We are a God church and a word-of-grace church. Here is what that means, and why it changes how you live once you know Whose you are.
When Paul said farewell to the elders at Ephesus, he told them he was committing them to God and to the word of His grace. Those two commitments, to God and to His grace, say almost everything about who we are trying to be here at Grace Life Center. We are, first of all, a God church. Everything we do, we do because of God. We pray because of God, we live because of God, we give because of God. He is the reason for all of it.
Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.
1 Corinthians 10:31
God Himself Is the Reward
This is worth saying carefully. We are not here mainly for prosperity, though we trust God to provide. We are not here mainly for holiness, though we do want to be holy. We are not even here mainly for heaven, though we are going there. We are here for God. To have God. Because God is not the means to some other reward; God is the reward.
I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.
Genesis 15:1
We were made for Him, and nothing less than Him will ever satisfy. When you understand that, you stop treating God like a vending machine for the things you actually want, and you begin to want Him for His own sake.
You Belong to Him
Why do we live this way? Because we recognize Whose we are. Paul told the elders to care for the church of God, which He purchased with His own blood.
You belong to God. He bought you out of the slave market of sin, at the cost of His own life for yours. There was a time when you belonged to someone else, when you were owned by sin and driven by the enemy of your soul. But the title has changed hands. You no longer belong to that old master. You can put down the fear and the doubt. You can be as bold as a lion, attempt great things, and expect God to do great things, because you are His and He watches over what is His.
Think about the master you were freed from. The enemy is a harsh taskmaster. Under him, everything has to be earned, and even when you work yourself to exhaustion, it is never quite enough. That is bitter bondage. Some of us chased relationships at great cost, hoping to find happiness, and ended up emptier than when we started. Some chased money and lost our health and our families to get it, only to find the money could not make us happy and quietly corroded us instead. Some chased pleasure and found it left a deeper emptiness behind. Like Israel in Egypt, our lives were made bitter with hard service.
And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field.
Exodus 1:14
That is what sin does. It is the principle at work in us that makes us disobey God even when part of us wants to obey. The good we meant to do, we could not do; the evil we did not want, we did. Even our good acts were tangled with wrong motives. Our marriages, our health, our habits, all of it grew bitter, and we were chained to things that were slowly destroying us. Sin, sickness, and sorrow were our daily companions. Pharaoh was king over our lives, until grace showed up.
A Story of Being Bought
Picture a slave market long ago. A young woman stands on the auction block, bruised and ragged, weeping. The men bidding for her are cruel, and the price is climbing: thirty, forty, fifty. Everyone can see where her life is heading, and it is nothing but exploitation and ruin. No matter how hard she works for such masters, she will never earn her freedom.
Then a nobleman passing by stops. Moved not by her beauty, for she is worn and plain, and not by anything she has done to deserve it, but simply by compassion, he calls out a price no one can match, a price a thousand times more than anyone thought she was worth. The bidding falls silent. The sale is made, and the deed of ownership is handed to him. The crowd murmurs, wondering what he could possibly want with her.
His first command surprises everyone: remove all her chains. No one buys a slave only to unchain her. Then he takes off his own rich robe and wraps it around her trembling shoulders. She can barely lift her eyes, but when she does, she sees nothing in his face but pure love. He asks her name, tells her he loves her, and then does the most astonishing thing of all. He places the deed, the very title over her life, into her own hands. Take this, he says, and go home. You are free. And with that he turns and goes on his way.
Friends, that is the story of every one of us. Jesus has purchased you at a price beyond anything your life could ever have earned. And yet He does not now enslave you the way your old masters did. He has handed you back the title to your own life. The question is what you will do with it. Will you spend that freedom only on more work, more possessions, more comfort? Or will you take the deed and hand it back to Him and say, You are my Lord; all I want to do, I want to do for You. Take my life, and let it be wholly Yours.
A Word of Grace Church
The second thing we are is a word church, or better, a word of grace church. Grace is the supernatural ability to become or do what you never could have on your own. It was grace that saved us, and it is grace that blesses us and matures us. Everything we receive comes through the word of God's grace, the word that flows from His mouth, for we do not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. And grace is rooted in love, because God is love, and His word to us is a word of love.
So our aim is to build people up: to build up character, homes, and families. Knowing God's grace does not only rescue you; it grows you up. And maturity matters for a very specific reason. It is the key to enjoying your inheritance.
An Inheritance, Not a Wage
Notice that word, inheritance. An inheritance is not something you earn; it is something you receive because someone else did the work. The reason you can expect to live and not merely survive is not that you are the smartest or the most deserving, but that Another gave up His life to secure life for you. It is not your wage. It is not your reward for fasting and praying. It is your inheritance as a child of the Most High God.
Think of the promised land, given to Israel by promise, not earned by labor. It was a land flowing with milk and honey, which means a land of abundance: rich soil, plentiful rain, thriving herds, sweetness. Jesus has given us our own land of promise.
I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.
John 10:10
That abundant life is yours by right, as a child of the kingdom. But to enjoy an inheritance, you have to grow up. A child may be heir to everything and still not be able to manage any of it. That is why we exist here: to commit you to God and to the word of His grace, so that you are built up and matured enough to actually receive what is already yours. Maturity lets you access your inheritance, and holiness lets you keep it, for sin will quietly take from you what Jesus paid so dearly to give.
For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world.
Titus 2:11-12
Staying on the Foundation
What does it take to enjoy all that God is providing? At the center of it is something that sounds basic but is easy to drift from: keep your faith on the finished work of Christ alone as the ground of your salvation. God does not accept you because you believed in Jesus and also paid your tithe, or believed in Jesus and also cleaned up your relationships. You changed your life because God saved you, not the other way around. To benefit from what God is doing among us, Jesus, and Jesus only, has to be your Savior.
Along with that comes humility, and a willingness to grow in community, which is why our house groups matter so much; they are one of the main places where real growth and development happen. So this is our vision and our mission in a sentence: God's life, through God's Son, by God's grace, worked out in people who know Whose they are and are being built up to enjoy their inheritance. Is there someone today who will make up their mind to commit, or recommit, everything to God? He has already given you the deed to your life. The most joyful thing you can ever do is to place it, freely, back into His hands.