Gracefilled but not Graceful

My husband and I once won a gold medal. No, really, it’s true…we won the Gold medal in the couples synchronized swimming at the 2008 Camp Bethel Family Olympics.

I am sure that we did not win because of skill or grace or choreography. No, it was our total and complete goofiness that helped us take the gold. We performed our routine to the song, “Trading My Sorrows” by Darrel Evans, using movements we learned in Kid’s Church. We were over-the-top in our delivery. There are videos circulating and I’m sure they’ll eventually end up on You Tube…I won’t be able to hold off my black-mailers much longer!

Now, Alton and I don’t usually partake in such random silliness, in public anyway. But, we feel so much love from the close friends we have made at Family Camp, that we felt it was OK to step out of our comfort zone. We knew it was safe to just loosen up and have fun, knowing that we would still be accepted no matter how goofy we got. I firmly believe that we all need friends like that in our lives. People that we can show our true, unguarded selves to without fear of rejection. More importantly, we also need to find that level of trust in our relationship with God.

As a believer, can I really present my true, messed up, baggage carrying, soiled, sinful self to God and trust that he will still love me back? Thanks to Grace that answer is a firm YES. Check out the following verses from Ephesians 2: 4But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9not by works, so that no one can boast. 10For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

If you have accepted Jesus, you can surely rest easy in the security of His love and Grace. You are His workmanship, His treasure in a Jar of Clay