Grace and power.

When you come to know the Lord, there is something that you hear a lot about: grace.

"God's grace covers a multitude of sins." "His grace is sufficient for me." "Without grace, where would any of us be?"

And so the focus on what has occurred in our lives through the redemptive power of Christ and his ability to take what had happened and apply grace becomes the defining factor for many of people as we recommit our lives to living the life that he has set out for us.

"Without grace, where would I be?"

Recommitting your life to Christ is as easy as a simple prayer.

"I am a sinner. I believe in Jesus Christ and that he died for my sins. I want God to make me new again, and ask him into my heart."

Simple.

(And the angels celebrate and your name is written in the 'Book of Life' and all of heaven rejoices. Yay!)

So now that this cataclysmic shift has occurred in your life, what now? The hangups that you had before are all forgiven and you are offered grace.

But what about this so-called power?

Stephen was a man from the Bible that walked around performing miracles and signs among God's people. The Bible specifically says that he was "full of God's grace and power" (Acts). In the end, the story doesn't end up so well for Stephen, but for the sake of condensing his story, God's grace and power are the focus.

The Bible doesn't tell us a whole lot about Stephen, except that right before he was to be stoned to death, he looked up in the sky and saw Jesus sitting on the right side of God in heaven. Just as the crowd rushed him, he asked God to forgive them and then simply "fell asleep" before he had to feel the pain of death. This guy was full of all kinds of power from God!

Back to the subject, and trying to make it relatable to my own life (and hopefully yours), I am going to stay on that subject of power, simply because it is something that I forgot about in my own life.

When I pray, I ask God for things for my friends, my family, those hurting ones around me. I have never believed that God didn't hear me because to be honest, I feel like he answers me so clearly sometimes that I have a direct prayer line to his throne.

Really,we all do.

Through the gradual change of my life becoming God's again (no, it wasn't right away; it was a progression), I talked about how God was the only one who could have taken my life and made it what it has become today.

His power is real, and I will attest to that. But will I forget that for myself?

I know that I have talked about my past a lot and what God delivered me out of, but I am not speaking about all of that "big stuff" during this post. The "big stuff" is the same to the devil as the small stuff, because no matter how small it seems to us, the devil will find a way to keep it hanging over our heads.

My "small thing" is smoking.

I have tried to quit a hundred times. I have allowed the devil to take my once-redemptive story and turn it into an excusive story in which I remember what I was delivered from, but use excuses to keep God from truly setting me free.

When I was eighteen, I started regularly smoking. During my mid-twenties, around the same time that I gave my life back to Christ progressively, I started looking for a way to validate why it was okay for me to continue to smoke.

"Well, people wouldn't judge me for this small thing if they knew what I had overcome."
 Or, "I'm not breaking any of the ten commandments, so this isn't a sin."

And that, ladies and gentleman, is how satan works.When you find yourself having conversations as to why something is okay, usually those conversations have satan written all over them.

Sure, I can put  these toxic chemicals in my body that are causing so much damage to my lungs, my heart, my everything, but since it's nothing major (and it is legal,after all), God's fine with it.

Not.

My pastor has this cool analogy. He talks about what the cross means to each of us. Many of us as young children or adolescents, accept Jesus into our heart. We acknowledge that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, thus offering us grace for the stupid stuff we did once upon a time.

Grace is awesome.

But does the cross stop there? We are giddy that our name is on the VIP list for heaven, that Saint Pete is the bouncer at a cool club up in the sky and that he's already picked us to go in, and that there's no cover charge because the cost has been covered.

What about after the cross, as in, what now?

Is that it? Is this redefining moment complete at the foot of the cross or is there more?  I think there's more.

The same thing that raised Jesus from the dead on the third day is available to us, now. It is power.

It was his power that delivered me from my past, but also is goes with me. It doesn't stop with the cross; it is the same power that brought a dead "man" back to life and then saved mine. God gives us access to it so we can take it with us as we try to disciple others.

So as I put perspective into my personal battle with my sin, I must reflect on all of the things I have been delivered from, as well as how these "insignificant"things that the devil has grown to significant proportions in my own mind and what God is going to do to bring truth and power into the situation.

My "big sin" once defined me and told me that I had no place in God's heart. Now, my "small sin" will not either. It's something that separated me from God and no matter what size category I place it into, God's power is more than enough.

He brought me back to life once, and that power has not changed.

As I wrap up, I ask you to be in prayer for me. Right now, I haven't smoked for 11 hours and approximately 36 minutes. Just keep me in your prayers because I know this will be hard, but I also know that God's power is there for me.

Love and peace to you all.