Faith and Grace – they go hand in hand

What can you think of that goes hand in hand:  potatoes and gravy, peanut butter and jelly, (from Forest Gump) peas and carrots.  But faith and grace?

I keep reading about how faith is not something that we have nor can find, like we cannot earn the grace that we have been given.  Faith is also something that is God granted and you just have to accept.

From gotquestions.org about faith and grace:

Hebrews 11:1 tells us that faith is “being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”

Kinda like the movie, Faith Like Potatoes, “the moving journey of a man who, like his potatoes, grows his faith, unseen until the harvest.” (from Wikipedia)  Gotta see this one yet!

Ephesians 2:8-9 (For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.) makes it clear that faith is a gift from God, not because we deserve it, have earned it, or are worthy to have it. It is not from ourselves; it is from God. It is not obtained by our power or our free will. It is simply given to us by God, along with His grace and mercy, according to His holy plan and purpose, and because of that, He gets all the glory.

2 Corinthians 12:9-10 (New International Version, ©2010) from Biblegateway.com

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.  That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Just enough faith, like the mustard seed faith, or as Gary Bob Scott put it, bb’s of faith.

Todd Agnew has a couple of songs that speak to this:

 “Higher ground”

Lord, lift me up and let me stand
By faith, on Heaven’s table land
A higher plane than I have found
Lord, plant my feet on higher ground
Oh, plant my feet on higher ground

And “Grace Like Rain:”

Hallelujah, grace like rain falls down on me
Hallelujah, all my stains are washed away, washed away

Rich Mullins also addresses it in “Screen door on a Submarine:”Faith comes from God
And every word that He breathes
He lets you take it to your heart
So you can give it hands and feet
It's gotta be active if it's gonna be alive
You gotta put it into practice
Otherwise....

It's about as useless as a screen door
On a submarine


And Jeremy Camp’s “Walk by Faith”, on his album Carried Me: the Worship Project:
Well I will walk by faith
Even when I cannot see
Well because this broken road
Prepares Your will for me

This song was written on the October honeymoon with his first wife, who the following February died of ovarian cancer.  That took faith, and he showed it.  And he was given grace in return.

Max wrote in one of his books, can’t remember which and cannot find the quote, but along the lines of . . . when you see a house, you know there was a house builder.  So, to continue that thought, when you look up at the stars, shouldn’t it follow that there was a star maker?  Just because you cannot see the person that built the house, you have know that someone did.  Faith means following that thought and believing that the stars were made in the same way, you just can’t see it yet.

 So, take a leap of faith, accept the grace, and look to the stars.  Someone beautiful is waiting.