manage finances, how to witness to unbelievers —and all other such utilitarian approaches to Scripture. Such practical instruction from the Bible regarding our daily lives is indeed valuable, but we need to go beyond that.

Our practical age has come to disparage a firm doctrinal understanding of Scripture as being of no practical value. But there is nothing more practical for our daily lives than the knowledge of God. David’s chief desire was to gaze upon the beauty of God (see Psalm 27:4) —that is, His holiness and sovereignty, His wisdom and power, and His faithfulness and unfailing love. Only in Scripture has God revealed to us the truths about His person and His character.

But the Bible is more than merely objective truth; it is actually life-giving and life-sustaining. The words of Scripture are “not just idle words for you —they are your life” (Deuteronomy 32:47). Growth in the grace of God —whether that be His divine favor to the unworthy or His divine enabling to the needy —requires growth in our assimilation of the Word of God. In the biological realm, assimilation is the process by which nourishment is changed into living tissue. In the spiritual realm, it is the process by which the written Word of God is absorbed into our hearts and becomes, figuratively speaking, living spiritual tissue.

How do we know God’s grace is sufficient for our particular “thorns”? How do we come to a proper understanding of what it means to live or minister “by the grace of God”? How do we learn about the “throne of grace” where we receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need? Where do we learn that God is the gracious landowner who gives us far, far more than we deserve? The answer to all these questions is the Scriptures. That is why Scripture is called the Word of His grace. God uses Scripture to mediate His grace to us. R. C. H. Lenski said, “God and the Word of his grace always go together; God lets his grace flow out through that Word.”[77]

This close connection between God and the Word of His grace is illustrated in Romans 15:4-5, “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus.” Verse 4 tells us that we receive endurance and encouragement from Scripture. Yet verse 5 says God gives endurance and encouragement. Endurance and encouragement are provisions of God’s grace “to help us in our time of need.” As we go to the throne of grace asking for it, God does provide. But He usually provides through Scripture.

If we are to appropriate the grace of God, then, we must regularly expose ourselves directly to the Word of God. It is not enough to only hear it preached or taught in our churches on Sundays, as important as those avenues are. We need a regular plan of reading, study, and yes, even memorization. Bible study and Scripture memorization earn no merit with God. We never earn God’s blessing by doing these things, any more than we earn His blessing by eating nutritious food. But as the eating of proper food is necessary to sustain a healthy physical life, so the regular intake of God’s Word is necessary to sustain a healthy spiritual life and to regularly appropriate His grace.

I strongly advocate Scripture memorization. In our warfare against Satan and his emissaries, we are told to take “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Ephesians 6:17). Charles Hodge commented on this statement:

In opposition . . . to all the suggestions of the devil, the safe, simple, and sufficient answer is the word of God. This puts to flight all the powers of darkness. The Christian finds this to be true in his individual experience. It dissipates his doubts; it drives away his fears; it delivers him from the power of Satan.[78]

We might say, in the language of our present study, it provides the believer grace to help in time of need.

In order to take up God’s Word as a sword, we must have it at hand, in our hearts. We must be like the psalmist who said, “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you” (Psalm 119:11). To hide God’s Word in our hearts is to store it or treasure it in our hearts against a time of future need. It is akin to our expression “to save for a rainy day.” This principle of storing up God’s Word has a much wider application than only keeping us from sin, especially as we tend to think of a more narrow description of sin as sexual immorality, lying, stealing, and the like. The Word, stored in the heart, provides a mental depository for the Holy Spirit to use to mediate His grace to us, whatever our need for grace might be.

Within the week that this chapter was written, I had a significant experience of this myself. A phone call from a distant city brought some very disturbing news about someone I am close to. I went to bed that night feeling as if I had just received an emotional “kick in the stomach.” The next morning, however, I awakened with 1 Peter 5:7 going through my mind: “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” As I was getting dressed, the verse kept going through my mind, and I was given grace by God’s Spirit to believe that He did care in this specific situation. I was thus able to cast that particular anxiety on Him, because I had received grace to help in time of need through His Word.

