This Is Enabling Grace // S03E02 (Episode 30)

Misunderstanding grace can become a stumbling block. Some see it as a license to sin and withhold it, others don’t give it enough credit and fail to serve up loving truth when things go south. This week, we’re talking about enabling grace, the kind that’s bold enough to forgive—and encourage us to grow.

Verses from This Is Enabling Grace

Ephesians 2:8, Romans 5:2, Romans 3:24, Ephesians 1:6, Hebrews 4:16, Exodus 33:17, Proverbs 10:22, Ephesians 2:7, Psalms 44:3-8, 2 Corinthians 13:14, 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17, 2 Timothy 2:1, 1 Corinthians 15:10, Romans 5:20, 1 Timothy 1:14, 2 Corinthians 9:15, 1 Corinthians 15:10, Romans 12:6, Ephesians 3, 2:7, 4:7, 1 Peter 4:10, Proverbs 12:1, Proverbs 15:32, Galatians 6:1, James 1:19, Titus 2:11-14, Hebrews 12:11, 2 Timothy 3:16

Quotes from This Is Enabling Grace

I can go to the throne of grace in my time of need. This throne of grace that He has is my strength.

Shea Watson, The Pantry Podcast, This Is Enabling Grace

It’s very straightforward that once you are in Christ, there is abundant proof that listening to reproof is going to help you improve.

Michelle Watson, The Pantry Podcast, This Is Enabling Grace

And so we have to start seeing that correction is a component of grace and it’s something that shows our love.

Michelle Watson, The Pantry Podcast, This Is Enabling Grace

Annotated Transcript

Shea: Hello?

Michelle: Hi.

Shea: Hey, this episode is epic. It’s been in the works

Michelle: For longer than the podcast’s existed.

Shea: This has been baking for a long time—years. This episode is called, “This is Enabling Grace.” I love the grace that God gives us. That, every day, I walk in His grace.

Michelle: It’s a blessing to be in a church that’s called Greater Grace. We always make a joke: whatever you name your church is what you focus on. And boy, does our church focus on grace. And I remember when I was very new to the church, I even said to somebody, you know, we can talk about something else; I already kind of get grace, you know? I get grace. We hear about grace all the time. Like, we can talk about some other topic. What’s funny is, I realize grace is an overarching, multifaceted concept. I didn’t have it all figured out. We’re still unpacking it, enjoying all it has to offer. But one thing that I did notice—the reason we’re having this episode is because—as we’ve experienced different nuances of the Christian community, whether it be online, groups and communities in person, groups, ministries within groups, fellow believers in other countries…we have so many different, wonderful experiences with the body of Christ at large.

And one thing I started to notice, and maybe it’s because we come from a church that talks about grace so much, dives into it so much, I noticed there was a dual trend: A lot of people were looking at grace like it’s a license to sin and we need to tread softly with grace, almost flipped in the other direction and leaned heavily in the legalism or punishment. Lots of focus on that. If you do this, you can’t do this. If you do this, you can do this, et cetera. But then on the other side, a lot of people so scared to offend or to discourage or to chase someone away that there was this very quick slap of, “it’s completely okay! Don’t even worry about it,” without any correction, without any repercussion. What I saw with that is the repetition of those actions that required the grace in the first place is on one end.

They didn’t seem to really understand the beauty of it. And then on the other side, they were robbing the person that did the thing needing the grace, as well as themselves, of this amazing moment of potential correction, where someone has the opportunity to grow in love. Because love isn’t just saying, “it’s okay.” But as we know now, raising a very little tot, but we already are like, yeah, it’s okay. You literally spilled the beans all over the kitchen. Now we’re going to pick them up, not, “Okay, go over here and I’ll just do it and tomorrow spill the beans again.” It’s—there’s—there’s more.

