Grace is good. Revolution is bad. But together, Grace Revolution multiplies the power of grace and can take you to a whole new level.
It’s like saying that grace by itself is not enough if you need a Grace Revolution. And that is just the point.
God’s grace is always available. Every day, every moment — God is offering to bless you with the renewal power you need to receive everything that He has planned. But for whatever reason, you are putting it off, leaving it for another day, or deciding to go it alone for just a little while longer.
Abraham knew that God was going to bless him with more descendants than he could number, but Abraham couldn’t understand how. Sarah couldn’t understand how God could be so good to her and she knew she was getting older every day. They were already well past the optimal or even believable child-bearing years and God had still not given them a child. It seemed more and more likely that she would die before giving Abraham an heir that could realize God’s promise of a great nation arising from his descendants. I mean, God only helps those who help themselves, right?
Sarah and Abraham thought long and hard. For years they waited, expecting God to bless them. Silence. Infertility. Emptiness. Dreams unfulfilled. Was God’s vision just a mirage, a fantasy? Maybe God needed Abraham to do something for him? Maybe God was expecting Abraham to step up to the plate and make it happen? Year upon year passed and Abraham and Sarah continued to think, to plan, to consider, to reflect. What was God’s plan for them? God had promised to be good to them. How would that work? What would it look like when it happened? Had they made a mistake? Passed up on an opportunity? Forgotten something they should have remembered to do? What were they missing?
Silence. Waiting. Life was passing them by. God couldn’t possibly mean for them to die without a child, right?
Finally, Sarah had an idea. It wasn’t a good idea. It angered her deep down in side. It frustrated and irritated her and at some level she knew she was settling, she was giving up, she was accepting that life wasn’t perfect and that she had to sacrifice something at the heart of her relationships with God and Abraham to bring God’s vision to pass. She decided to offer Abraham a surrogate. She believed she was the problem. She believed she could be the solution. She couldn’t see how God could restore her and give her a child. She didn’t believe God’s promise would happen without her giving up her own desire to have a child with Abraham.
Sarah and Abraham thought about it. It challenged them. It seemed wrong. But they couldn’t think of any other way to make God’s promise come to pass.
What Abraham and Sarah needed was a Grace Revolution. But what they chose was just the revolution. Abraham slept with the surrogate, Hagar, and had a son, Ishmael.
This was not God’s plan. And from the very start things began turning out wrong. Sarah and Abraham’s relationship became strained. They fought. They struggled. They lost that hope for what they had originally known God would provide for them. Their original excitement and intimacy at the thought of God’s promise was gone. Things just didn’t seem right anymore. Had they actually done the right thing in trying to accomplish God’s purpose for their lives?
It got so bad that when God’s messenger showed up to announce that the time for God’s plan had finally come, Sarah laughed out loud at the news. Are you kidding? Look at everything I have already given up to accomplish God’s purposes. And now you are going to show up and say if I had just understood your timing I could have had everything you had promised with none of the heartache, none of the jealousy, none of the distance and frustration? HA! You’ve got to be kidding. How dare you show up after everything that I have done to make it happen for you and tell me that you didn’t need my sacrifice? That your blessings were never in question? That you had a plan and you were bringing it to pass even when I couldn’t see it? HA!
What Abraham and Sarah needed was a Grace Revolution. Their life was about to turn upside down and head over heels, topsy turvy and round about as they turned their lives back over to God, turned around and over and got back on the path toward’s all of God’s promises. They were going to have to give up their plans, let go of their initial understanding of how God was going to work in their lives, and instead step back into God’s grace and realize the full power of God to work a greater miracle than they had imagined was possible.
It was hard. It was very hard. It challenged Abraham and Sarah to the very core. They had to give up their first born son, Ishmael, and then be willing to give up their own shared first born son, Isaac, before they would fully find restoration with each other and with God and rediscover the wonder of that night so long ago when God had promised to bless them. They didn’t get to just leave their poor decisions behind them as if they hadn’t ever happened, but the power of the Grace Revolution that God worked in their life did empower them to release new levels of success, overcome the challenges their past had introduced into their lives, and rediscover the plan that God had in store for them from the beginning.
No matter what the circumstances facing you today, God is working for a Grace Revolution in your life. If you are willing to reconsider the possibility of God accomplishing great things in you, for you, and through you than God is going to be able to make changes that are so broad, so big, so powerful, so overwhelming that when He mentions them to you today, they might sound miraculous, unbelievable, and beyond all shadow of a doubt, beyond reach.
It’s time to start believing again.
I am here to tell you that this is the good news. God’s promises are not out reach. God’s plan is achievable. God’s Grace Revolution is coming your way. And while it may feel like a storm in the moment, God’s blessings are coming over you and flowing out through your life as you read this. Even now, the tides are turning and your outlook is improving. You are being healed. You are being restored. You are being reborn. You are a new person strengthened and equipped by the Grace Revolution that God is working in you. And through you, all the people in your life will be blessed.
Then the Lord said to Abram, “Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land that I will show you. I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. And, ALL the families on earth will be blessed through you.” – Genesis 12 (NLT)
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