So many organizations rushed to Haiti to supply free medical help to victims of the earthquake that already established hospitals and clinics have gone bankrupt for lack of paying patients. In Africa free American food is rushed to famine stricken nations only to have farmers, who have labored all year to produce their crops, have the price fall out from under them because of our help. Helping people can be a serious challenge. How do you help someone without harming another or harming the very person you are helping? There are times I see opportunities to help a student pass a class only to realize I have enabled their indolence and have reinforced bad habits. While supplying grace to one situation I have contributed to an attitude that one need not really work hard and learn.
And so it is with grace. How can I steel myself against sin when I know that God will always forgive? I can guess what you are thinking. God knows our hearts and knows we are working the system; therefore, we will not get the grace we need. But there is forgiveness for willful sin. We can deliberately do wrong only to discover the consequences were much worse than we had anticipated and thus enter into a genuine repentant state. Yeah. We can.
The quest to be genuinely Christ-like and to always do the right thing for the right motive is an immense challenge I have been questing for all my life. When I am totally honest with myself I know I need grace, lots of grace. So how can God help us without harming us? In His wisdom He does it very carefully because He understands our hearts are amazingly deceitful – deceiving ourselves.
Written by Roger Bothwell on February 10, 2011
Spring of Life Ministry, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574
Rogerbothwell.org