Most would agree that a grace mindset leads to choices within God’s unconditional love and kindness pools to support ourselves and others. But what happens when grace directs our lives?
Good news is that grace transforms life into tangible joy and deep delight. We ditch stress in favor of the kind of calm trust that sees inner healing and enjoys growth on a regular basis. We tend to see God pretty much in every key event of our lives. We understand how nothing that comes our way is accidental. We keep calm, and look for possibilities to resolve stubborn problems. We risk running with more of our dreams and we learn to listen to and access more of God’s transformational courage. We live our best lives and help others to enjoy life more too.
Let’s say we walk into the workplace staff room where an especially introverted young man sits alone at one table while five or six fellow employees laugh and jest at another. That initial instinct to follow the fun and laughter, as well as gestures from colleagues to join in, likely woos us to the lively table at first. But then God’s grace guides us to choose agape love and kindness that flow from deep within heaven’s heart to deep within ours. We may remember Joshua’s words in 24:15 which said, “Choose ye this day whom you will serve. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
Initially, we may feel led to jump into the fun, and then we feel God’s gentle nudge to show us that lonely staff member at the opposite side of the room. We see miserable expressions on his face that remind us how he knows very few employees. Suddenly we begin to feel his uncomfortable insecurity. God’s grace draws us to the shy person in need, and helps us to bring together this newcomer and regular employees in a caring way that both sides feel welcomed.
It’s as if grace hands us an inner microphone that amplifies sweeter sounds from agape love’s perspective. It’s a bit like a divine computer chip with an agape amplifier that converts all incoming sounds into kinder and empathetic codes. Grace analyzes the value and worth of all around us and adjusts the sounds we hear based on our hearing loss, listening needs and the level of need that emerges around us. These grace mindset signals are amplified with practice and then converted back into sound waves by God’s unconditional love for all creation and delivered back to our ears through inner speakers or receivers to help us hear insights from God’s viewpoint.
Each time we choose to listen to grace’s goodness, we find it easier to move past anger, overlook resentment, or let go of fear that another person would choose to do us harm. That desire to either vilify another or to write them off in order to get them back gets exchanged for our newer role of humility that hits pause to act from within grace’s effervescent courage and generosity. We may even risk our reputation to defend a scapegoat at times, or to introduce change that includes people who differ as a way to facilitate God’s grace as alive and well in our midst.
It usually starts with quiet time and inner space to rest, recreate and reflect! Just by listening carefully to grace within safer spaces, we rehearse new steps we may take. Grace will jettison us toward opportunities to practice inner kindness or serve care and support to others from within pools of God’s endless rich blessings and benefits for all our lives.