Quotes About Grace

God ordained the Sabbath for us, not just as another requirement from us.

Once we belong to Him, we know where to look for sweet communion,

A worthy life involves loving as loved folks do, sharing the ridiculous mercy God spoiled us with first. (It really is ridiculous.) It means restoring people, in ordinary conversations and regular encounters. A worthy life means showing up when showing up is the only thing to do.

If Jesus is the heart of the church, people are the lifeblood. There is a reason He created community and told us to practice grace and love and camaraderie and presence. People

Life is severe and coping is harder for some than others. We can make the journey trickier or easier, smoothing the path with grace or complicating it with more obstacles. This person is here to stay for the foreseeable future or forever, so he is a necessary member of your tribe. You can exercise compassion without enabling misconduct.

Jesus created a motley crew, plucking us from every context and inaugurating a piecemeal clan that has only ever functioned with mercy. We should be grabbing hands, throwing our heads back, and laughing that God saved us all, because surely this is the messiest family ever and He loves us anyway. Our shared redemption should keep us grateful and kind, because what other response even makes sense?

You have no other responsibility than to represent Jesus well, which should leave that person feeling absurdly loved, welcomed, cherished.

God is here and we are not alone. We can't deliver folks from their pits, but we can sure get in there with them until God does. Live long enough and it becomes clear that stuff is not the stuff of life. People are. We need each other, so we probably ought to practice radical grace, because our well-flaunted opinions are cold companions when real life hits.

We are only qualified to administer mercy, not judgment, because we will pull up many a beautiful stalk of wheat, imagining him a weed.

Guilt is not Jesus' medium. He is battling for global redemption right now; His objective hardly includes huddling in the corner with us, rehashing our shame again. He finished that discussion on the cross. Plus, there's no time for that.

Spoiler alert: You are amazing. You are. This grace thing is no joke. We get to live a free life. So do other people because God gave us Jesus, who fixed everything. Instead of being 'right' at each other all the time, we can just live these beautiful, precious lives of ours in full freedom. It really is good news.

Maybe we can lay down our fear and criticism, self-directed and otherwise. Maybe if we let ourselves off the hook, we can let others off, too, and discover that God was in control all along, just as He tried to tell us. He is good at being God.

When Jesus' followers asked what to do about the weeds in the harvest field, He said to treat them the same as the wheat, 'because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them' (Matthew 13:29)... We are only qualified to administer mercy, not judgment, because we will pull up many a beautiful stalk of wheat, imagining him a weed.

Jesus was tender toward brokenness but impatient toward egotism.

Condemnation is a trick of the enemy, not the language of the heavens. Shame is not God's tool, so if we are slaves to it, we're way off the beaten path. And

Folks who thrive in God's grace give grace easily, but the self-critical person becomes others-critical.

We need not fear that He will say, "You loved too greatly, too liberally, too generously, too shockingly.

If Jesus is the heart of the church, people are the lifeblood. There is a reason He created community and told us to practice grace and love and camaraderie and presence. People soften the edges and fill in the gaps. Friends make up some of the best parts of the whole story.

Despite my best efforts, I'm not quite perfect. Let's just say I'm like one of those Hopi blankets where they leave a tiny flaw so as to not affront the Lord.

Be patient - let yourself unfurl one delicate leaf at a time.

Receive compliments gracefully instead of countering with a disclaimer such as, "Oh, this ratty old thing?" Try this instead: "Thank you." Period. Take

Do not fall prey to the false belief that by forgiving someone you're letting them off the hook. Because when you forgive someone you let yourself off the hook.

Gratitude is a state of being.

Jennifer Ackerman