Irresistible Grace

Tell me something you find irresistible.

I love to walk in the quiet of the woods where I can hear every bird calling out his territory and each hickory nut pelting the ground in autumn.  I’ve learned that if I climb high into the hunter’s treestand I can feel the gentle breeze on my face, see the sun gazing through the canopy, and even catch the silhouette of a hawk soaring against the cottony clouds that don’t seem so high above as they did before.  There I can sit… and pray… and think, a rare commodity in my industrious lifestyle.

I also love a good chai latte.  My friend Sara likes coffee. My daughters carve out every opportunity to get lost in their futuristic novels. My friend Robin has a hard time resisting a beautiful piece of fabric.  For my husband… it’s a good football game.

What is it for you? What is something you find almost irresistible?

I’d like to take a few minutes to tell you about Irresistible Grace.

I didn’t coin the term.  It was created a few hundred years ago by some theologians of the day.  It’s part of a five-point Christian doctrine that I won’t expand on here, except to say that the five points have been the source of a friendly (er–uh–sometimes not-so-friendly) debate for a very long time.

What I do want to talk about is God’s irresistible grace in my own life.  It’s something I can’t fully explain, but its pull on my life is something I can’t escape; nor do I want to.

As I have gotten to know Jesus better, I have increasingly realized that I am at my best, happiest, most content, when I am doing what He has designed me to do.  I have realized that all the things I have pursued for various reasons pale in comparison to knowing Him and becoming who He has made me to be. The word “grace,” translated from the New Testament Greek word χάρις (charis), also means kindness or favor. It is His irresistible kindness that draws me toward Him (Romans 2:4).

Perhaps the time I felt His grace most strongly was when I began to feel God calling me to step forward and lead in a new way.  I have shared about that here.   The thing I have found irresistible is that He would call me, draw me, provide for me, and completely fill me with purpose.  Sometimes His irresistibility spills over, ’till I don’t know what to do with it all.  I guess writing about it is a good first step.  Inviting you to join me in the journey is the second.

Consider the words of The Apostle Paul in Philippians 3: “But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”  (vs.7-14, NASB).

Paul had many qualifications through which he could find his value, but he knew that the  value of knowing Christ surpassed all other things.  I have found that as I get to know Him, it is true of me as well.

Have you ever thought about what it would look like to value knowing Christ above all other things?  What do you find irresistible, and how is Christ better yet?

*Tomorrow I want to tell you a story about how Philippians 3 changed my perspective many years ago.