The big stuff. You know what big stuff is. It’s whatever is consuming your thoughts right now and causing disturbance in your life. Big stuff can be good and cause good disturbances, but it can be bad and make a nasty splash in your otherwise calm life. Whatever your big stuff is, there is grace for it.
There is grace to help you learn how to play setter in volleyball, and there is grace to help you break free from past regrets and the grip of shameful memories. Grace is a broad concept covering everything from making margin in your life for the good little things to weeding out the very big, very bad things. This grace is not here to drag you in front of what you’ve done and shame you for it; it’s here to gently show you how much more comfortable you will be living in God’s clean, holy space. When life, temptation, sin, loneliness, depression, abuse, or, if we’re really honest, anything makes a mess you can’t clean up, it causes pain and hurt and makes the problem worse. This sound familiar to anyone? My guess is that everyone reading this understands what I’m talking about in some way or another.
Some of you will have gone through depression which takes you to such a low place you can’t do anything, no matter how hard you try. Some of you have been stuck watching porn and are hoping and praying I can’t actually read your mind right now. Some of you are battling same-sex attraction and wondering what the big deal with it is and why it’s causing such a big stink in the church anyway. Some of you are stressed or lonely and can’t figure out how to deal with it. Some of you are just wondering why Jesus feels so distant. All of you somewhere deep down inside are struggling with something, whether you know it or not. God sees it and he knows it, and, you guess it, he has plenty of grace spilling over the brim for you! The only thing you have to do to is accept it. Live in his love, and live graced.
Because we’re all completely broken and in need of grace and God knows this, he made sure to include a passage or two to help pick us up in our time of need. For the big stuff, those problems that seem insurmountable, we have a God who conquered the most insurmountable problem of all. He leapt straight over death itself
Graced 