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Imparted Grace

I have a friend, Jim, who had coached a high school girls’ basketball team for eighteen years. In all that time, they were not able to win the state championship. Year after year, the team was either beaten in the regional finals or, if they made it to the state tournament, eliminated before the final round. 

Jim shared with me, “I was frustrated and ready to quit, but around that time period, I discovered the power of God’s grace.” Jim made a firm decision. He would no longer coach in his own strength, as he had done for eighteen years, but would completely rely on the grace of God. 

He asked the Lord what to do, and God’s response was, “Restructure your practices. Instead of ninety minutes on the floor, spend forty-five minutes in the locker room reading the Bible, sharing, and praying, and then spend the last forty-five minutes on the floor.” 

And God’s grace and wisdom was the game-changer. That year, Jim and his girls won the state championship for the first time. And if that wasn’t enough, the next year they won it again! The change seemed counterproductive, but Jim knew he had heard from God, and his obedience yielded positive results. 

Jim tapped into divine wisdom; in fact, it was the same insight the apostle Paul discovered—one that statistically eludes over ninety percent of the 21st-century church. The insight is this: Biblical grace is not only God’s gift of salvation, but His empowerment for our lives. Examine Paul’s words, but keep in mind, these words are an exact quote from the mouth of God: “My grace is all you need, for My power is greatest when you are weak” (2 Corinthians 12:9 GNT).

There’s no question or gray area here. God directly refers to His grace as being His empowerment. The word weak in the above verse means “inability.” The Lord declares to Paul, and also to you and me, “My empowerment (grace) is optimized in situations that are beyond your natural ability.”

Your destiny, which God prepared for you, is beyond your natural ability. That’s why we need grace! Eighteen years of Jim’s hard work and years of falling short was well worth the agony and multiple disappointments for the wisdom Jim would finally discover: God’s grace empowers us to go beyond our natural ability.