No Spanking and a Cupcake??
I've really been thinking and meditating a lot lately on God's mercy and grace. I think it kind of boiled to the top of my mind a couple of weeks ago when my wife and I were doing our morning Family Bible Class with our girls. We homeschool Emma (5 years old, Kindergarten) and Keira comes along for the ride during our Bible time. Our passage was Ephesians 2:1-7, and we were talking about God's mercy and His grace. Here is the passage: "And you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you previously walked according to the ruler of the atmospheric domain, the spirit now working in the disobedient. We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and by nature we were children under wrath, as the others were also. But God, who is abundant in mercy, because of His great love that He had for us, made us alive together with the Messiah even though we were dead in trespasses. By grace you are saved! He also raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavens, in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might display the immeasurable riches of His grace in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus." (Holman Christian Standard Bible)This passage talks a number of times about God's grace and God's mercy. Now, I don't know about you, but I think it is really important to teach children doctrine. I think it is important to teach them definitions to words in the Bible. But I also think it is important to teach them in a way that they can understand and hopefully remember. Of course, this approach to teaching the Bible requires that we as parents know what the Bible is saying and what it means. So how do you teach God's mercy and grace to a 5 and 3 year old? Well, what is mercy? Mercy is when we don't get something we deserve. Grace is when we get something we don't deserve. In the context of the Bible, when we put our faith in Jesus, God's mercy says we don't get hell, and God's grace says we get heaven. So this is how I explained that to Emma and Keira: "If you are naughty and disobedient, Mommy and Daddy's mercy says, 'No spanking!' and Mommy and Daddy's grace says, 'Here's a cupcake!'" If you think about that, that is exactly how God's mercy and grace work in our lives. For as many times as we have rejected, disobeyed and even rebelled against God, we deserve eternity in hell. But God in His abundant mercy keeps us from hell. And there is no way that you or I deserve heaven! I am too rotten of a guy to ever get to a place like that! That is where God's grace steps in and gives us an eternal home in heaven. Verse 7 talks of God's immeasurable riches of His grace...that means God's grace which not only begins a relationship between man and Almighty God, but also puts our name down on the reservation list for the grandeur of heaven.
Most of the time, we take God's mercy and grace for granted. We don't think about it much. Yet God is constantly dumping His mercy and His grace all over us. We should be forever on our faces in worship and humility on account of God's abundant mercy and immeasurable grace, for it is way better than not getting a spanking and being given a cupcake!
