Grace that Is Still Amazing

The song has been out for more than a decade. Yet after a recent worship gathering where two musicians sang “Your Grace Still Amazes Me,” it made me list of favorites (again).

It’s not that I hadn’t heard the song before. However, like so many it had faded into the recesses of memory, displaced by other tunes and the events of life.

Thanks to modern technology, I can revisit it often by going to YouTube. There, a fascinating collage of lyrics and illustrations accompany the singing of Phillips Craig and Dean.

Judging by the nearly 2.4 million views as of early January, lots of other people are doing the same thing.

A Key Decision

Thirty-five-plus years after deciding to follow Christ, it is sometimes easy to get caught up in the crush of day-to-day life.

That can easily rob my joy and make me forget how empty, forlorn, and hopeless life looked prior to this most crucial of decisions.

From that one decision flowed countless others.

I credit God for the good ones and accept blame for the bad ones, too often made in the heat of emotion or self-centered reasoning.

Yet, despite my mistakes, my faltering faith when the pressure is on, or the complaints I aired when I didn’t understand what the Lord was doing, His grace still amazes me.

It amazed me when I confessed how badly I had mismanaged my life.

It amazed me when I considered the seemingly unrelated, months-long series of events that all led to becoming one of those crazy believers I used to scoff at.

It amazed me when I saw how many times He came through when it looked like hope was lost, or He had abandoned us, or there was no way out of our dilemma.

No Coincidences

That song performed recently served to remind me of just how amazing God has been, and for so long.

To name just a few highlights:

• When we decided to move to Colorado in 1981, we put our house on the market at a time when real estate took an average of four-to-six months to sell. It sold in two weeks.
• We found the first house we rented after I saw a classified ad in The Denver Post, laughed and said, “We can’t afford that. I think I’ll call the number.” Turned out the owner was willing to rent for less than advertised because the higher figure was a lease-to-buy option.
• Because we were in that house, we drove by the church that had its service times listed and decided to go there the next day.
• At that church, we were blown away by the people’s friendliness, and the pastor’s enthusiasm and powerful messages.
• We also met the deacon who had been a motorcycle rider and drug dealer before he accepted Christ. He played a key role in my conversion.
• Years later, we had moved back to West Virginia. When my wife said she wanted to enroll in seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, I shocked her with my willingness to relocate.
• When we made that move, we didn’t have the money until a month before our departure date.
• Because we lived in Louisville, I decided to use the better airline connections to attend a major Christian writers conference in California.
• There, I met three editors who agreed to look at a manuscript I had been working on for more than two years. Eighteen months later, the first commercially published book I coauthored was available nationwide.

I could go on and on. Suffice it to say: His grace still amazes me.