Be Careful What You Pray For

God has a knack of teaching me (i.e. hitting me in the face with a 2 X 4). I recently started a series on "Grace." It's important to spend the year looking at the grace of God and what it should mean in our lives. What has happened has been a spate of incidences that make me look to myself in regards to grace.

Without being too specific, there have been divorces, sad judicial rulings, angry people, other people doing things I don't appreciate, and the list goes on and on. There was more going on than I had remembered in my ministry in a long time. It was really getting to me when I realized, "I prayed that God teach me about grace." GOOD LESSON #1--Be careful what you pray for, it may come true. I am having to learn about grace. About giving people a break. About realizing that in spite of what happens, I must react as God would react. I must realize that grace is so vital in our world.

So I'm trying to crawl out of the pit. It's a difficult concept to learn. I understand a little bit of what Job felt when God finally responded to his questions. (Although God never really answered Job.) These have been hard lessons, but I think they are helping me understand in some small way what God wants of me in regards to grace.

NOTE TO SELF: Don't preach a series on patience