Shea: Which is beautiful. God, He gives us enabling slash empowering grace. And I think before we even go farther in this, we have to unpack grace, right? You have to look at Grace a little bit. We have to sit down and just kind of bring out the beauty of grace. I think that, you know, some people do just stop at, “Well, He gives me grace when I said that.”

Well, when I look at that, I look at this, like, this grace. Unmerited favor, Lewis Sperry Chafer has a beautiful thought on this.

He says, “under grace, God does not treat men as they deserve, but He treats them in infinite grace without reference to their desert.”

I like that. I like that. I like, cause I mean, we need deserts. So we walk through…how many changes do we have in our lives? When we come to Christ, how much work is being done, you know, in us, you know, for us, actually?

And I just love that. And so when we look at the grace, there’s like three folds in its operations.

You have salvation by grace, which is Ephesians 2:8:
“For by grace, you have been saved through faith and this is not of your own doing it is the gift of God.”

Number two, safekeeping through grace, Romans 5:2,
“Because of our faith, crisis brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand and we confidently enjoy. We look forward to sharing God’s glory.”

Number three, grace provides a rule of a life for the saved rules of conduct. I love this. Grace is a gift. Think of a souffle, right? I’ve never had a successful souffle. I put it in the oven. I go to bake it, man, that thing falls, you know? And, and, and the pantry we were looking at, you know, these staples, right? My souffles always fall, but I’m no longer in this idea of defeat. When my souffle falls, my sins come out or I sin. I have a God who has given me unmerited favor. So on that note, right, ’cause I want to unpack this. I don’t want to just keep it there because there’s so many things that grace does for us, right? We have to look at the safekeeping through grace. We have to look at this because it doesn’t stop at just being saved.

• Grace justifies us before God, Romans 3:24, Ephesians 1:6
• Gives us access to communicate and fellowship with God, Ephesians 1:6, Hebrews 4:16
• Is a new relationship of intimacy with God, Exodus 33:17
• Grants us immeasurable spiritual riches, Proverbs 10:22, Ephesians 2:7
• Helps us in our every need, Hebrews 4:16
• The reason behind our every deliverance, Psalms 44:3-8, Hebrews 4:16
• Preserves us, comforts, encourages and strengthens. 2 Corinthians 13:14, 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17, 2 Timothy 2:1
• Is in our ministry, 1 Corinthians 15:10
• Greater than our sin, Romans 5:20
• Is abundant grace, 1 Timothy 1:14
• Too wonderful for words, 2 Corinthians 9:15

Woo hoo. That’s a lot of verses, but look, go back, study them, read them, understand. Right?

Michelle: They’ll be in the show notes.

Shea: Because let me tell you something. These are important to understand for where we’re going. We have to understand these things, you know. Kenya I’m on the other side, right? I get to see a lot of things that come out of Kenya. Boy, you bring up grace and it’s like…the room gets quiet or they all leave because they’re afraid that when we do that or when they do that or when they allow grace to be a focal point that like, “Yeah, you’re good. You know, you’re forgiven, man. This is unmerited, right?” They’re afraid that people are gonna walk away.

Michelle: Funny on both sides. People are doing this because they’re afraid people are going to walk away.

Shea: Right. It’s kind of funny. It’s kind of like, “Oh, well, they’re just going to go do whatever they want to do. And, and, and they’re going to walk away from the faith. And! And!”

I can go to the throne of grace in my time of need. This throne of grace that He has is my strength. Knowing that I don’t measure up, but I need someone who, who can just pull me up all the time, save me all the time. I don’t have to be scared that He’s going to be gone. I have a pastor in Kenya, Pastor Jackson. I love my brother. He teaches a beautiful grace message. And so when I reached out to him and said, “Hey, would you be willing to, like, maybe send me an audio clip?” he said yes. We really want you to hear that right now.

Pastor Jackson Kepue: Hallelujah and praise God. My name is Pastor Jackson Kepue and I want to take two or three minutes to share with us about the enabling grace of God.

