Being Saved by the Power of God and His Grace

Society and politics never change very much. There is a story of a newspaper that had assigned a photographer to get a “hideous picture” of Theodore Roosevelt that would turn people away from him. After seven weeks of following him around, he finally got one. It was used against him, and several months later the photographer was embarrassed to meet Mr. Roosevelt. When he told his story to the president, he responded: “I will not worry. If I look that way only once in seven weeks, I cannot look so bad most of the time.” Yet, thousands of people judged him by the snap of a camera, just one second of his life.

It has always been so that some people exchanged the golden rule for fools-gold. There are those who see the diamonds in a person’s heart, and others who look for any rubbish they can use against another.

We are to show “a more excellent way of living; and that way is Love. A love that keeps no records of wrongs and does not rejoice in evil.

I love the church because it is a body of redeemed sinners, and not the society of the self-righteous. Some of us are sinners being saved, some are sinners searching, and others are sinners led there by an unseen hand that they do not know yet.

I cannot think of anyone of God’s faithful servants in the Bible that did not have one of those “hideous picture” moments. We can all thank God for grace, and may we never stand over another sinner with a stone in our hand. I am convinced that the reasons that ordinary sinners loved to be with Jesus was that, finally, they were with someone who in his own words, “did not come to condemn them,” but was kind and welcoming. The Gospel tells us, “Go and do likewise.”

“How could I boast on anything
I’ve ever seen or done.
How could I dare to claim as mine
The victories God has won.
Where would I be
Had God not brought me
Gently to this place?
I’m here to say I’m nothing but
A sinner saved by grace.”