That one specific incident comes to mind because it is so recent. But it is only one in a series of incidents occurring frequently in my life —and I’m sure in the lives of all other believers who store up God’s Word in their hearts. As F. F. Bruce said in his commentary on Ephesians 6:17, “The divine utterance, the product of the Spirit, lends itself readily to the believer who has laid it up in his heart for effective use in the moment of danger against any attempt to seduce him from allegiance to Christ.”[79] In a footnote to that statement, Bruce refers specifically to Psalm 119:11.

So, if you desire to appropriate God’s grace, you must have the sword of the Spirit —the Word of God —available in your mind for the Spirit to use. In fact the structure of Ephesians 6:17 provides a very instructive insight into the interaction between the Holy Spirit and the believer. Paul said we are to take the sword of the Spirit. That is something we must do. And yet it is the Spirit’s sword, not ours. He must make it effective. The bare quoting of Scripture does not make it effective in our hearts, only the Spirit can do that. But He will not make His sword effective unless we take it up.

Often God’s Word is not made effective immediately. In fact, there are many times when I struggle over an issue for a period of days, mulling over several pertinent passages of Scripture and crying out for grace, before the Holy Spirit finally makes them effective and gives His grace, helping in time of need. The Spirit of God is sovereign in His working, and we cannot squeeze Him into the mold of our spiritual formulas —for example, pray for grace, quote some verses, and receive a guaranteed answer.

God not only has His own ways of working, but also His own timetable. Sometimes He grants grace to help almost immediately as He did in my most recent experience with 1 Peter 5:7. At other times, He allows us to struggle for days, perhaps even weeks or months, before we receive the grace to help. But regardless of the delays He may impose on us, we must continue to come to the throne of grace believing His promise to grant grace to help, and we must continue to resort to appropriate Scripture until He makes it effective in our hearts. It is our responsibility to take up the sword of the Spirit; it is His prerogative to make it effective.

SUBMISSION TO GOD

The third means God uses to administer His grace to us is our submission to His providential working in our lives. The apostle Peter said,

All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because,

“God opposes the proud

but gives grace to the humble.”

Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.

1 PETER 5:5-6

God gives grace to the humble, to those who humble themselves under His mighty hand of providence. Our tendency is not to humble ourselves but to resist the workings of His mighty hand. At best we fret and murmur and worry even as we cry out for deliverance. At worst we become angry or even rebellious against God. In so doing, we have become proud, and “God opposes the proud”; that is, He actually sets Himself in array against us.

If we are to appropriate God’s grace, we must humble ourselves, we must submit to His providential working in our lives. To do this we must first see His mighty hand behind all the immediate causes of our adversities and heartaches. We must believe the biblical teaching that God is in sovereign control of all our circumstances, and whatever or whoever is the immediate cause of our circumstances, God is behind them all.

Job and Joseph are examples of those who saw the hand of God in their circumstances. In one day the Sabeans stole Job’s oxen, and the Chaldeans carried off his camels and murdered his servants. Lightning burned up his sheep, and a mighty wind struck the house of his oldest son, killing all his children. Later Job himself was afflicted with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. Job’s response at the loss of his children and his possessions was, “The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away” (Job 1:21). And with respect to his own affliction he said, “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” (2:10).

Quite apart from Job’s humble reaction toward God, we should note first that he ascribed his sufferings to the hand of God. He saw beyond the actions of evil men and the disasters of nature to the sovereign God who controlled those events. And the inspired writer who recorded the trials of Job, at the close of his account, said, “They [his relatives and friends] comforted and consoled him [Job] over all the trouble the LORD had brought upon him” (42:11, emphasis added). Even though the writer had himself reported the malicious activity of Satan in Job’s life at the beginning of the narrative, he still ultimately ascribed Job’s troubles to the Lord.

