January 1, 2015. 1 Timothy 1:14. Abundant Grace.....

1 Timothy 1:14

The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

Abundantly.  

Imagine being quite possibly the man that Christians feared most in this world.  Imagine martyring instead of being martyred....this was Paul's life prior to his encounter with God.  This was Paul's life as Saul.  Most feared, most hated, most intent on wiping out every morsel of Christianity.

And God revealed the Truth, Paul immediately changed and the Lord poured out His grace abundantly. 

With the change of Paul's heart, God not just extended forgiveness and mercy but poured out His grace abundantly.....not in measured increments consistent with his time of "remorsefulness " but abundantly. 

Abundantly. And, yet, there are many of us who couldn't accept God's abundant flow of grace in our lives if it slapped us in the face...and sometimes it does!   We journey through this world holding ourselves accountable to past issues when everyone else has forgotten.  We limp through our lives tethered to past sins that have long been forgiven but in our mind not forgotten.  We carry gathered in our arms a past that causes our heads to fall in shame....missing completely on the abundant fall of His grace in our lives.

I'm not taking about living a life flippantly or carelessly but rather a life filled with abundant grace knowing that the same God that poured abundant grace over Paul's life is the same God that pours in our life. 

Grace. Abundantly.

What would our lives look like if we lived in the grace that has been poured upon us?  If we embraced every single drop of love that He extends?  Imagine a life well steeped in abundant grace...from top to bottom.  Satan doesn't want us to find that place.  The moment in our lives where our life is so changed that we go from being a "Saul" to a "Paul"....the moment when we realize what grace really means instead of the watered down version that many of us survive in...teetering back and forth from one abyss to another...never firmly planting our feet on His firm foundation.

No sin is too big, no past too brazen... Let's start living today in His abundant grace.  We say we believe, we know the Truth but many of us still live as if tethered to our old selves....  Find freedom in Him.