Sustaining Grace

Tonight, at Shores devotional, we discussed sustaining grace. We tried to define it and the basic conclusion was that it does not mean that we won't go through hard things. In fact, it seems like God intends that we go through hard times so that we would cling to Him. We went through the story of Lazarus in John 11 and also went to Jeremiah 32. Also I mentioned 1 Corinthians 1:3-11, talking about Paul and the hardship He and Timothy experienced in Asia. But two things that we discussed were a poem and a hymn. Both are worth going back to and looking over again so here they are.

What is sustaining grace?

Not grace to bar what is not bliss,

Nor flight from all distress, but this:

The grace that orders our trouble and pain,

And then, in the darkness, is there to sustain.

Now here is the fourth verse in Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing that Mark went through:

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.