Praise God. Thank you, servant of God, for sharing the pulpit. I know many of you here are teachers and ministers yourselves. I just want to encourage you that the Lord in His wisdom plants churches in every context and in every region for a purpose. The universal church, which we are all a part of, is a massive family. God, in His grace and His mercy, has allowed us to have different expressions of this universal church. India Full Gospel Church, you are one such beautiful expression of the universal church of God. It is an expression that goes beyond even our own understanding—existing before our time and ahead of our time until Christ returns. May the Lord continue to bless each one of you as you gather together in your various meetings, whether it is in your homes or in this place. May the Lord richly bless you all.
I know you have already introduced me, so I won't say too much about myself other than to say that we are from Oklahoma. It is a true joy to be back with you here in your previous building. My in-laws, Finny Jacob and Molly, send their warmest hellos to you all. They live with us in Oklahoma, and since they are currently in the U.S., I am certain they will come down to visit you sometime soon.
For today’s meditation, we are going to dive into a lot of scripture, so I ask each of you to track along with me. We are focusing on a very familiar topic, but it is something that we as believers often forget. Although it is familiar, my prayer today—as Sister Archana was saying earlier—is that the Lord will enable us not just to gain head knowledge, but to be truly transformed by the truth and washed by the Word of God.
We need this washing because there is a lot of dirtiness in this world that hits us and sticks to us throughout the week. We come together on Sunday morning, and we leave rejuvenated, excited, and ready to say, "God, I am going to do this for You, or I am going to do that for You". But then we step out into our workplaces, our schools, and our various other contexts, and we quickly realize that we fall short of the decisions we tried to make within ourselves. That is precisely why we gather like this as a fellowship of brothers and sisters in Christ: to hear directly from God’s Word.
Let’s turn together to John chapter 1, verses 14 through 16. This is John's powerful prologue regarding Jesus Christ:
“And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. John testified about Him and cried out, saying, ‘This was He of whom I said, “He who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.”’ For from His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace.” (NASB 1995)
Let us look also at verses 17 and 18:
“For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.” (NASB 1995)
Look at verse 16 again: “For from His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace.” For the time we have ahead of us, we are going to slowly and methodically meditate on this incredible truth: that from the limitless fullness of Jesus comes grace upon grace. That is my title for today: Grace Upon Grace.
The Illusion of Individualism and True Grace
We live in a world—and specifically here in the United States—where we easily get assimilated into a cultural mentality of rugged individualism. We celebrate self-made people who pull themselves up by their bootstraps. We applaud those who come from absolutely nothing, work hard, and rise to the top through sheer self-determination and self-confidence. We love to watch someone face negativity, find a positive angle, work tirelessly, and reach a high level of success. This shapes the "happily ever after" narratives we tell one another and read to our children. We like to think that even if there are bad days, we can step into good days purely through self-realization and time spent working alone.
This is the secular narrative we have to walk in every day. That is why it is so important that in the church, we intentionally take time to meditate upon the deep truths of the gospel. We gather here and praise God for everything He has done. But the moment we walk out those doors, we face a world that insists you must work hard to earn your success and gain your acceptance.
Then, this biblical word enters our lives: grace. Unfortunately, there is a massive amount of misunderstanding surrounding this term. On one end, if you speak to those who do not know Christ, they might define grace simply as physical beauty, elegance, or social formality.
The best example I can think of—which is a bit humorous—is a dog show. The dog gets perfectly groomed, looks spectacular, and does a little walk or run around the ring. You will hear the commentators quietly say into their microphones, "What grace, what grace! Look at how this dog prances and struts along!" Now, the dog handler running behind doesn't usually show much grace at all because they are frantically chasing the animal, but they describe the dog using the word grace.
Let me be clear: this is absolutely not the grace I want to talk about today. In the Christian life, biblical grace is not about physical posture, how we stand, how we talk, or our dining manners. That is just beauty, manners, and formality. What scripture is talking about is something infinitely deeper and wholly transforming. A proper understanding of biblical grace changes the entire equation of how we live and how we serve. It completely transforms how we treat other people and what we say to them. Ultimately, a true understanding of grace fundamentally changes our perspective on suffering.