Joseph, when he finally revealed his identity to his wicked brothers who had sold him into slavery, saw beyond their evil acts and said, “So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God” (Genesis 45:8). He recognized that God in His sovereignty used even the heinous sins of his brothers to accomplish His purpose. So, you and I, if we are to appropriate God’s grace in our times of need, must see His sovereignty ultimately ruling in all the circumstances of our lives. And when those circumstances are difficult, disappointing, or humiliating, we must humble ourselves under His mighty hand.[80]

Not only must we see God’s mighty hand behind our circumstances, we must also see it as the hand of a loving Father disciplining His children. We lose a lot of comfort in times of trials because we tend to view them as evidences of God’s desertion of us rather than evidences of His Fatherly discipline and care. Hebrews 12:7, however, says, “Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons.” The writer of Hebrews did not qualify hardship. He did not suggest that some hardship is God’s discipline, while some may not be. He simply said endure hardship —all of it —as God’s discipline. You may be sure that whatever hardship comes into your life from whatever immediate source, God is in sovereign control of it and is using it as an instrument of discipline in your life.

Further, the writer of Hebrews, in the previous sentence, had said this discipline is a proof of God’s love, “because the Lord disciplines those he loves” (verse 6). He offers this, not as a word of warning, but as a word of encouragement (verse 5). The purpose of God’s discipline, according to Hebrews, is “that we may share in his holiness” (verse 10), that we may be conformed in our character to His character.

Discipline may be either corrective or remedial. It may be sent for the purpose of correcting some sinful attitude or action, or to remedy some lack in our character. In either case, it is administered by our heavenly Father in love, not in wrath. Jesus has already borne the wrath of God in our place, so all adversities that come to us, come because He loves us and designs to conform us to the likeness of His Son.

Samuel Bolton said,

God has thoughts of love in all He does to His people. The ground of His dealings with us is love (though the occasions may be sin), the manner of His dealings is love, and the purpose of His dealings is love. He has regard, in all, to our good here, to make us partakers of His holiness, and to our glory hereafter, to make us partakers of His glory.[81]

It is difficult for us to see God’s hand of love in the adversities and heartaches of life because we persist in thinking, as the world does, that happiness is the greatest good. Thus we tend to evaluate all our circumstances in terms of whether or not they produce happiness. Holiness, however, is a greater good than happiness, so God arranges and orchestrates circumstances to produce holiness before happiness. He is more concerned about our eternal than our temporal welfare and more concerned about our spiritual than our material welfare. So all the trials and difficulties, all the heartaches, disappointments, and humiliations come from His loving hand to make us partakers of His holiness.

John Newton expressed this intent of God in our trials and afflictions in his hymn “Prayer Answered by Crosses”:

I asked the Lord that I might grow

In faith and love and every grace,

Might more of his salvation know,

And seek more earnestly his face.

’Twas he who taught me thus to pray;

And he, I trust, has answered prayer;

But it has been in such a way

As almost drove me to despair.

I hoped that, in some favoured hour,

At once he’d answer my request,

And by his love’s constraining power

Subdue my sins, and give me rest.

Instead of this, he made me feel

The hidden evils of my heart,

And let the angry powers of hell

Assault my soul in every part.

Yea, more, with his own hand he seemed

Intent to aggravate my woe,

Crossed all the fair designs I schemed,

Blasted my gourds, and laid me low.

Lord, why is this? I trembling cried;

Wilt thou pursue this worm to death?

This is the way, the Lord replied,

I answer prayer for grace and faith.

These inward trials I now employ

From self and pride to set thee free,

And break thy schemes of earthly joy,

That thou may’st seek thy all in me.[82]

But it is not enough to see God’s mighty hand behind the immediate causes of all our adversities, nor to see it as the hand of a loving Father disciplining His children. I have seen the doctrine of the sovereignty of God in the Scriptures for so many years that I instinctively see His hand behind every circumstance. And I have come to the place where I acknowledge, almost reluctantly sometimes, that all hardship is God’s discipline, either corrective or remedial. The rub comes in submitting to it. Sometimes we resist it. But if we are to appropriate God’s grace in our trial, we must first submit to His hand, which brought the trial.

