Amazing grace

"Grace is not a commodity... it is a free gift."

These words were given to me as I started to wake up one morning. I was on my way to a men's breakfast that morning and all I could think about were these words. When we had our devotional time I shared these words and asked if anyone knew what they meant. No one spoke up...
It was some years later that I learned the truth about these words and why no one at that men's group spoke up. These words were given to help me get free from a life time of legalism that defined not only my religious endeavours but my personal life philosophy.
I learned that grace was given to me not as a response to my behaviour but as a gift. It wasn`t dependant on anything I did or didn`t do...it was unconditional.
Grace was for the lost and for the found alike and because of it you could rest from your efforts. Efforts to try to please God and efforts to please men.
As it can`t be earned just experienced it qualifies solely as a gift. It comes from God and was paid for by Jesus and can never be returned.
It seems to good to be true and for a long time legalist like me it was hard to realize that it didn`t demand anything in return. All I had to do is receive it.
Once I started to understand grace better and the legalistic shackles started falling off I started to begin to love God in a more intimate grateful way.
Now that I wasn`t under a compulsion to perform in any certain way I found myself wanting to read my bible and study more about grace. Reading my bible wasn`t a chore anymore or just a religious habit like it used to be.
The more I studied the more the old ways of thinking were exposed and that was the start of an internal battle that has taken a number of years.
Am I completly free or reached some lofty spiritual level? No I just know that because of Jesus I`m free to be whatever He wants me to be and that is because of God`s grace.

Ephesians 2:8-10New International Version (NIV)

8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

The Bee Gees hymn

                                                         The Bee Gees hymn

There is a song by the Bee Gees that was a huge hit. It asks a lot of seemingly unanswerable questions and whatever the writer may have meant to say I think I have an interpretation of his song that speaks quite powerfully of how the natural man becomes newly created.
The song speaks to me of a man who has experienced some great sorrow involving his life and is now questioning why things happen and how he will be able to recover from his broken heart. Each question posed is easily answerable from a grace perspective.
 Question #1-How can you mend a broken heart? From a grace perspective all broken hearts of stone have been swallowed up in Jesus and he has given the believer a new intact heart made of flesh.
Question #2 How can you stop the rain from falling down. The word of God says that the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike so the answer is its in Gods hands only although there is some biblical evidence that even rain can be started and stopped for a righteous reason.
Question #3 Asks how do you stop the sun from shining and when I came to this question I had a picture of the light of the world, Jesus, being snuffed out on the cross of calvary and the bible tells us that the sun was darkened at the same time.
Wow what a song so far but there`s more...
Question #4 Asks what makes the world go around and I think this could either be a literal physics query or maybe the song writer is asking what makes life unfold the way it does and in the context of this song you could go either way so first I`ll say God through Jesus put this universe into existence and is holding it all together including earth's orbit around the sun. Secondly the bible says that we live and move and have our existence in God so I believe life, as we know it, is our experiencing the grace of God sometimes even unknowingly.
Question #5 Says how can you mend a broken man which is a topic I have a lot of experience with as I endured losing everything financially in bankruptcy and then losing my health and job within a short time span.
Some people break easily all at once by one experience and others like me broke down little by little, experience after experience, until they are finally hit bottom. It is only at this point of brokenness that God can truly begin mending a man.
I`v been taking these Questions as they have come up in the song but this one is the key to understanding all the others and their answers as it is the point of conversion that a loser can ever win.
Only God could take a loser like me and turn him into a winner by including my sorry life and all its failures with Christ on the cross and by crucifying us together and put an end to all my sin and degradation.
 Jesus was buried and my old life got buried to signify that I`m dead to sin but now the fantastic part, I`m also raised to a new life with Jesus.
In the song the writer asks to please let me live again and this is exactly what happened to me because by being placed into Jesus`s resurrection I get to live again but now I`m in Jesus and all I was is gone and everything about me is brand new. The bible says that I`m a new creation totally separate from who I was.
The bible even says that I`m totally righteous now not because of what I do but because of what He has done.
This song has so many spiritual elements in it its uncanny. So now the writer turns nostalgic again speaking of misty memories of days gone by.
The memories that the writer speaks of can haunt us all as our minds are not newly created just our spirits. So our past, although totally forgiven, is still in our mind and seeks to control our every action as before but through the power of God we now have the ability to live out of his resources and therefore the great sorrow we have felt fades in the light of Gods glory and purpose for our lives. What a song to contain all the elements of basic Christianity. I`v heard other secular songs that have given me pause to wonder if God did`nt put the lyrics in those songs to cause people to say hmm. For instance have you ever wondered why a great majority of modern songs deal with the subject of love? Could it possibly be that God is influencing our strongest entertainment medium to reflect his nature( God is Love) or is there some other explanation. Hmm
how can you mend a broken hearthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZInWGC5L2T8