Two Dimensions of Grace: Common and Special
In Christianity, we see two distinct operations of grace. The first is common grace, which God gives freely to absolutely everyone. As the scriptures declare, God causes His sun to rise and shine on the evil and the good alike. God is so profoundly gracious that He demonstrates patience and mercy to the wicked and the evil just as much as He does to those doing good.
I actually believe those of you living in this region have been granted a little bit of extra common grace! When you step outside, you see a spectacular natural beauty that we simply do not have back in Oklahoma. You can drive out an hour and be right at the beach, looking at the trees, or going on nature walks. We are quite jealous of that back home! Whether a person believes in God or not, everyone here enjoys this extra common grace.
However, today I want to focus intently on the second kind: special grace. This is the specific grace given exclusively to those who have faith in Jesus Christ. As we read in John chapter 1, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth, and from His fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. Jesus is entirely full of grace, and He has poured it directly into our lives.
For the next several minutes, we are going to walk through four different expressions of this grace. I have framed these using four words starting with the letter S so that each of us can easily remember them when we leave this place. This will help us understand what we have already received and what we will continue to receive until we see Jesus face to face. These are the four S's: Grace in Salvation, Grace in Suffering, Grace in Service, and Grace in Scripture.
1. Grace in Salvation
We are going to look at a lot of scripture passages now, and I will read them for us. Let’s look first at grace in salvation. As your minister already highlighted during the opening prayer, this is a core emphasis of this church, so I can go through it a bit quicker, but it remains a vital reminder for us all.
A passage we know exceptionally well is Ephesians chapter 2, verses 4 through 9. Scripture reminds us that because of His great love for us—and make no mistake, His abundant love is the exact source from which this grace flows—God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were completely dead in our transgressions. Paul emphasizes: “it is by grace you have been saved.” God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus. Stop and think about that incredible privilege: you were completely dead in your transgressions, and now He has raised you and seated you in the heavenly realms! That is absolute, pure grace.
Why did He do this? He did it so that in the coming ages He might display the incomparable, surpassing riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. Then we see those foundational words in Ephesians 2:8-9:
“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.” (NASB 1995)
This is the grace by which we are saved, accessed through faith. Sometimes a subtle mentality creeps into our hearts where we think we can boast about our faith. We might think, "I chose the faith on my own," or "I went through so many tribulations to maintain this faith." But what is faith, essentially? Faith is mere trust. If I say, "I trust my doctor, I trust this person, or I trust this bridge," do I take personal credit for that trust? No, we don't assign personal credit or boast about trusting a bridge. Yet, in our spiritual lives, we somehow still try to boast.
We desperately need to remind ourselves of exactly where we were. We were dead in our transgressions and sins. We were utterly lost and completely outside the kingdom of God. As Stebby was praying beautifully at the start of our service, we were trapped in the kingdom of darkness. But a total transfer occurred. Out of the heart and mind of God, driven by His immense love, He poured out His grace so that those who had no claim, no spiritual family, those who were alienated and orphaned, could be brought directly into the family of God.
Grace is a gift, but it is not just a simple, ordinary gift. It is a gift that goes far beyond anything we could ever earn. Grace found us when we least deserved it. Grace found you and me when we were nowhere close to wanting or seeking it. Grace found us while we were still sinners. It reached us when we were weak, helpless, empty-handed, and desperate—when we thought our lives were over and completely devoid of meaning or worth. Grace found us.
Brothers and sisters, whether you are a recent believer who has newly come to the faith, or you have walked in the faith for many decades, I ask you to examine your heart today. Has any part of your heart quietly taken hold of the prideful thought that you are part of this church because you earned your place, or because you made it here on your own strength?
When we study salvation in the scriptures, we see that it spans three distinct tenses or phases: past, present, and future.
Justification (Past Tense): The moment we placed our trust in Jesus Christ for our salvation, we were saved and declared righteous, clothed entirely in Christ.