God gives grace only to the humble, to those who are not only humble toward other people, but are humble, or submissive, under His mighty hand. John Lillie expressed this idea so well. He said, “‘Humble yourselves, therefore,’ receiving in silent, meek submission whatever humiliation it [God’s hand] may now lay upon you. For this is your time of trial, and, when paternal rod meets thus with the child-like spirit, will be surely followed by another time of healing and joy.” Then Dr. Lillie added an important word of exhortation: “See that you do not frustrate the gracious purpose of God and lose the blessing of sorrow. Rather make that purpose yours also.”[83]

After the death of my first wife, a friend sent me a sympathy card on which she had copied the following verse, apparently from an ancient hymn, which I have now put in my notebook to meditate on frequently when I pray:

Lord, I am willing

To receive what You give,

To lack what You withhold,

To relinquish what You take,

To suffer what You inflict,

To be what You require.

We must have that spirit if we are to humble ourselves under God’s mighty hand and receive the grace He has promised to give.

But there is still one more essential element in this exercise of humbling ourselves under His mighty hand. We must not only submit, we must also do so in faith that He will lift us up in due time. The “due time” is when the adversity has accomplished its purpose. As the prophet Jeremiah said,

For men are not cast off

by the Lord forever.

Though he brings grief, he will show compassion,

so great is his unfailing love.

LAMENTATIONS 3:31-32

God will not leave His heavy hand of adversity on us one moment more than is necessary to accomplish His purpose: “For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men” (verse 33).

The humbling of ourselves under God’s mighty hand always leads to exaltation. Sometimes this may consist in the removal of whatever affliction God has brought into our lives and the restoration of peaceful circumstances, perhaps even more prosperous circumstances than before. This happened in the case of Job: “The LORD blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the first” (Job 42:12). At other times, though the circumstances are not changed, as in the case of the death of a loved one, the heaviness and painful grief or agony are removed. This happened in the case of Paul’s thorn. He was given grace to accept his thorn.

How are we to obtain such faith when it often seems to us God has forgotten us? The answer lies in 1 Peter 5:7: “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” God cares for you. Even though He is disciplining you, He cares for you. As we have already seen, discipline is an indication of His care. But His care goes beyond necessary discipline. Even as He disciplines you, He shares in your pain. Isaiah described God’s attitude toward Israel, “In all their distress he too was distressed” (Isaiah 63:9). The same can be said of God’s attitude toward you. In all your distress He too is distressed.

Because God cares for you, you can cast your anxiety on Him. Do not get these thoughts reversed. The text does not say, “If you cast your anxieties on Him, He will care for you.” His care is not conditioned on our faith and our ability to cast our anxiety on Him; rather, it is because He does care for us that we can cast our anxiety on Him.

Even at this point, we need the help of the Holy Spirit to do this. Even with all the assurance this whole passage provides us, its truth sometimes fails to reach our hearts. Sometimes we have to pray for the grace to humble ourselves under His mighty hand and the grace to believe that He does in fact care for us. Sometimes we must pray as did the father who came to Jesus asking Him to heal his son. When Jesus said to him, “Everything is possible for him who believes,” the father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” (Mark 9:23-24).

MINISTERS OF GRACE

The fourth principal means by which God ministers His grace to us is through the ministry of other believers. This truly is a primary means God uses, because He has ordained that in the body of Christ all the members “should have equal concern for each other” (1 Corinthians 12:25). Of course, this is to be a reciprocal ministry. We should be channels of grace to one another.

Let me deliberately misuse a statement of Scripture to make a point: This is one area where most of us feel it is indeed “more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). That is, we are more inclined to be ministers of grace to others than to allow others to be ministers of grace to us. Our problem is we are reluctant to be transparent and vulnerable to each other. We men especially don’t like to admit we have problems. That is perceived as a sign of weakness.

We want to appear as if we have life under control. We want to appear as if we are successfully dealing with temptations to sin, and as if we are successfully dealing with the difficult circumstances of life. We are just as unwilling to let others know we have been passed over for promotion at work as to admit we are having lustful thoughts about the secretary in the next office.

The times when we need an extra measure of God’s grace are often the times when we are most reluctant to let other people know we need it. This leads to an important principle regarding the ministry of grace. Each of us needs to cultivate a small group of friends with whom we can be transparent and vulnerable. This might be on an individual or small group basis. But we need a few people —including our spouse, if we have one —with whom we feel free to share our failures, hurts, and sorrows. The Puritans used to ask God for one “bosom friend” with whom they could share absolutely everything. That is a good goal for us today.

