2nd in series: May 10 Grace I Am
Episode 2 of the Grace I Am series featuring inspirational words that help us believe and experience the myriad of things God believes about us! Each message comes from a page in my newest book “Grace To All” which is available at gracewithpaulgray.com/books/ and Amazon. All proceeds go to help single parents and their children! ~Paul Gray
The purpose of each of these blogs to help you know, experience, and internalize the truth of what The Creator of the Universe says is true about you.
Grace I AM #1
This book and the lives highlighted in it, is all about transformation: being transformed from something that wasn’t working as we had hoped into something that works better than we ever imagined!
The primary scripture author about hope is a man named Paul. Originally his name was Saul, and by his own admission, he was the “worst sinner” on the face of the earth. Grace is all about radical changes! Paul became known as the Apostle of Grace and wrote two thirds of the New Testament!
Paul had the absolute best religious pedigree in a nation that was all about religion. He came from a very religious family, went to private religious schools, studied under the best religious teacher, rose to the top of the religious community, was a leader of religious leaders. He kept all the rules— without fault. And…he was an absolute jerk!
He was a religious maniac who was on a mission to persecute, kill and destroy those who believed differently than he did. He was stubborn, angry, judgmental, mean-spirited, hateful, vindictive, ruthless and his concept of “god” was just like him!
Then, one day, Grace appeared to Saul, showed him the Light of Truth, and totally changed his life…from religious negativity to spiritual positivity. Grace introduced Saul to “The only True God” who was a polar opposite of Saul’s concept of an angry “god,” and surprise…surprise, who had lived IN Saul from before he was born!
Saul (now named Paul) grasped this personal revelation so well that he immediately changed his life’s mission. He went from mean-spirited religious fanatic to sweet-spirited Grace who introduced “The only True God” to people who started forming little Grace Restoration Teams all over the world! Instead of taking credit for this transformation himself, Paul proclaimed The Truth: “By Grace, I Am what I Am!”
The Only True God personally mentored Paul for some thirteen years in the Arabian desert. As a result of God’s revelation to him, Paul began teaching and writing about the greatest spiritual mystery of all time— God has always been in every person. Not separate, not distant, not “out there,” not judging and ready to punish the slightest infraction of the law. Just the opposite! Paul told us “There is a divine mystery—a secret surprise that has been concealed from the world for generations, but now it’s being revealed, unfolded, and manifested for ALL to experience. Living within you is the Christ who floods you with the expectation of glory! This mystery of Christ, embedded within us, becomes a heavenly treasure chest of hope filled with the riches of glory for his people, and God wants everyone to know it!
“Christ is our message! We preach to awaken hearts and bring every person into the full understanding of truth. It has become my inspiration and passion in ministry to labor with a tireless intensity, with his power flowing through me, to present to ALL people the revelation of their being perfect in Jesus Christ.”
Paul also wrote— drawing on his very personal experience and what Christ told him was true about ALL people: “This is the wonderful message that is being spread everywhere, powerfully changing hearts throughout the earth, just like it has changed you! Every believer of this good news bears the fruit of eternal life as they experience the reality of God’s grace.
“And we pray that you would be energized with all his explosive power from the realm of his magnificent glory, filling you with great hope. Your hearts can soar with joyful gratitude when you think of how God made you worthy to receive the glorious inheritance freely given to us by living in the light. He has rescued us completely from the tyrannical rule of darkness and has translated us into the kingdom realm of his beloved Son. For in Christ all our sins are canceled, and we have been set free from our former way of life!”
Like Paul, you are going to become awakened to The Good News about who you really are, always have been, and always will be! You’re going to see and love and embrace the real you…that you’ve maybe never met before!
You, the real you, is amazing! God’s Amazing Grace—Grace personified— grace in person, in you, has made you perfect! You are embarking on the inexhaustible adventure of knowing who God really is and who you really are!
Take a few minutes in your secret place with your primary Teammates, Jesus, Papa, and Grace, and say (out loud if you can) several times slowly, “I am who I am by the Grace of God!”