Sanctification (Present Tense): We are being saved. Even though we are legally clothed in His righteousness, we are actively working out our salvation daily by the power of the Holy Spirit, putting remaining unrighteousness to death and claiming victory over it.
Glorification (Future Tense): We look forward to the day when our salvation will be made completely full and we will be glorified to be exactly as He is. That final phase is also pure grace—the grace of glorification.
Because salvation encompasses the past, present, and future, we can never treat faith as a one-time past decision. The scriptures explicitly warn us that we must endure. There must be an endurance in our faith. We have to maintain our absolute trust to the very end, because this world will constantly present opportunities to lead us astray and cause us to make a shipwreck of our faith.
Eventually, our faith will become sight. We will no longer need faith when we see Him face to face. You might have had an incredibly difficult journey coming to the faith, or maybe your initial decision was smooth but life has hit you hard since then, leaving you wondering, "Can I even maintain this faith when it brings so many challenges?" Yet, even through the heaviest trials, you still love Him and trust Him, even though you cannot physically see Him.
The Apostle Peter marveled at this exact reality. Peter had walked with Jesus and seen Him face to face, but he wrote to a suffering community of believers who had never seen Jesus physically. He looked at their lives and marveled, saying, "You possess the exact same faith, trust, and love that I have, even though you do not see Him." That is what salvation is all about: the supernatural grace God gives us to clearly see Him despite living in a fallen world full of darkness and suffering.
Before moving to my second point, I want to highlight a passage that became deeply profound to me because of my wife Benita Shalu’s grandfather. Before he passed away, one of his absolute final wishes was for a specific scripture reference to be written on a piece of cloth and placed directly over his body in his casket. That verse was Titus chapter 2, verses 11 through 13:
“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus…” (NASB 1995)
This single passage perfectly captures justification, sanctification, and glorification. It describes grace not merely as an abstract theological concept, but as a person: Jesus Christ has appeared and brought salvation. And notice that this grace does not just alter our legal status before God; it provides a teaching grace. It actively instructs us to say "no" to ungodliness.
I say this to remind myself just as much as I say it to you: through His grace, God has given you the actual power to say "no". We are not helpless victims. We live in a world overflowing with intense pressure, darkness, temptation, and trials, but because God’s grace has saved you, He has also fully equipped you with the grace to say "no" to anything that violates His Word. If you have successfully said no to things that would have dragged you down a path of destruction and ungodliness, take comfort in knowing that was the secure grace of God actively at work within you.
2. Grace in Suffering
Our second point is grace in suffering. Suffering is an incredibly uncomfortable topic to discuss, largely because of the worldly narrative that has heavily saturated the modern church. We have cultivated an expectation that following Jesus means a permanent "happily ever after" on this earth. We love testimonies that say, "My life was terrible, then I met Jesus, and now everything is perfect and easy."
Sometimes we even base our entire evangelism on this framework, asking people, "I found so much peace, joy, and fulfillment when I came to Jesus; don't you want that too?" But if you say that to a wealthy, successful person who feels entirely satisfied and has built a great life without God, that message will go completely over their head. They will simply look at you and say, "I am genuinely glad you found that fulfillment, but I am doing great where I am. I don't need your Jesus."
We must thoroughly examine and rethink the foundation of our message. The core of our message must be the gospel itself, because the gospel is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes. We must place our absolute trust in the exact same message the original apostles preached—the life, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. In some places, thousands accepted their message; in other places, they were violently kicked out of town. But regardless of the immediate results, they trusted the intrinsic power of the gospel.
The true gospel message does not promise a fairy-tale "happily ever after" on this earth right now. We are currently groaning in a world corrupted by sin, decay, and brokenness. Our ultimate "happily ever after" belongs to the day when Christ returns in glory with His saints, renews the world, and lifts us into the new heavens and the new earth.