We saw in the section “The Word of Grace” that we should store up God’s Word in our hearts against a time of future need. We also should “store up” a few bosom friends against the day when we need them to be God’s ministers of grace to us.

Usually when we think of the ministry of grace to one another, we think of the initiative being with the person who will be the minister. But the initiative is often with the one who has a need. We have to admit our need and give the other person “permission” to minister to us. We have to, in some way, communicate that we are not only willing to share our needs but are willing to be ministered to.

What are some ways in which we can ask others to be ministers of grace to us? In answering, we need to keep in mind that we are asking the person to be an avenue for God’s Spirit to pour out His grace to us. We are asking the person, or persons, to help strengthen our contact with the Holy Spirit so that we can better receive the divine assistance He has promised to give. We are not asking, at this point, for practical assistance or human counsel. That may be appropriate at the right time. But for now, we are thinking of our need for grace, for God’s divine power to come to help us in our time of need.

That being true, the first thing we need from others is prayer support. It is instructive how often Paul asked the recipients of his letters to pray for him, even when he did not seem to have extremely pressing needs. So certainly in our times of need we should ask others to pray for us. But if they are to pray effectively for us, we must be willing to share what our real needs are.

The second thing we need is their help in accepting and applying Scripture to our specific needs. We might say, “Here is my problem. What Scriptures do you think might help me?” I realize this is a radical suggestion, because so often, when we are experiencing adversity, the last thing we want is for someone to give us a pat answer in the form of a Scripture verse. But if we have developed the kind of friendship where we can be transparent and vulnerable with one another, then we are not going to be giving each other pat-answer type responses.

Third, we can ask the other person to be a minster of grace to us by helping us see our situation with a better, more objective, perspective. We all know our tendency to magnify problems, or perhaps put the worst construction on events affecting us. The other person can be the Holy Spirit’s agent to help us see our circumstances more objectively. That better perspective may help us to more readily humble ourselves under God’s hand.

You will recognize that, in this section on ministers of grace, I have not introduced anything beyond the basic avenues of prayer, God’s Word, and submission to God’s providence. This is as it should be. All another person can do is facilitate our own contact with the Holy Spirit. All another can be is an avenue of God’s grace. We have nothing to offer each other just from ourselves.

We also need to keep in mind, as I have mentioned, that ministering grace is a two-way street. If you were to look up in a concordance the expressions one another and each other, you would see how strongly the New Testament writers emphasize ministering to one another. We are to pray for one another, encourage one another, teach and admonish one another, spur one another on, carry each other’s burdens, share with one another, and so on. Truly the body of Christ should be constantly alive with this reciprocal ministry to one another.

But let’s keep our focus for now on ministering grace to one another, that is, being an agent available for the Holy Spirit to use to convey His grace to someone else. We have considered briefly how we may reach out to others and allow them to be ministers of grace to us. This in itself takes some grace, and we may need to pray, “Lord, help me to be transparent and open to my friend, even though doing so seems humiliating to me right now. And make my friend a minister of Your grace to me.”

Since this is a reciprocal ministry, however, let’s now consider some ways by which we can be ministers of grace to others. All of us, if we are exploiting this avenue of God’s grace, should find ourselves at various times on both the receiving and the giving end. To borrow a principle of reciprocity from Paul’s teaching on giving, “At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need” (2 Corinthians 8:14).

How, then, can we be ministers of grace to others? Well, obviously in the same three basic ways they can be ministers to us: prayer, the Word of God, and help in submitting to God’s providence. But there is a crucial difference between receiving and giving. In receiving we must give permission to the other person to share Scripture with us and to help us submit to God’s providence. In giving, we must receive permission. Usually this means we must first earn the right to minister to the person through a relationship of mutual sharing, openness, and trust that we have already established.

