Sometimes grace can be a great antidote to legalism and preaching morality. It’s a great way to grow a church to just say  ‘God loves you as you are, so stay the same.’ But that’s not real grace.

1 Cor 15:10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.

Paul effectively says ‘I am who I am by grace BUT… I worked.

BUT grace was working in me

It wasn’t me working – it was grace.

There’s an apparent contradiction, it really it’s a both/and

Grace is not a licence to do wrong but the power to do right.

Works don’t lead to grace; that’s legalism

But grace causes us to work.

We have to fundamentally understand grace because God not need your good works, but the world does.

You could never do anything to earn it, but when you get it – you are motivated by it.

And God will give me grace upon grace, not so I continue in sin, but continue in his power.

(from today’s devotional thought at @leadnet retreat)