Receiving God's Grace

Month 1 is Complete!

I just hit send on all my June assignments, which were due tonight by 11:59 pm. Quite a month for learning, and not just about God's grace (duh) but also learning how to learn again and the boundaries of my "school skills".

If you'd like to read my final response paper from the month's assignments, here is a Google Doc version. Am I happy with it? Take a wild guess. Microsoft AI Editor (which I just learned existed) gave it an 84% editor score and now I can't look at that feature ever again.

If you don't read it, my Growth Goals for Prayer are: "...to pray to Jesus more, talk to him with admiration about what he did to grant me such freedom. I’m not sure why I’ve always had an easier time praying to God or trying to build a relationship with God, but less comfortable with Jesus. Another growth goal is frankly just to pray more, period. In reading about my older brother syndrome, it revealed the hard truth that my “main goal in prayer is to control their environment rather than delve into an intimate relationship with a God who loves them.” ('The Prodigal God', page 74). And sadly, I know it’s true. My last goal would be to judge less (in an older brother fashion) individuals at church. It really stuck with me when Tim Keller says if our church isn’t appealing to younger brothers, then we must be more full of older brothers than we’d like to think, legalistic, controlling and putting on a false mask. I certainly don’t want to behave that way or promote Park church to move in that direction. I want to celebrate the younger brothers who even step foot inside our church by God’s courage and help them understand God’s abounding grace."

In one of our assignments, a lecture called "Living in God's Grace" by Stuart Alpine, he begins by saying, "You're going to have a great time over these next few months... but I think regardless of how you are as you come here, I think we all feel in Kindergarten. This is not a PHD program for people trying to get smart about God. This is about becoming wise, under salvation. And I'm sure that one of the fruits of this time will be that you will be tremendously encouraged in your own communication of what you believe and what you know, but if at the end of this year, you find yourself still completely undone in the presence of God and more inarticulate than you were before, that would be of great Godly outcome. And I say that to save us from feeling that we've got to just jump to somebody else's responses. We're committed to an authentic word with God. Amen? Amen."

Amen.

I can't answer the question, "What did you learn this month?" Lots? And yet concepts I've heard or read many times, but somehow it was all a total mic drop, Holy Spirit mind-blown sentence one after another? It's hard to explain.

I could spend months studying and meditating on God's grace and I probably should! To really hammer in everything I read this month. Particularly to sledgehammer all my years of prior beliefs and replace them with every "But God" in the Bible. Reminding myself daily of God's great mercy, the great love in which he loved us, and grace upon grace.

"For grace you have been saved through faith. And it is not your own doing, it is a gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in." Ephesians 2: 8 - 10. That was typed by memory! BOOM! (I promise I will not go check right now if every word was right).

This month was humbling and the perfect start. I look forward to the next couple months still "in the desert" before all our group meetings start, as I refine my study structure for the sole purpose of being able to deeply focus while reading or listening, without distractions or anxiety, and absorb as much of whatever God wants me to hear.