Audrey Siahaan
“I always thank my God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus.”
(1 Corinthians 1:4)
When was the last time you showed your appreciation for God’s grace in someone else’s life?
God’s grace in our lives and the lives of others gives us the chance to celebrate and rejoice together. It is so important for us to celebrate and rejoice together, and we can do this by searching for grace in each other. After all, grace is the basis for a Christian life, and it is what we search for in Him everyday. Without God’s grace, our faith wouldn’t be strong. We believe it is through grace and faith that He has saved us.
It is so easy for us to rejoice over God’s righteousness in our own lives, but it takes a completely deeper level of love to rejoice over God’s goodness in another person’s life.
Opportunities for us to celebrate someone else experiencing God’s grace are all around us, yet we just never seem to notice and take action. We can rejoice over a mother who gets to foster, adopt, or take care of a child who has special needs. We get the opportunity to rejoice when we see someone who is on the road to recovering cancer. When we see a teenager who’s overcoming depression, or a friend who’s finally giving Christ a chance.
God’s grace and love can be found in all things, granting us endless opportunities to rejoice with others; but we must be no stranger to them. As teens, we must not only focus on the grace given in our own lives but also of that experienced in other people’s lives. Such shows that we are not self-centred and allows us to love others by realising God’s work in other people and celebrating with them their experience with God’s grace.
Now, why is recognising God’s grace in others and extending His grace in our lives important? Here is 3 reasons why:
- This grants us grace and makes us aware of the different ways God can work.
God works with different people in different ways. When we hear or read testimonies of how God has changed their lives with his grace, we also receive His grace through others. Our hearts get touched by other people’s stories and we get reminded of how good God’s grace is. Sometimes we learn more from other people’s experiences than our own. If God gives us the opportunity to learn and be reminded of His grace when we recognize it in other people, we must take advantage of that opportunity. After all, this opportunity helps us to know God and learn the different ways He works.
- This shows God’s love to others and builds our character to be more Christ-like.
“At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do.” Luke 10:21
Jesus rejoices when he sees His Father showering His grace to His children. Seeing the Father’s free enlightenment and salvation for those whose only hope is free undeserved grace, Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit in the Father’s grace. Having this heart that rejoices in God’s grace in other people’s lives comes as a result of knowing Jesus and becoming more like Him.
But it doesn’t stop there. We’re not only called to rejoice when others receive grace from God, but we also can be a messenger of God’s grace to others. We can show God’s love for us to our brothers and sisters in Christ by listening to their situations, stories, thoughts, or just making them feel seen. Giving a warm smile or wave is a good start to make them know you are open to listening to them. When God sees you doing this, He and His angels will rejoice with you.
- Strengthens our faith and other’s faith.
When we see God’s grace in others, our faith grows in Him. When we share our testimonies with others, their faith will grow. Especially when we share testimonies to those who haven’t given their life to Jesus and may not even know a thing about God, these stories impact them the most. In these testimonies, they are confronted with the reality of God’s grace and love which drives them to come to Jesus.
God has already done so much for us, we are granted heaven and endless forgiveness, and the least we can do is extend grace to others. Extending grace to others saves them. It could change their life forever. Don’t you want to be used by God to save someone’s life? When we see an opportunity to extend the grace given to us to others, are we willing to take it?
The Bible says that when a person gives His life to Jesus, and experiences the supreme grace of salvation, all heaven rejoices. The grace of God is the greatest gift we can experience and when we extend God’s grace to His other children, all of heaven rejoices. That is why, the search for grace and the act of extending grace, is very important not only to us, but to His plan of salvation.
How can we extend grace to others?
Extending grace to others can be hard especially when the person is so unlovable. We would prefer that they get what they deserve. But that is not what the Holy Trinity did.
The Holy Spirit reminds us in his Word that we didn’t deserve grace either, and we didn’t receive what we actually deserved because Jesus took on the penalty for us. We can find this a helpful way of looking at the sometimes difficult task of extending grace to others. On the days that we are acting the most unlovable, grace is what we need more than anything. When someone offers us grace instead of what we actually deserve, it makes our unlovable attitude powerless, and overcomes all negative things including arrogance, and instead humbles our hearts. Grace changes us, our attitude and our way of thinking. That is the very gift we can give to the people around us. It is by receiving grace we can extend grace to others. Yet something important to remember is that it all starts with our own relationship with God; it starts with how much we know and seek God. The more we know God, the more we want to experience his grace, and be the ones chosen by Him to give grace to others. The ultimate aim of God’s grace is that through it, we can come to know Him and His nature more and more. We must search for grace, and we must extend it. That, after all, is the will of God.