Pause. Breathe Healing Grace
“I can’t, Lord. It’s just too painful.” That was an actual prayer. Nope, not joking.
Something had happened, well, actually, something was done toward me, that was hurtful. Oh, I had forgiven the person. There was no animosity or anger in my heart. Zip, zilch, zero, however you want to say it. Anger? Gone. This heart cry wasn’t because God had asked me to forgive a painful situation. Nope, this heart cry was in response to God’s request that I choose to move forward in grace.
See…forgiveness was the easy part, and I want you to read that as a testimony to God’s awesomeness, not mine. I’m a human being who is quite mooshy inside and feels lots of feels in a big way. Forgiveness wasn’t something I was just naturally “good at” (are any of us??). But God had worked enough in my heart over years through repetitive practice, training me to forgive the hard things. So forgive? Sure! I’ll forgive and without turning my head, I’ll keep going.
But this time, God didn’t want that. He didn’t want me to forgive and keep going without stopping. He wanted me to stop and learn a lesson. A hard one. One that made forgiving and forgetting look like the easiest thing in the world.
I want you to release grace, He whispered into my heart as He showed me a vision of lavender-colored fine, silky threads being knitted together. I knew what He was asking and what He wanted to do. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Him; it was that I just didn’t think I had it in me to try.
“But God, I’m HURT!” Maybe if I emphasized how much my heart hurt in my prayer, He would understand and change His mind. Oh, He understood (without me needing to emphasize), but He didn’t change His mind. “How? How can I release grace when I am hurting so much?”
Grace heals. It will heal your heart. Trust Me in this. Allow My grace to flow through you, it will heal the hurt.
It made sense. So I tried. I tried going the forgiveness route…again. The problem was, I had already forgiven! There was no more work to do there! The offense, the anger, was gone. All that was left was the hurt, a hurt that I had no idea how to eradicate from my life. Allow My grace to flow through you…
I paused. I changed strategies. Rather than focusing on releasing the anger that had already been evicted, I focused on God’s presence. I focused on receiving His grace. I asked Him for greater revelations of His grace in my mind and in my heart. I asked Him to wreck me in His presence.
It worked! As I focused my mind and heart on His love rather than the situation, He overwhelmed me with His grace, and as I breathed in His grace, I was able to let my life breathe it out to those around me—all of those around me. It was a pivotal shift, a deep work, of learning the power of God’s work in my heart. It was a huge lesson of learning—again—that focusing on the One Who is the solution is always the answer. It was another step of entrusting myself into God’s hands so God can create—or knit—something more powerful and beautiful in me and through me than I could ever begin to imagine on my own.
As I write this, I pray it challenges you (as it challenged me). I pray it challenges you to not just focus on the situation and struggle through the layers of forgiveness, but to shift your focus onto Jesus and His incredible grace. As He reveals His grace to you, just breathe. Breathe it in, breathe it out. Don’t just hold on to it for yourself. Don’t try to control it either. Savor it. Draw strength from it. Find life in it. Let it fill you. Then, just as you received, GIVE. Give to ALL. Give just as Jesus gives. It is His grace, after all.
God, I pray that You would reveal Your grace to us. I pray You would reveal Your heart of love and compassion so that we would see ourselves and others the way You do. I pray You would teach us and show us how to release Your grace freely and lavishly to those in our lives. I pray that living in the revelation of Your grace would become as natural and life-giving as breathing to us. Let us breathe You in and let Your breath of life breathe out of us.