Fresh Grace Daily

I am a child of God. He is the Lord, the maker of the heavens and the earth, and there is no other. The fact that I can call him my Father has nothing to do with my merit—it’s all about his grace. In this context, grace is unearned favor. I can’t claim I’ve done anything to deserve it. It’s a lavish gift and completely undeserved.

I need grace every single day, and not because I have some dramatic failure—like an aggravated assault—to confess. It’s just the simple truth that I miss the mark all the time.

I’ve had so many times in my life when I was stubborn, hard-hearted, and just plain selfish. If I’m being honest, those traits haven’t totally disappeared—I still wrestle with them. Some struggles are just sticky.

I can’t claim that God just cleaned up my past and now I keep myself on track by sheer willpower. There are still days when I drift, thinking I know best, and end up discovering—again—that I don’t.

Sometimes it reminds me of our kids when they were little, wandering away from us in crowded stores, thinking they were fine on their own. As adults, our wandering usually isn’t about not knowing better—it’s about pride and wanting to do things our way.

Here’s what gives me hope: by God’s grace, I’m not who I once was. His mercy really does change people, and it’s changing me. But that doesn’t mean I always stay “clean”—it means I wake up every morning needing grace all over again, and every morning, he has a fresh supply waiting. That truth from Scripture—his mercies are new every morning—has become more real to me with time.

Through Jesus, God did for me what I couldn’t do for myself: he dealt with the penalty for my sins. On my best days and my worst, my standing is the same—I’m a recipient of grace. It’s humbling and freeing at the same time.

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
Lamentations 3:22-23

. . . and that’s what I know today.