Let us look at the Apostle Paul’s personal experience in 2 Corinthians chapter 12, verses 2 through 10. Paul begins by speaking of himself in the third person, describing a man who was caught up to the third heaven and heard things that cannot be humanly uttered. But then, he shifts to a raw, first-person narrative to describe his intense suffering:
“…Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me—to keep me from exalting myself! Concerning this I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. And He has said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.’ Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.” (NASB 1995)
Think deeply about this context. Paul was the greatest evangelist the world has ever known, the apostle to the Gentiles, and the writer of over a dozen New Testament books. Yet, to explicitly keep him from becoming prideful or conceited due to the staggering revelations he received, a painful thorn in the flesh—a literal messenger of Satan—was permitted to relentlessly harass and torment him. He went to Jesus and begged three distinct times for it to be removed, and Jesus responded, “My grace is sufficient for you.”
Jesus explicitly states that His divine power is made perfect in our human weakness. The way His power manifests in us gives absolutely no glory to us; it ensures that all the glory goes to Him alone. The more you openly boast about your weaknesses, your hardships, and the spaces where you feel harassed or empty, the more the magnificent grace of God is revealed to the world. It is a sufficient grace. It is completely enough.
Now, I am not fully qualified to explain the complex cosmic purpose behind all human suffering. But I can tell you with absolute certainty from my own life what suffering accomplishes: it keeps us entirely humble. And if there is an infallible formula for receiving God's grace, it is humility. First Peter chapter 5, verse 5 clearly states: “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
Look directly into your own heart today. How many times have we personally blocked the flow of God's grace in our lives because we took our eyes off Jesus, looked at ourselves, and began swelling with pride over our own accomplishments or who we think we are? Experiencing "grace upon grace" requires growing in deep, authentic humility. If you truly understand the sublime beauty of grace, you will actively ask God for more of it. In His perfect wisdom, He will guide you through situations that break your pride and keep you completely humble before Him so that He can pour more of Himself into you.
The Sympathetic High Priest and Unending Grace
The absolute best visual illustration of this unending grace is the ocean waves. Those of you who live near the coast know exactly what this looks like. Imagine standing right on the shoreline, watching the waves continuously and relentlessly crash over your feet. It never stops. You stand there knowing that there is an entirely limitless, inexhaustible supply of water rushing toward you. That is the exact image of how God pours His grace into our lives—wave after wave of grace upon grace.
Let’s anchor our hearts in Hebrews chapter 4, verses 14 through 16:
“Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (NASB 1995)
Jesus is our great High Priest and our eternal Intercessor who has passed through the heavens. The author of Hebrews uses this truth to exhort us to hold fast to our confession and endure in our faith to the very end. Our High Priest is not a distant, blind, unfeeling deity like the idols this world worships. He is Almighty God who stepped into human flesh, took the massive weight of human sin upon Himself, and completely satisfied the righteous wrath of God on the cross. He died, rose victoriously from the grave, ascended into heaven, and is seated in absolute authority at the right hand of the Father, living forever.
Because of this, He is fully able to sympathize with your weaknesses. Have you ever looked at the painful circumstances of your life, cried out in tears, and asked, "God, where are You? Do You even understand the depth of what I am going through right now?" Jesus can look directly at you without batting an eye and say, "Yes, I completely sympathize with your weakness." For those of you who are desperately wrestling with temptation and think, "Lord, it was easy for You; You don't know how heavy this pressure is," He reminds you, "No, I have been tempted in every single respect just as you are, yet I remained without sin."
Therefore, we can approach His throne with bold confidence. He calls the seat of His cosmic power a throne of grace. We can run to it with boldness, knowing that the God of heaven understands our trials in a far deeper way than we can even comprehend ourselves. Every single temptation you face is understood by the One who endured the ultimate temptation and conquered it.
I am not quite finished with my message, but I feel strongly that we need to pause right here. If this reality of the throne of grace and the intercession of Jesus Christ is not actively engaging your heart this morning, it absolutely should right now by the power of the Holy Spirit. Let us close our eyes for a moment and fix our spiritual gaze on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. For the joy set before Him, He endured the agony of the cross, despised its shame, and is now seated in power and majesty at the right hand of the throne of God. He is reigning right now, waiting until every single enemy, including death itself, is placed under His feet.