The one area where we do not need to give or receive permission is, of course, in praying for one another. But even here, another individual cannot pray for your specific needs if you have not been willing to share them. There are some difficult or tragic events, such as the death of a loved one, the loss of a job, or a crippling disease or accident, that result in certain obvious needs we can pray for. But even in these areas, each of us responds to those events in ways distinctive to us, and in these areas of individual response we need to share and receive specific prayer requests with the close circle of friends we have cultivated.

Prayer is probably the most important way we can be a minister of grace to someone else. We have already considered God’s gracious invitation to approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. But sometimes brothers or sisters in Christ are so discouraged about their adversity and God’s seeming silence over a prolonged period, they just don’t have the spiritual strength even to approach the throne of grace. To them the doors of heaven are shut and God just doesn’t seem to “be there.” At these times we need to “carry” that person to the throne of grace by our prayers.

This type of ministry is beautifully illustrated in the literal carrying of the paralytic man to Jesus as recorded in Mark 2:1-12. This is one of the few events in Jesus’ ministry recorded in all three of the synoptic gospels. The story is familiar to most of us. We admire the faith and tenacity of the man’s friends who, when they could not bring him in to Jesus through the door of the house, went up on the roof, and after making a hole in it, lowered the man through the roof to where Jesus was.

Let’s consider some often-overlooked facets of the story. The man was completely paralyzed, at least unable to walk. As such he would have been a dead weight to his friends, unable even to cooperate with them as they carried him on his mat. The mat was probably a thin, straw-filled mattress, which the man on being healed could easily pick up and carry out with him. So the mat itself was likely limp, providing no stability to aid the man’s friends. In every respect, the paralytic lying helplessly on his mat was an awkward, heavy burden to be carried. But the paralytic’s friends were undeterred by either the awkwardness of their burden or the obstacle of the crowd. They persisted until they brought him before Jesus.

Sometimes one of our friends or loved ones becomes a spiritual paralytic. The affliction or trial he or she has undergone has virtually immobilized the person spiritually. He is unable to help himself. Not only that, but the spiritual “mat” he is lying on —that is, faith in God and trust in His promises —is no more than the equivalent of a thin, straw-filled mattress. If you try to encourage him through Scripture, he will look at you blankly and tell you Scripture just doesn’t mean anything to him anymore. He has tried to claim God’s promises, but nothing “works.” God just isn’t there.

This person has become an awkward, heavy spiritual burden. You cannot pray with him, you can only pray for him. But just as the paralytic’s friends persisted until they brought him to Jesus, so we too must persist in bringing this person to the throne of grace until God heals him spiritually.

Of course, the spiritual paralytic is an extreme case. More often than not, the person to whom we are called to be a minister of grace can still go to the throne of grace himself. But we are still called to rally around that person in prayer. God can, and often does, answer our individual prayers, but the general tenor of Scripture is that God desires we support each other in prayer.

Beyond prayer, we must in some way receive permission to be a minister of grace to the person in need. One of the best ways we can do this is to demonstrate that we care. The first thing the person requiring grace needs from you is the assurance and demonstration that you care. We want to help that person come to the place where he or she can cast that hurt on God, truly believing God does care. So often, though, our perception of God’s care is derived from our more tangible perception of other people’s care. If we see care demonstrated in our friends, it is easier for us to believe God cares. It shouldn’t be this way; we should not gauge the care of God by the care of fallible, sinful human beings. But we do. And often, God wants us to be the tangible evidence of His care.

How can we demonstrate that we care? Obviously the first thing we must do is to make contact. If you live in the same city, invite the person to lunch or coffee, or in some way establish personal contact. Based on my own experience after the death of my first wife, and confirmed by several friends who have lost loved ones, this is where we so often fail each other. Apparently because we feel awkward and don’t know what to say, we don’t say anything. In fact, we may even avoid the hurting person. One friend, whose wife died some months after mine, said to me, “Jerry, where are my friends?” Another told me of someone, who was one of his best friends, avoiding him after the death of a child.

If you have failed to make contact because you didn’t know what to say, allow me to offer a suggestion. Just tell the person, “I know you must be hurting badly, and I don’t know what to say, but I just want you to know I care.” Then, if appropriate you could add, “If it would help, I’d like to have lunch [or whatever] with you, and just listen to you. I’d like to know how you are really doing.”