We are talking of God’s supernatural power through the Holy Spirit and the Word of God that they help us do, help us change, help us accomplish, help us turn around in life. Even in a situation and instances, we were not able by ourself, in the book of Timothy, Paul writes to Timothy and says, “My son Timothy, be strong in the power of our Lord. Jesus Christ.” If we were to put a vertical watch in a more contemporary language, Paul was telling Timothy, be strong through the grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Take advantage of that grace and the manifest training you, to enable you, to do, to accomplish, to fulfill, and to release God’s purpose concerning your life.

To those who are around you, we are not saying that grace is a license to sin. Of course, nobody needs a license to sin, but the grace of God helps a person to overcome his or her weaknesses. Let me say that, quickly and briefly, that when we expose people to the love of God, we are connecting them to the grace of God. We are connecting them to their power, which enabled them to feel that they don’t just have a duty to change, but they change because it is for their benefit. And it is for their welfare, correct? Surely now, and then we make us look judgmental. But when we expose people to the grace of God, we give them an opportunity for themselves to experience God’s power and God’s glory. Let me share an instance of John and Jesus. One day John was in prison. He was offended that Jesus was not coming to see him and help him out of prison.

But he sent two people to ask Jesus, “Are you really the one we are expecting? Are you the man that they all talk about?” But Jesus didn’t condemn those people and tell John that he will never come out of prison, but on the contrary, Jesus answered and responded by love. By praising John in the public, that was the last time we hear John complaining about Jesus until the time he was beheaded, that John believed in the ministry of the Lord, Jesus Christ.

So friends, I want to encourage you. I want to challenge you. The grace of God can help you. The grace of God can help you change. Get it? Transform. If you can’t do it, the grace of God can help you.

Paul says in the book of 1 Corinthians 15,
“I have labored above all but not I, but the grace of God that will work with me.”

And so I wish you that Grace. May the love of God bring a minister that grows to you. May that grace bring healing to you. May that grace bring restoration to you. May that grace bring shortage of God’s love to you. God bless you. Amen.

Michelle: Amen.

Shea: You know, it makes me think, like, what if there wasn’t a Jethro for Moses? What if there wasn’t a Nathan for David?

Michelle: Right?

Shea: What if there wasn’t an Apostle Paul for Peter? All of them under Grace and Love, right? Love enablement being enabled. And yet when it came down to it, the love that they had brought correction, that changed directions. God provides a rule of life for the saved. Listen. Grace is given to serve others and to exercise our spiritual gifts for the building up of the church. If you look at that in Romans 12:6, Ephesians 3, 2:7, 4:7, 1 Peter 4:10…correction does not contradict grace.

Michelle: Yeah. I think that’s the missing component because of how the world handles things. It’s a residual effect of how we interpret grace in the world. We are living in a time where I remember when I was a teenager, there was this movement in education to stop marking up papers with red ink because it lowered self-esteem. So there’s this idea in our minds, going back to last season, we were talking about, you know, Pride’s Many Sides. There’s this idea in our heads of who we are. And sometimes to cope with all our flaws, we build ourselves up to be better than we actually are, at least in certain ways. And so when we hear that someone has noticed a flaw in us, it can cause us to recoil, but at the same time, we’re called in Christ. And thanks to the Holy Spirit, we have the ability to overcome that and actually move into a place where we listen to reproof and we see it as valuable because we know that with each reproof that we actually hear and start to walk in, that we are growing closer and closer to being Christ like in yet another way, you know?

In Proverbs 12:1, it says:
“Whoever loves discipline, loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.”

Which I always laugh.

Shea: So straight up. Amen.

Michelle: Right? And trust: I’m not just calling y’all stupid—I’m calling myself stupid. When I—when I get all up in my feelings, when I get a correction that I know is godly in my head, I’m like, “Stupid!” Like, “Get over it, me!” Praise God.