This is the One we worship. This is the One we pray to. This is the exact reason we are gathered together today. We are gathered in the matchless name of Jesus, our sympathetic High Priest who promises to give us fresh mercy and sufficient grace in our exact time of need. My deepest prayer for you this morning is that even if you lose sight of every other human being in your life, do not lose sight of who Jesus is. Human beings will inevitably disappoint you, and human beings will hurt you, but Jesus never, ever will.
Remember the profound words of Robert Murray McCheyne: "If I could hear Jesus praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million enemies. Yet distance makes no difference. He is praying for me." Think about the sheer depth of Christ's active intercession for you. If you want to see a clear picture of what this looks like, look at the life of Peter. Peter was boasting in his own strength, saying, "Lord, everyone else might deny You, but I will never deny You! It's never going to happen!"
Jesus looked at him and said, "Peter, you are going to deny Me three times tonight. Satan has explicitly demanded to sift you like wheat to destroy you completely. But I have prayed for you, Peter, that your faith will not fail." Jesus was so utterly confident in the power of His own intercession that He added, "When once you have turned back and been restored, go and strengthen your brothers." He knew Peter would return because He had prayed for him. It is the deeply loving, protective heart of Jesus to pray that your faith will not fail, because He invested His very blood and life for you.
When you truly realize that Jesus is praying for you, it completely casts out fear. If God is for us, who can possibly stand against us? A million enemies can stack up against me, the entire world can oppose me, but if my Jesus is for me, and if my Jesus is actively interceding for me at the right hand of the Father, who can conquer me? And even if challenges break through into your life, you can rest assured that they have not bypassed the sovereignty of your God. If He has allowed it, it is never meaningless, and it is never purposeless. There is a distinct divine purpose behind it.
Cling to the words of 1 Peter chapter 5, verse 10:
“After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you.” (NASB 1995)
Your suffering in this life is very brief, light, and momentary. But the God of all grace has called you to an eternity of glory. Even when you feel like your feet are slipping and you are about to fall, He is actively holding you and keeping your footing secure. Hold on, church, it is just for a little while!
3. Grace in Service
Our third point is grace in service. Romans chapter 12, 1 Corinthians chapter 15, and 1 Peter chapter 4 teach us a powerful lesson about what God does for those He has saved and sustained by His grace. God does not intend for us to merely absorb or consume His blessings. He pours out supernatural gifts of grace into the body of Christ so that we will actively use them to serve one another. Romans 12:6 states: “Since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, each of us is to exercise them accordingly…” Every single person sitting in this room has been handed a specific proportion of God's grace to use.
Many of us fall victim to a consumer mentality where we just want to sit back, absorb resources, and consume sermons without ever giving back. But God gave you your gifts to be spent. And here is the beautiful paradox of grace: the more you spend it, the more He supplies. You might feel physically exhausted or mentally drained from pouring yourself out, but as you empty yourself for others, He faithfully pours more grace back into you.
Look at 1 Peter chapter 4, verse 10:
“As each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.” (NASB 1995)
We serve one another so that in all things God may be fully glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belongs all glory and dominion forever and ever. Ephesians similarly reminds us that grace was given to each one of us according to the specific measure of Christ's gift. When Jesus ascended on high, He led a host of captives and gave varied spiritual gifts to the church—providing apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers. These leadership gifts and callings do not operate because someone has a magnetic natural personality or an innate human talent. They function strictly because of the absolute, unmerited grace of God placed upon them.
Now, how do we balance intense hard work with the reality of grace? How do I labor with everything in me while acknowledging that everything is a free gift? Paul masterfully walks this tightrope in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verses 9 and 10:
“For I am the least of the apostles, who am not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored even more humbly than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me.” (NASB 1995)
Paul lived with a deep sense of his own unworthiness. He remembered with grief that he had stood by and approved while Stephen was brutally stoned to death. He felt completely unfit to even be called an apostle or to tell people how to believe in Christ because of his past as a violent persecutor of the church. Yet he declares, "By the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain."
