Hold On! Part 3 - 1 Peter 4:10-11

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<<Hold On! Part 2

"Based on the gift each one has received, use it to serve others, as good managers of the varied grace of God." If anyone speaks, it should be as one who speaks God's words; if anyone serves, it should be from the strength God provides, so that God may be gloried through Jesus Christ in everything."

In Part 1 of this SBM mini-series on grace, we learned from the Hebrews writer in Chapter 12 that God's redemptive plan is for us to enter into fellowship with Him through a relationship or covenant based on receiving God's grace through Christ. God didn't intend to institute a permanent ritual sacrificial system under Old Testament law.

The Hebrews writer admonished us to actively hold on to God's grace when we receive it and allow it to become the source of our strength for serving God and His Kingdom.

God's sovereignty can best exert its rule and reign over our lives when Christ is manifested in our lives as a result of holding on to the grace God has shown us.

While the Hebrews writer told us to hold on to grace to see us through all the circumstances of life, Peter says in these verses that we are also the managers of God's grace that rules over our own lives.

So God gives us grace but it is our duty to manage it!

God delegates a portion of His grace to each of our lives. Sometimes we call the grace God has designated to us "spiritual gifts."

While the Hebrews writer was speaking of the gift of God's grace in its totality, Peter is speaking of the varied grace, the giftings, the spiritual gifts, with which God's grace endows each of us.

Peter formulated two general categories of spiritual gifts: speaking and service.

Although these are distinct giftings, notice that they both serve a common purpose--to glorify God.

With both speaking and serving, God is the source of strength for the practice of the gift so that Christ can be manifested and God can be glorified in our lives.

So this is the life cycle of Gods grace as it is applied to our lives:
     God gives us grace. ->
          We hold on to God's grace as the source of strength for manifesting Christ in our lives. ->
                Through the effective operation of God's grace in our lives, we live/give glory to God. ->

And God gives us more grace!

God gives us grace. We give God glory.

In other words, God gives us gifts and we say thank-you! Is that great or what?

And that's the circle of life that God intended through the dispensation of His grace.

"For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God's gift" (Ephesians 2:8).