Working under Grace

God is faithful and by "holy coincidence" a coworker asked me if I am a Christian. He saw in my online work profile that I put the "bible" as my favorite book. He is a believer and invited me to a weekly prayer meeting where I met other brothers in Christ at work. It was really good because I really need the prayer support to handle the challenges at work, to be more productive and to share my faith. Apparently my coworker knows a past chairperson from CCF.

It was interesting when my co-worker was sharing during the prayer meeting that he is struggling with understanding grace, and that he is pushing himself too hard. While another person shared that he is experiencing a lot of grace but that he is in the border of slacking in spending time with God.

Coincidentally, I am reading Prayer - Does It Make Any Difference? by Philip Yancey, and he mentions the paradox of how we need to leave everything to God, but at the same time we need to do our homework in the Christian walk. This is very similar to a famous quote that says "pray as it all depends on God, and work as it all depends on you". I like how our faith is so full of paradoxes!

How do we connect the dots between God's grace and our works in our spiritual growth? It is very clear from Ephesians 2:8-9 that our salvation is given by grace through faith. But if faith does not produce works, then it is dead (James 2:17). It is dangerous in one end to abuse grace and use it as an excuse to not work hard in our spiritual life. At the same time it is also dangerous if someone focuses too much on works to forget grace.

This can be extrapolated to decisions between setting a rigorous schedule for spiritual activities to discipline myself... versus waiting upon spontaneous spiritual goodness prompted by God. I was catching up with a brother, and we're talking about how some leaders abuse the concept of being "Spirit-led" to neglect preparation. Jesus spend a lot of time praying and being alone with the Father so that He can be prepared for the works of His ministry. We concluded that the more we prepare is better because we will allow the Spirit to work more as we understand Him more.

Ultimately, the Spirit is the one who works in us to transform and enable us to do good works for God's purposes because everyone falls short of His glory (Rom. 3:23).  At the same time, we have to work hard in knowing God more and prepare ourselves so that the Spirit can do more in us. It is really His grace that allows us to do works for Him, because God chooses to use us to make His gospel known to others.

"... continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose." - Philippians 2:12-13

In the bible we see characters doing many great feats, and some of us will like to accomplish big things. It starts with being faithful with little things in life, in working in your daily life, and God will add more and more. 

Rock Lee from Naruto is a character who lacks many talents in the ninja arts. He often see other talented ninjas who are considered genius, and he decides to strive to become strong like them. Since he lacks pretty much every skill, he focuses on training extremely hard in one skill that he is able to do (physical power). After intense training, he is able to fight on the same level as those who are considered genius because of his determination to work hard. And he is considered the "genius of hard work". Yeah, let's be genius in training hard for the Lord!

Jacky Chan shared with me this awesome mathematical formula relating faith, work, and salvation: