Lauren is talking to her best friend Amy, “I know that he loves me, but somehow this is not enough.” Lauren and Patrick have been married for 17 years, and they had a ‘love story’ that you can make a movie out of, but that was back then.

“But Patrick has done so much for you during the first five years of your marriage. Does not that count for something?” Amy exclaimed.

Lauren replied, “I am not denying all that Patrick has done, but, I do not know how to explain it, I have not felt anything from him in quite some time. It is just hard to keep telling myself, remember when, when he is right there in front of me.”

This scenario is an attempt, maybe a poor attempt, to show that love is a continual process. Expressing love is something that needs to be a recurrent experience, and not a “haven’t I proven to you that I love you already!” kind of thing. And for love to stay a recurrent experience, it does take work, intentionality and deliberate action. Hope you agree with me on this ‘love’ thing.

Grace is no different than love. Grace is a recurrent activity. Grace is to be; patient, considerate, thoughtful, forgiving, nurturing, protective, merciful, kind, charitable, a servant, a helper, a guardian and finally, Grace is Love.

Believe it or not, these are all descriptions of the Grace of God in the Old Testament.

You are maybe a bit surprised as somehow we have been raised to believe that Grace is somehow a God characteristic associated primarily with the New Testament. Furthermore, we have somehow cornered the Grace of God into a single act of redemption of Jesus, our Lord and Creator here on Earth, dying on the cross. Of course Jesus was crucified and was resurrected, but let me ask you this; Do you, yes you the one reading this right now, do you know about God’s grace and what He did, or do you experience God’s Grace momentarily, daily, weekly? Not think about His Grace or acknowledge it, rather experience it? Do you?

You are maybe wondering, “What do you mean experience it?”

Just like Lauren in the scenario above, somehow somewhere we, in my opinion, know and acknowledge what God has done for us, but sadly we do not experience His Love and His Grace as a recurrent activity in our daily lives. This may explain why we, the collective we, have lost the passion for God, for how can we be passionate about something we do not experience. If I may summarize what I believe where we stand in our road with God, it is as follows;

Be a good person, worship God and do what you can to help others.

If this is you, please know that in spite of what we claim about Grace is the free gift of God, the equation above is pointing to your works…………… not your faith………… for being a good person and helping others is works, even your worship is works ..……..

I say this not to discourage, but indeed the opposite is desired. It is said to have you want to seek this thing termed “experiencing God’s grace”, this recurrent experience that you have throughout your life. Again, not the knowledge of what He has done, rather experience what He is doing. Another term to use is; ‘how to infuse God into my life”. Sounds weird though, as if I am bringing God into my life, doesn’t it? But indeed it is you infusing Him into your life. It is you and me choosing to experience Him in our lives. God created you and me with the freedom to choose. Therefore, indeed I, you, we need to choose to infuse God into our life, on a frequent and regular manner, and NOT just know and acknowledge what He has done in the past. It is God’s desire that we choose to experience Him and infuse Him into our lives, recurrently.

‘How’ is the question, correct? Not that there is an answer that I do know and can just share with you right here. Rather it is a different look at the same Bible we have used for thousands of years. The Bible is still the plumb line, it is indeed the experience of man and God for thousands of years, and through it we can see the Grace and Love of God to His creation, the one in His likeness, plastered all over it. For when we understand and realize the recurrent Love of God, we have no other option than to fall in LOVE WITH HIM. Then, we will experience NOT acknowledge the recurrent Grace and Love of God momentarily, daily, weekly and recurrently LOVE Him back.

Merry Christmas to you all 🙂  and till next week.