Unmerited Favor

Have you ever run into those people who have favor with everything and everyone? I have. They are successful at almost everything they do, always have crazy things given to them, or even something so trivial as always winning your favorite game as they ask God for a number each time they roll the dice...and get it. I know someone that it happens to. It almost seems like everything they touch in some way or another turns to gold, so to speak. Ever wonder why this happens to some people but not others?

I had been closely watching a friend of mine that I worked with.  Her demeanor was always so confident and trusting of the Lord. She always did so well at work, and seemed to have favor everywhere she went.  I saw her faith in the Lord.  It was so childlike, so trusting, and knowing that good things were always going to happen,  even when times were bad.  She knows she's a daughter of the King! And she rests in that fact.  I then began to wonder, "God, what does she have that I don't?"  He began to answer softly as I listened to the song "Good Good Father" by Housefires.  Knowing that He truly is a good, good Father is the beginning of it all.  He showed me the meaning of grace.  Grace-"The free and unmerited favor of God, as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowal of blessings." It all started with Jesus' blood shed for you and I.  We were blessed with unmerited favor, grace upon grace, when he came and set us free. The debt we all should have paid with our lives in eternal agony was ripped from us and instead bestowed upon the perfect sacrifice, Jesus Christ, once and for all, fulfilling the wrath of God and returning us back to a place of sonship. We all know this story.  But how many act as the child running to their father knowing he'll come to them and fill the desires of their hearts?  I, like so many, muddy the glory of Jesus' sacrifice by trying to do things on my own.

Reading the definition of grace I was caught by those two words. Unmerited Favor.  Simply put, unworthy approval. That's what He bestows on us day after day, after day.  And I began to realize in a new way, my life is in the hands of my papa.  I, too, whether or not it manifests in the same way as others, have unmerited favor wherever I go and with whatever I do.  But do I see it?  That doesn't mean I'll always get what I want.  It's not magic.  It's God's love, which is perfect.  And even when he is disciplining his child in order that they grow, his favor is always present. Because it is not just what He does for us in the present, it is His goodness to have saved us in the first place. And we get to come boldly before His throne as a child, knowing their father is good!

Ephesians 2:8 "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God."

Written by Gena, Bellingham, Washington