LESSON EIGHT

APPROPRIATING GOD’S GRACE

(Chapters 12 and 13)

CENTRAL IDEA

God’s grace is applied to our lives and made real in our experience through prayer, the Bible, submission to His sovereignty, and the ministry of other believers.

Warm-up

Describe a recent time when you experienced God’s grace in a specific way. What did God use to give you this sense of His grace?

Appropriating God’s Grace

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. 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 first avenue of appropriating God’s grace is simply to ask for it in prayer. When we come to God’s throne, we need to remember that 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 never to 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.

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.

Second, if we are to appropriate the grace of God, 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.

The Bible is more than merely objective truth; it is actually life-giving and life-sustaining. 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.

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.

The third means God uses to administer His grace to us is our submission to His providential working in our lives. If we are to appropriate God’s grace, we must humble ourselves, and 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.

The fourth principal means by which God ministers His grace to us is through the ministry of other believers. 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.

There are three basic ways we can be ministers of God’s grace to others: prayer, the Word of God, and help in submitting to God’s providence. Having experienced God’s grace, we are then called on to extend that grace to others. The evidence of whether we are living by grace is to be found in the way we treat other people. If we see ourselves as sinners and totally unworthy in ourselves of God’s compassion, patience, and forgiveness, then we will want to be gracious to others.

God’s grace is indeed meant to be a transforming grace. I invite you and urge you to lay aside any remnant of self-goodness you may think you still have. Admit your total spiritual bankruptcy, and drink deeply from the infinite grace of God. And then in deep awareness of what you have received, extend that same spirit of grace to others. (Taken from chapters 12 and 13 of Transforming Grace.)

Exploring Grace

Experiencing God’s Grace through Prayer

  1. a. Hebrews 4:14-15 encourages us to go to God in prayer, asking for the grace we need. What does this passage give as some of the reasons why we can approach God with confidence? (See also Hebrews 2:18.)
    1. b. In what ways do you find any of those reasons encouraging?
  2. If we are to experience God’s grace through prayer, we must pray. But even for Christians this often seems to be the last thing we get around to doing.
    1. a. Why do you think many Christians don’t pray more?
    2. b. How do you feel about your prayer times at this point in your spiritual pilgrimage?
    3. c. What specific things do you think you need to do to improve your prayer life?

God’s Grace Applied to Our Lives through His Word

  1. If we are to experience the grace of God, we must regularly expose ourselves to the Word of God. God can bring His Word to our attention in many ways, including:
    • friends
    • sermons
    • Bible study
    • Bible reading
    • Christian books
    • Bible memorization
    • Christian radio and television
    1. a. Which of these are a part of a regular week for you?
    2. b. Is there one area you believe you need to give more time to in your life? If so, which one?
  2. a. Share a time when God used a particular Scripture passage in your life to speak directly to you.
    1. b. By what means did you become aware of this passage at the time you needed it?
    2. c. How did it help you in your particular situation?

Receiving God’s Grace through Humble Submission to Him

  1. To experience God’s grace, we must humble ourselves and trust that God is in control regardless of the difficulty of our circumstances. Read 1 Peter 5:5-7.
    1. a. What are we told to do in these verses?
    2. b. What is the end result of our humility? When will we receive this end result?
    3. c. In what areas of your life is God teaching you to be more humble?
  2. a. Describe the attitude of a person who refuses to submit to what God is allowing into his life.
    1. b. How is the grace of God restricted in this person’s life?
    2. c. Have you ever experienced a time when your attitude created a barrier in your life to enjoying the grace of God? Share what you learned from this experience.

God’s Grace Given to Us through the Ministry of Others

  1. There are three basic ways that we can help one another respond to the Holy Spirit in our lives and thus receive God’s grace:
    • Pray for and with each other.
    • Share relevant verses with each other.
    • Help each other submit to the providence of God in our lives.
    1. a. We must have close relationships with other people if we want God to use those people in these three ways in our lives. How do you cultivate close relationships in your life?
    2. b. Give an example of a time when someone used one of these three ways to minister God’s grace to you.
  2. In order for God to use you to minister His grace to someone, that person must be receptive and open to your input. In the same way, we must communicate to others our willingness to let them minister to us.
    1. a. How good are you at letting others minister to you? Are you able to admit your needs to others?
    2. b. How good are you at reading the signals from others as to when you could be a minister of God’s grace in their lives?

Appropriating God’s Grace

  1. a. Of the four ways that God can make His grace real in our lives discussed in this lesson, which one do you think you have the biggest problem with?
    1. b. Take a few minutes to come up with a specific plan for how you will make yourself more available to God in that area this week.

Closing Prayer

Pray the following prayer as a group. Read one sentence at a time. Allow enough time of silence between sentences for each person to talk to God about specifics in his or her life that relate to this prayer.

Lord, I am willing to receive what You give.

Lord, I am willing to lack what You withhold.

Lord, I am willing to relinquish what You take.

Lord, I am willing to suffer what You inflict.

Lord, I am willing to be what You require.

Going Deeper (Extra questions for further study)

  1. Colossians 3:12-14 gives us a list of qualities that are the result of God’s grace at work in our lives.
    1. a. What do these verses say about how God thinks of us?
    2. b. How do the qualities listed in these verses enable us to be ministers of God’s grace to others?
    3. c. Choose one of the qualities listed and commit to asking God every day for a week to increase that quality in your life.
  2. Read Hebrews 7:25 and 1 John 2:1. How could the fact that Christ is interceding for you affect the way you pray?
  3. a. What do the following verses teach us about God’s sovereignty and the attitude we should have toward trials?
    1. b. How does trusting God and seeing His hand ultimately ruling in the circumstances of our lives help us maintain an attitude of humility?
  4. Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 gives us a poetic description of how much we need one another. What are some of the reasons why we need strong friendships within the fellowship of believers?

PONDERING GRACE (FOR PERSONAL REFLECTION)

To pray is nothing more involved than to let Jesus come into our hearts, to give Him access with all His power to our needs. From this it is clear that success in prayer does not depend upon the assurance of the one who prays, nor upon his boldness, nor any such thing, but upon this one thing, that he opens his heart to Jesus.

O. Hallesby, Prayer

Prayer is the exercise of drawing on the grace of God. Don’t say —I will endure this until I can get away and pray. Pray now; draw on the grace of God in the moment of need.

Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest

If the majesty and grace and power of God are not being manifested in us (not in our consciousness), God holds us responsible. “God is able to make all grace abound.” Be stamped with God’s nature, and His blessings will come through you all the time.

Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest

God and the Word of his grace always go together; God lets his grace flow out through that Word.

R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of The Acts of the Apostles

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.

John Newton