When I look at Paul's life, it challenges me deeply: can we live in such a way that we resolve to pour out our lives as a completely spent drink offering before God, ensuring that the grace He has given us is never in vain? Can we lay down our lives in such profound thankfulness and gratitude that not a single ounce of God's grace toward us is wasted?
Paul states, "On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them." This is where hard work and divine grace beautifully collide. He labored to the point of absolute physical exhaustion, yet he maintained the radical humility to say, "It wasn't actually me working; it was the grace of God operating and powering within me."
This is the ultimate example of true humility and self-forgetfulness that God wants to produce in us. When we look back and realize, "I was completely dead in my transgressions and sins, and I was justly condemned. But when I came to the Lord, He absolutely transformed everything about my life—He changed the way I think, He changed what I value, and He redefined my identity by His grace," we become fully surrendered to His service. Whatever He wants to do through me, I will do it with all my might to love others and serve His church. I can pour myself out completely without fear of running dry, because I know that the more I pour out, the more grace will be supplied.
When we appeal to Jesus Christ, our sympathetic High Priest, He will continually pour out His sufficient grace in our exact hour of need. We will never be left lacking, and He will keep us deeply content in every circumstance.
4. Grace in Scripture
Our final point is grace in scripture. If you read carefully through the New Testament letters, you will notice a fascinating, intentional pattern: at least fifteen of the New Testament books explicitly begin and end with the word grace. They open with apostolic greetings like "Grace to you and peace," and they close with powerful benedictions like "Grace be with you."
I want to remind you that the written Word of God preserved in these letters is a literal vehicle of divine grace. It was granted first to the early church audience and has been meticulously passed down generation after generation to us today. Every single time you open the Bible and read it, grace is being actively communicated to your soul. When we finish reading and meditating on these pages, we walk away with a greater, transforming knowledge of who Jesus is.
The authors of scripture desired that the grace received through the word would abide with the readers. In fact, the very final sentence of the entire Bible in Revelation chapter 22, verse 21 seals the entire scriptural narrative with this exact theme: “The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. Amen.”
Let me leave you today with this beautiful apostolic blessing found in 2 Peter chapter 3, verse 18:
“…but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.” (NASB 1995)
Let us bow our heads and pray together.
Closing Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You so deeply for this time You have granted us in Your presence today. Father, help us to truly remember where we once were, and help us to realize every single day that we are entirely products of Your unmerited grace. Open our eyes to see the stunning, majestic beauty of Your grace shining in the face of Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Lord, our minds are sometimes so hard and dull, and it is incredibly difficult for us to fully comprehend the immense depths of Your grace. But we trust that Your Holy Spirit will open these scriptures to our hearts in a far greater magnitude in the days ahead, so that we would walk this earth fully recognizing that we are vessels of Your mercy and Your grace. We once deserved to be vessels of Your wrath, but by Your cross, You have made us vessels of Your grace. Therefore, pour out Your grace in an even greater measure in our lives, O God.
Lord, if there is any part of our hearts today that proudly thinks we have made it on our own, or that we don't need anything because we are good in ourselves, I pray a very dangerous prayer this morning: tear down every self-reliant structure, every haystack, and anything we have foolishly built up by our own power and might. Tear it down, O Lord, so that You can build us back up again by Your grace alone.
I pray that by Your grace, as this congregation goes out into their workplaces, into their schools, and into their local communities this week, people will look at them through a completely different lens. Help people to see a distinct grace upon them that is clearly not of themselves—an otherworldly grace that comes from another place entirely. Let it be vividly manifest in their daily conversations, in their service, in their financial giving, and in their deep selflessness. I pray that You will grant them this special, transforming grace.
Finally, Lord, I pray for the teachers, leaders, and servants of God in this congregation. Pour out a special, surpassing grace upon Your servants. Let it not be because they have achieved great things by human standards, but because they continually come before You at the throne of grace—asking, asking, and asking for more and more of Your grace. Please plant Your divine presence here and grant them a passing, sufficient grace to victoriously accomplish every single task You have called them to do. We give You all the praise, all the glory, and all the honor. In the matchless and holy name of Jesus we pray, Amen.