Now thank we all our god: choose grace

What is the foundation of giving thanks?  It is a sense of gratitude for something or someone. Gratitude is always a choice and it is not always easy.  We sum it up in many ways: “count your blessings”, “pay it forward”, or “I appreciate you.”  It is not hard for us to sense its impact.  All of us have had that moment in which someone said “thank you” at just the right moment to lift our spirits and hopes.  One of the foundations of gratitude is a realization that we got something more than we deserved.  Gratitude is harder for modern society because of things like “entitlement” (feeling like we deserve more) or our consumer society that demands to be served.  Grace is the foundation of giving thanks in our relationship with God.  Without sensing God’s grace for us, then we will not fully appreciate or experience the love or power of God in our lives. Grace fuels our thanksgiving to God.  The more a believer sees the grace they have received, then they will experience God’s wonderful love and find a greater strength.  In our sermon series Now Thank We All Our God the sermon is Choose Grace. Choosing grace is important in two ways: to receive it and to give it.  We don’t simply receive grace, instead, when we claim this grace, it empowers amazing things in our lives! When we accept God’s grace then we are able to share it.  This week we turn to Romans 5:1-10.  Paul is writing to the Roman believers to help them understand the power of grace but also their need to choose to live into the grace that God had given them in Jesus Christ.  Grace was not passive but it was the power of undeserved kindness to change our lives, to transform our spirits and to fill us with a undying hope.  Paul is inspired by the Holy Spirit to encourage these early believers to experience the full measure of God’s grace.  The power of grace was not just for the Roman believers but it is also can transform our hearts.  We will never deserve God’s grace but we can choose it!  Paul gives us the path to find the strength and hope that only God’s grace can give us!  We pray that the power of this grace will transform your heart as you read Romans 5:1-10.

Romans 5:1-10 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ² through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. ³ Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; ⁴ perseverance, character; and character, hope. ⁵ And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. ⁶ You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷ Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. ⁸ But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. ⁹ Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! ¹⁰ For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!  (NIV)