Grace

The kids and I have been listening to John MacArthur's series on Forgiveness for the last week.  You know, it's something that we can all work on around here.  ;-)  I would give a link so you can listen in for yourself if you're interested, but I can't find one.  I am subscribed to his podcasts and download his daily radio messages onto my iPod for us to hear. 

I have to say, if you don't have an iPod, you should do ALL you can to get one.  Mine has changed the face of our homeschool in so many ways!  Skip counting tapes and other math/geography/grammar misc.?  On the iPod.  Books on tape?  On the iPod.  Everything is on the iPod and I no longer have to lug around a heavy, annoying CD holder from the house to the car and back again.  My husband bought a cord that plugs into our stereo system that plugs into the iPod and we all have listened to "The Fellowship of the Rings" together every evening.  We also have an adapter for it in the car and we have listened to many a history CD (LOVE Diana Waring!) as we travel about. The "little rectangle" (as I used to call it before I understood all it could do) holds a TON of stuff.  I love my iPod.

ANYWAY........so we've been listening to a series on Forgiveness......where was I??????  OH!  Yes, well, after we listened to each sermon, the kids and I would chat about all the implications that the information we had just heard, could have on our lives.  And I've been tossing around the word "grace" a lot in conjuction with what God provides for us by way of His own forgiveness towards us. 

Tonight I went to The Shepherd's Scrapbook.  Great blog, but I can only really focus on it when I'm not totally fried from playing mommy all day.  You know, it's deep and thoughtful - one of THOSE blogs.  ;-)  Somehow, tonight, I was able to focus, and Tony, the blog owner, had posted a quote by Sinclair Ferguson.  It goes like this:

No such ‘thing’ as grace
by Sinclair Ferguson

“There is nothing between the person of the Lord Jesus and the person of the believer as that union and communion develops and grows. I think this is a very important thing for us to grasp. Let me put it the way I sometimes put it: The union with Christ we have is not that we somehow or another share His grace. Because – follow me carefully – there actually is no ‘thing’ as grace. That actually is a Medieval Roman Catholic teaching. There is a ‘thing’ called grace that can be separated from the person of Jesus Christ. It is something Jesus Christ won on the Cross and He can bestow it on you. And there are at least seven ways it can be bestowed on you and they all, as it happens, turn out to be in the hands of the church. And you can have this kind of grace, and this kind of grace, and this kind of grace … There is no such ‘thing’ as grace! Grace is not some appendage to His being. Nor is it some substance that flows from us: ‘Let me give you grace.’ All there is is the Lord Jesus Himself. And so when Jesus speaks about us abiding in Him and He abiding in us – however mysterious it may be, mystical in that sense – it is a personal union. Do not let us fail because of the abuse of expressions. Do not let us fail to understand that, at the end of the day, actually Christianity is Christ because there isn’t anything else. There is no atonement that somehow can be detached from who the Lord Jesus is. There is no grace that can be attached to you transferred from Him. All there is is Christ and your soul.”

-Sinclair Ferguson on John 15 at the Banner of Truth Ministers’ Conference in Grantham, PA this Spring.

It's always easy to let things or ideas take the place of Christ, isn't it?  I'm afraid I've been focusing more on "grace" than CHRIST with the kids, and will have to do a HUGE U-turn in our conversation tomorrow.  Just another instance of Mom not being perfect.  sigh.  ;-)