The grace of God is such a vast subject that scholars have filled volumes in examining its aspects. However, every believer needs to know the ways in which God’s grace is essential to living and growing in the midst of his or her circumstances.
One of my priorities has always been that the truths from God’s Word bring a divine impact into a person’s situation. Truth that cannot be implemented and experienced is of no more value than error.
An important truth about grace is found in First Peter 4:10-11:
“Whatever gift each of you may have received, use it in service to one another, like good stewards dispensing the grace of God in its varied forms. Are you a speaker? Speak as if you uttered oracles of God. Do you give service? Give it as in the strength which God supplies. In all things so act that the glory may be God’s through Jesus Christ; to him belong glory and power for ever and ever. Amen.”
A steward administers or exercises responsible care over possessions that have been entrusted to him. The thought of being a steward over anything isn’t very exciting and doesn’t carry a sense of outstanding importance. In fact, the concept may seem very common and mundane. But stewardship is actually the day-to-day establishment of God’s ways in His Kingdom. We must do His will in His way, or His Kingdom will never become established in us.
As a believer, we have been entrusted with God’s grace. He has placed this power within our hearts to sustain and influence us. Second Peter 1:4 says that God has deposited all things that pertain to life and godliness within our hearts. His grace is there to empower us to fulfill all He has called us to do.
As a wise steward of grace, we are called to faithfully distribute God’s gifts to meet other people’s needs. God does not deposit His grace in our hearts to meet our own needs alone, but so we can become a vessel of His divine flow into the lives of others.
Within every true believer’s heart is the desire to be used by God to demonstrate His goodness and His might against the devil’s works. The real richness of a Christian’s life in God is only realized as he allows God’s great delivering power to flow through him to minister to others.
Remember, grace is the demonstration of a master’s kindness toward his inferiors or servants. Thus, it is clearly grace that God has shown toward mankind through the sacrifice of His only Son Jesus.
According to Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, grace can also be defined as God’s merciful kindness as He exerts His holy influence upon us to turn us, keep us, strengthen us, and increase us in His ability to do His will.
Notice what Acts 6:8 says about Stephen: “And Stephen, full of grace and power, was performing great wonders and signs among the people” (NAS). It was grace and power that made Stephen stand head and shoulders above others. Grace empowered him to move with God and to produce wonders and signs of God’s anointing.
Grace will bring us into this kind of supernatural life, if we act wisely as its steward.
