Growing in Grace and Knowledge

[HKHaugan]

“But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen (2Peter 3:18 NIV).”

 

We have been looking at glory as the final cover, the tent in which our eternity is lived.  In the meantime Peter calls us to grow in grace and grow in knowledge.  The aim here is to see Jesus as the object of glory.  It seems we can give God glory.  To grow in grace and knowledge of Him is to give Him glory. 

 

First, to grow in grace.

 

To grow in grace needs the understanding of what grace is in order to grow in it.  So let’s begin a journey into this matchless and wondrous spiritual foray.  Consider what grace is from a personal perspective.  I’ll make a leap here and then invite you to join me. 

 

Grace is the opulent presence of Almighty God spreading the great cloak of His love around the length and breadth of Creation.  His all-embracing care for all that He has brought into being is personally directed to and in each one of us. There is not a single fragment, cell and particle in us and in the broad expanse of space that is beyond His control and careful maintenance. 

 

In the spiritual realm, all the unseen movement, the entities that operate in every situation within and beyond our experience, find their ultimate destiny in His mind and intention.  Grace is the overall comfort extended from His mind and heart through His Spirit.  Grace is the cushion in which we rest even in the aloneness we feel and the distress of our physical deterioration.  His grace is the shelter that not only spawned us but also holds us in the relational future He has planned. 

 

Grace is far beyond the limited human mind to describe, the heart to feel and the spirit to grasp.  But it is amazing, it is full of wonder, it transcends reason yet is the logical conclusion that He has shown in His Son. 

 

Grace is never a quality we control, it is a quality we allow to happen, we trust to function, we yearn to feel and we open to its direction wherever He chooses to take us.  Grace always surrounds us, moves within us and is offered us to share in that part of God’s being that is most profoundly an extension of Himself.  We were made to share His grace.

 

We can actually grow in grace.  It is like a spiritual fertilizer, a gentle nutritious rain and the soil bathing and breathing in the warm rays of the sun.  But as we allow its penetration, we find it is a gift that radiates from us to others just as He planned when He created us to be His spiritually active images and likenesses. 

 

Grace is the likeness of God seen in our worship, love for and obedience to Him.  When we release our minds, hearts and spirits to Him, in those releasing moments, we are absorbed and filled with His grace.  Believer and unbeliever alike are covered in the hope that what is incomplete will be completed, what is unfulfilled will be fulfilled and what has been revealed will be finally and fully revealed. 

 

It is grace that moves us from infancy to maturity.  It is grace that accepts our foot dragging and our moral lapses.  It is grace that takes our sin and guilt and makes them white as snow.  It the grace that moves us from shame to repentance and sorrow to joy.  It is grace that is the picture of the movement of Jesus in the wilderness of our lives leading us toward our inevitable rest in Him.  It is grace that is the field in which the seed of faith reaches toward the Son and blossoms into the reality of our true being as images and likenesses of Him.  Grace permeates the pages of His Word and brings to life the message of God’s love of us.  Scripture is the manifestation of His grace and the graceful presentation of His mind always there to bring His uniqueness into play as we mine its pages. 

 

It is grace that leads us to accept the presence of Jesus in our hearts.  It is grace that is the Holy Spirit moving relentlessly to bring us into the fullness of His presence.  It is the grace of our Father shown in His Son and splashed throughout the universe in His Spirit.  Everything that is reflects in some way the grace of God.  Our task is to grow in grace. 

 

Now, I turn it over to you.  What is your sense of grace? 

 

Next, growing in the knowledge.