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The Grace to be...

"Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don't see many of the 'brightest and the best' among you, not many of the influential, not many from high-society families. Isn't it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses chose these 'no-bodies' to expose the hollow pretensions of the 'somebody’s'? (1 Corinthians 1:26-27, The Message.)

1:26 You might as well admit it my Brothers, it was not your academic qualifications or your

good looks or social connections that influenced God to identify you in Christ.

1:27 It is almost as if God deliberately handpicked the wacky of this world to embarrass the

wise; the rejects to put to shame the noble.

1:28 The ones with no pedigree of any prominence; the 'nobodies' in society attracted

God's initiative to unveil his blueprint opinion in order to redefine man. Thus he

rendered any other social standard entirely irrelevant and inappropriate.

1:29 Every reason for man's boasting in himself dwindles into insignificance before God.

1:30 Of God's doing are we in Christ. He is both the genesis and genius of our wisdom; a

wisdom that reveals how righteous, sanctified and redeemed we are in Him.

(In God's economy, Christ represents us; what man could never achieve through personal discipline and willpower as taught in every religion, God's faith accomplished in Christ. Of his design are we in Christ; We are associated in oneness with him. Our wisdom is sourced in this union! Also our righteousness and holiness originate from him. Holiness =wholeness and harmony, spirit, soul and body. Our redemption is sanctioned in him. He redeemed our identity, our sanity, our health, our joy, our peace, our innocence and our complete well-being! Knox Translation: "It is from him that we take our origin.")

1:31 This is what Jeremiah meant when he wrote: "Let not the wise man glory in his

wisdom, let not the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches;

but let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD

who practice steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth; for in these things I

delight, says the LORD."  1 Cor. 1:26-31 (Mirror) (Jer.9:23,24) (He is our claim to fame)

It's not who we were when He calls us, it's who we become after He calls us, that matters. Everything we are is 'grace'! On our own merits, we cannot receive this life, for even receiving it is a gift of grace. "The grace to grasp grace is grace" Brennen Manning.

This grace enables us to discover who we really are. It empowers us to live in our true identity-to be our true self and live out of the heart Jesus gave us. 'To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting,'' E.E. Cummings.

Live today in the grace to be who He is making you to be!

In the grip of Papa’s grace to be, Ron Ross