{"id":38333,"date":"2025-12-02T22:00:24","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T05:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/?p=38333"},"modified":"2025-11-25T21:16:24","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T04:16:24","slug":"251203-grace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/251203-grace\/","title":{"rendered":"Stunning Grace"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"flex_column av_one_full  flex_column_div av-zero-column-padding first  avia-builder-el-0  avia-builder-el-no-sibling  \" style='border-radius:0px; '><section class=\"av_textblock_section \"  itemscope=\"itemscope\" itemtype=\"https:\/\/schema.org\/BlogPosting\" itemprop=\"blogPost\" ><div class='avia_textblock  '   itemprop=\"text\" ><p style=\"text-align: right;\">by Max Lucado<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-38335 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/251203_1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/251203_1.jpg 600w, https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/251203_1-300x150.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve never been surprised by God\u2019s judgment, but I\u2019m still stunned by his grace. God\u2019s judgment has never been a problem for me. In fact, it always seems right. Lightning bolts on Sodom. Fire on Gomorrah. Good job, God! Egyptians swallowed in the Red Sea. They had it coming. Discipline is easy for me to swallow, logical to assimilate. But God\u2019s grace? Anything but.<\/p>\n<p>Examples? How much time do you have? Peter denied Christ before he preached Christ. Zacchaeus, the crook. The cleanest part of his life was the money he\u2019d laundered, but Jesus still had time for him. The thief on the cross \u2013 hung-out to die one minute, heaven-bound and smiling the next.<\/p>\n<p>Story after story. Surprise after surprise! Search the pages, read the stories.\u00a0Find one person who came seeking a second chance and left with a stern lecture. Search. You won\u2019t find it.<\/p>\n<div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"CToWUd\" src=\"https:\/\/ci3.googleusercontent.com\/meips\/ADKq_NYaAHCKALpHywaTtzrm8NxFrxMSf4vLZycr9MOW3N7OwMNLXb9ITHXPIvJaDKJKe_9zlqnFArPXwyEqmwjHAWBQM3iFmGqGMmOc3Krq_KYAgEVPXmZD1tmWW853tyVE=s0-d-e1-ft#https:\/\/maxlucado.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/LucadoInspirationalReader_L1.jpg\" alt=\"The Lucado Inspirational Reader\" width=\"100\" height=\"132.87037037\" border=\"0\" data-bit=\"iit\" \/>Read more\u00a0<a title=\"The Lucado Inspirational Reader\" href=\"https:\/\/maxlucado.us2.list-manage.com\/track\/click?u=bed511e434184985961d50fcb&amp;id=2b48502b75&amp;e=0716428f80\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/maxlucado.us2.list-manage.com\/track\/click?u%3Dbed511e434184985961d50fcb%26id%3D2b48502b75%26e%3D0716428f80&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1762998269695000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1217jxyrNhljQ5visk7aC7\"><em>The Lucado Inspirational Reader<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve never been surprised by God\u2019s judgment, but I\u2019m still stunned by his grace. God\u2019s judgment has never been a problem for me. In fact, it always seems right. Lightning bolts on Sodom. Fire on Gomorrah. Good job, God! Egyptians swallowed in the Red Sea. They had it coming. Discipline is easy for me to swallow, logical to assimilate. But God\u2019s grace? Anything but.<\/p>\n<p>Examples? How much time do you have? Peter denied Christ before he preached Christ. Zacchaeus, the crook. The cleanest part of his life was the money he\u2019d laundered, but Jesus still had time for him. The thief on the cross \u2013 hung-out to die one minute, heaven-bound and smiling the next.<\/p>\n<p>Story after story. Surprise after surprise! Search the pages, read the stories. Find one person who came seeking a second chance and left with a stern lecture. Search. You won\u2019t find it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38335,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[148],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-upwords"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38333"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38336,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38333\/revisions\/38336"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}