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If you have indeed become a child of God through God’s saving grace, then the next question is, are you living your life in the reality of God’s grace?
And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work (2 Corinthians 9:8).
How much grace can abound toward you? All! How sufficient can you be? All! How many areas of your life can you have this all-sufficient grace? All! How many good works can you then do? An abundance! An abundance of what? Grace! For what? Every good work.
God pours out all grace on you so you can be sufficient in all the things he puts in your life and therefore you will do many good works—an abundance of good works. God put you here to do good works:
For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do (Ephesians 2:10).
You have to meet Grace before you do the good works. Otherwise, you will keep trying to do the good works on your own, to win God’s favor or feel good about yourself or check off the boxes so you can say, “Look, I did it.” God gives you grace upon grace—all grace, for everything, an abundance—and then you have the privilege and joy of doing the good works, being the person God created you to be, knowing the fulfillment is yours as a child of the king.
But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me (1 Corinthians 15:10).
You do the good works God intended you to do because you’ve met grace, and that grace was not in vain! You work hard to do the good works because God’s grace is with you.
Have you been missing some of God’s grace? Why? Can you put a finger on it? If so, what do you do to turn around and start living in grace?