Above all, do not ask the person merely in passing at church or somewhere else “How are you doing?” Though you may not intend this, it communicates to the hurting person that you are expecting the typical cultural response, “Oh, just fine!” Speaking as one who has “been there,” this is taken as more of an indication that you don’t care than that you do.

When you have demonstrated to the person that you do care —be sensitive to determine when the other person believes this —you can begin to ask gently probing questions, such as, “How are you and God getting along during this tough time?” “Are you able to get any comfort from the Scriptures, or are they just dead to you right now?” Ask questions in a way that communicates you won’t be shocked by negative answers.

The sharing of Scripture with a person who is deeply hurting requires a great deal of sensitivity. We must be careful that we do not appear to be “preaching” or giving glib answers to difficult problems. A good rule is to comfort others only with Scriptures that have comforted us in a similar situation. We also need to be sensitive to the person’s receptivity of our sharing Scripture. I have found it helpful to write the other person a letter in which I share Scripture I think might be helpful. This doesn’t require a response from the other person and consequently seems to be less intrusive than sharing face to face.

Ministering to one another in time of need is an important means by which the Holy Spirit mediates His grace to us. But as I have already observed, this is to be a reciprocal ministry. Do you have one or more people who are ministers of grace to you? Have you earned the right through a regular caring relationship to be a minister of grace to others? We do need each other’s help to appropriate the grace of God, for as Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 says,

Two are better than one,

because they have a good return for their work:

If one falls down,

his friend can help him up.

But pity the man who falls

and has no one to help him up!

If you realize you do not have such a “grace ministry” relationship with one or more friends and are wondering how to develop it, let me offer a few suggestions. First, we must admit we need it. Some of us, especially we men, are reluctant to admit such a need. Self-sufficient independence seems to be a hallmark of western culture. But if you have read to this point in our grace study, you probably have realized and acknowledged that none of us is self-sufficient —even in our personal, private relationship with God. He has made us in such a way that we need one another.

Second, ask God to lead you to the specific people with whom you can develop such a mutual relationship. As you pray, consider the various people within your sphere of acquaintances who might be possibilities. If you are looking for a one-to-one relationship, invite that person to breakfast or lunch or something similar, and see if the “chemistry” is there, that is, if you sense a mutual comfortableness with one another in sharing personal needs, goals, spiritual lessons, and so on. If you are looking for a small group environment, invite two or three friends who might be interested to get together and explore the formation of such a group.

Don’t be surprised, however, if God answers your prayer for a friend or friends in an unexpected way. He may well bring into your life someone whom you have not thought of as a possibility. You may be looking for someone whom you consider a spiritual “giant” to be your mentor and counselor. God may provide someone who seems to be the equivalent of “worm Jacob” (Isaiah 41:14), as we discussed in chapter 11.

As you begin to develop your relationship, you will often struggle within yourself about what you are willing to share. Again, this is especially true of us men because of our reluctance to admit we have needs. But speaking as one who is prone to be this way, my encouragement to you is this: Unless you sense a definite check from the Lord in your spirit, just “suck in your breath” and plunge in. I think you will be surprised how understanding your friend or small group will be, and how they will begin to open up and share their own struggles with you.

But don’t just share your struggles, and above all, don’t just commiserate with one another. Remember, we are to be ministers of grace to each other. We are to seek to be avenues of the Holy Spirit to help the other person appropriate the grace of God. Praying with and for one another, sharing applicable portions of Scripture, and helping each other submit to God’s providential dealings with us must characterize our times together.

During the time David was hiding from Saul, who was trying to kill him, he fled to the cave of Adullam. While there he wrote Psalm 142, a cry of distress to God. Verse 4 is one of the most plaintive cries in all of human literature:

Look to my right and see;

no one is concerned for me.

I have no refuge;

no one cares for my life.

Does that describe the way you sometimes feel? Do you think no one is concerned for you, no one cares for you? If so, you need one or more friends who will be ministers of grace to you. And very likely, you need to be such a minister of grace to someone else.