Many people don’t understand God’s grace. We live in a world where you have to work for everything you want, and we don’t understand that we receive grace for free. That’s why people often want to do something to receive grace.

But grace cannot be “earned”. Grace came into the picture because of God’s incomprehensible love for people. It is only this undeserved grace that brings about our salvation.

We also see many places in the world where grace is distributed for free. Starving people who don’t deserve it get boxes and boxes of food, for free. They don’t deserve it and yet people bless them with an abundance of food. It’s just grace.

Often people do something wrong and end up in prison. Sometimes for some reason, the head of the country writes off the criminals’ debts and they can go free. It’s just grace.

Getting things for free unfortunately involves the risk that people start wasting it. Then the grace works counterproductively. People who receive free food all the time end up wasting the food. They don’t understand the value of the food or the good deed. They may even start insisting on free food.

Once the people in our neighbourhood group notified the members that we shouldn’t give food to the beggars. Because a beggar had thrown away in his garden the tasty sandwich that his neighbour had made with love.

Some people waste God’s grace too. Sometimes people do wrong things intending to apologize again tomorrow morning.

But it doesn’t work that way. If you intentionally do wrong things just to confess the next day to get a clean slate again, one is wasting God’s grace and His forgiveness of sin.

¹⁶Exercise your freedom by serving God, not by breaking the rules.

We must realise that a high price was paid as punishment for our sins. Yes, by grace we receive salvation free from God. We don’t have to work for it. But Jesus had to suffer for it. He paid for it with His life.

When we realise what Jesus had to go through, and when we realise how much was paid for our freedom, and when this transaction starts impacting our lives, we cannot mess with it!

Then you are driven to listen to God and do as He does. Then we want to give back in some way what we have received, even though it is completely impossible.

Then because we are grateful, we can’t help but go out into the world and really make a difference.

Let us never waste God’s grace and make sure that we do exactly as He wants us to do.

Scripture
1 Peter 2:13-17

Reflection
How do you understand grace?
Do you always do the right thing?
Where do you sometimes waste God’s grace?

Prayer
Father, sometimes I don’t do what You want me to do. Sometimes I also draw a line through Your grace. Please forgive me and help me not to waste Your grace. I ask this in Jesus’ Name. Amen.