And then also there’s this beautiful sister verse in Proverbs 15:32 that says,
“Whoever ignores instruction, despises himself. But he who listens to reprove gains intelligence.”

It’s very straightforward that once you are in Christ, there is abundant proof that listening to reproof is going to help you improve. And it’s going to be the answer to a lot of your prayers that you don’t even know you’re asking, or you don’t even know what’s going to help those prayers, but it will because it’s changing how your daily walk looks. And when we’re talking to others, sometimes we don’t know if they are at that level. So if we have the correction to give, we’re scared and we withhold it because we don’t want to chase them away.

“Well, what if they don’t come back to church at all? What if they don’t want to be in this ministry any more? What if they get really mad at me? What if the fact that I still sin in X, Y, or Z way…they know that I come late, so will they even listen to me when I talk about them doing whatever at the end of the day?”

The comfort is, and we can say this, whether we’re the one delivering the correction or we’re the one receiving it, if it comes from a godly place, it doesn’t matter what we know to be a shortcoming in the other person. It’s an act of love. We can receive it as an act of love because it’s truth. It’s an opportunity that we can use to just improve. And it’s important because that is a part of love. Love isn’t just, like I said earlier about raising children, it’s not just giving all the positives and never a single correction. If I never corrected our daughter, would she still be alive? If I just let her do whatever she wanted as many times as she wanted, would she still be alive?

I mean, by the grace of God, maybe, but she’d have a lot more scars, be a lot more banged up. And so we have to start seeing that correction is a component of grace and it’s something that shows our love. So when we hear it, take it to see it as an act of love from the other person. When we give it, do it boldly, but gently, respectfully out of a place of love so that we know that our intentions in that correction are pure and not for condemnation.

Shea: So yeah, what she’s saying is this week, don’t go to church and just start beating up people.

Michelle: Don’t do that! You’re not their Holy Spirit.

Shea: You’re not their Holy Spirit, but you know, you know, we can look at how correction should look now in Galatians 6:1, really guys, as well. I really liked this. You know, if a brother, sister—however you want to look at that—

Michelle: A sibling.

Shea: There we go.

“If anyone is caught in any transgression or correction, right, You who are spiritual should restore him or her in a spirit of gentleness, keep, watch on yourself, lest you to be tempted.”

You who are spiritual, which means spiritual and in touch with, like, the number one person that could do this the right way. That means you have been on your knees in prayerful battle in prayerful discernment, asking for the right word. It should never be on the fly unless absolutely necessary to save someone’s life. Uh, you know, somewhere in…Proverbs again, right? Or no, which one is that slow to wrath?

Michelle: James 1:19?

Shea: “Quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath,” because this, this discipline, right, trains us in a way that honors God. I could have wrapped this whole podcast up in this verse: Titus 2:11-14. This wraps this all up beautifully in a package. It says:
“For the grace of God has appeared bringing salvation for all people training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled upright and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to, and to purify for himself, a people for his own possession who are zealous for good words, we have been called to do things. And when we do these things and discipline fruits come from this discipline, this life wanting to, to walk as Christ walked for the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”

Hebrews 12:11, the word of God is the guide. Rules of conduct. I like that. You know, being a military guy in my past, we always had rules of conduct.

2 Timothy 3:16:
“All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training and righteousness.”

We’re learning. Grace is a beautiful thing. Grace is a loving thing. I like how you brought up Calia. Like you said, she spills the beans. You didn’t just say whatever and walk away, right? No, you brought her in. You said, “Hey, let’s pick these beans up together.” And that is how we demonstrate grace, the way God demonstrates it. He corrects us in love. Amen?

Michelle: Amen. I think that it’s important to carry this through as, as you go in this season and we are here to pray with you and answer questions, engage in some dialogue, you can always hit us up on thepantrypodcast.com as well as at The Pantry Podcast on Facebook and Instagram. So until next time, bye.

Shea: Bye.