Celebrate Freedom: Live Freer with Grace

We come to the end of our series Celebrate Freedom.  However, the struggle for freedom, for our nation and our lives continues.  As we look at our society, it remains desperately divided.  There are many people offering solutions, but they seem to be maneuvering for control rather than the common good.  We live in the world where people “spin” the truth rather than seek it.  The truth of God’s freedom and the gospel are powerful.  Our Founding Fathers were inspired by a vision of God’s freedom that enabled them to create a form of government unique to their time.  This was God’s gift to our nation and ultimately to our world.  America will never be a perfect nation or a perfect a form of government, but as the hymn says, “God shed his grace on thee.” (America the Beautiful)  Our final sermon in this summer of freedom is Live Freer with Grace.  Our foundation for this sermon is Ephesians 2:1-10. Grace is God’s gift to all of us through Jesus Christ and without it we would have no hope for being right with God. More than this, it is the dynamic power of the Christian life.  We are saved by grace, not by our effort.  Grace is uncomfortable because we want to control it, or earn it, or we are suspicious of it, as if there is another shoe that is about to drop! When we accept a greater sense of grace, we live into a wonderful and powerful freedom that empowers our lives.  We pray you will experience this grace growing in your heart so that you realize that the old broken past is gone and you hear our Savior say, “Behold, I am making you new!”

Ephesians 2:1-10:   As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, ² in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. ³ All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. ⁴ But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, ⁵ made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions–it is by grace you have been saved. ⁶ And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, ⁷ in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. ⁸ For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith–and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God– ⁹ not by works, so that no one can boast. ¹⁰ For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (NIV)