{"id":39888,"date":"2026-04-09T22:00:54","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T05:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/?p=39888"},"modified":"2026-04-08T22:41:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T05:41:08","slug":"26-0410","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/26-0410\/","title":{"rendered":"Grace Gets Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Max Lucado<\/p>\n

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Grace is God as heart surgeon. Grace is God cracking open your chest, removing your heart, poisoned as it is with pride and pain, and replacing it with his own. God\u2019s dream isn\u2019t just to get you into heaven, but to get heaven into you.<\/p>\n

Grace lives because Jesus does, works because he works, and matters because he matters. To be saved by grace is to be saved by Jesus\u2014not by an idea, doctrine, creed, or church membership\u2014but by Jesus himself, who will sweep into heaven anyone who so much as gives him the nod.<\/p>\n

Grace won\u2019t be stage-managed. I have no tips on how to get grace. Truth is, we don\u2019t\u00a0get<\/em>\u00a0grace, but it can sure can get\u00a0us<\/em>. If you wonder whether God can do something with the mess of your life, then grace is what you need. Make certain it happens to you!<\/p>\n

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Read more\u00a0Grace: More Than We Deserve, Greater Than We Imagine<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

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Your dad makes you come to church, but he can\u2019t make you listen. At least that\u2019s what you\u2019ve always muttered to yourself. But this morning you listen because the preacher speaks of a God who loves prodigals, and you feel like the worst sort of one.<\/p>\n

You can\u2019t keep the pregnancy a secret any longer. Soon your parents will know. The preacher will know. And the preacher says God already knows and you wonder what God thinks.<\/p>\n

Could you use some grace? You know, grace is God\u2019s best idea. Rather than tell us to change, he creates the change. Do we clean up so he can accept us? No, he accepts us and begins cleaning us up. What a difference this makes! Can\u2019t forgive your past? Christ can, and he is on the move, aggressively budging you from graceless to grace-shaped living. A forgiven person who forgives others. This is grace. Grace is everything Jesus!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39892,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[148],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39888","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\/39888","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=39888"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39893,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39888\/revisions\/39893"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}