Paul looks back on his life and doesn’t credit talent, grit, or a second chance he somehow earned. He points to grace—grace that didn’t just forgive him, but changed him, strengthened him, and sent him forward with purpose. Today is an invitation to stop measuring yourself by yesterday and start moving by what God is doing in you right now.

Grace That Names the Truth

Paul is honest about who he was and who he is. That kind of clarity is freeing: we don’t have to edit our story to be usable. The gospel doesn’t need you to pretend—you can come into the light and let God call things what they are. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Confession isn’t humiliation; it’s the doorway to healing.

And grace doesn’t just cover the past; it anchors your identity in Christ. “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Your failures may be part of your history, but they don’t get to be your headline. In Christ, you can be truthful without being trapped.

Grace That Works Through You

Paul talks about working hard, but he refuses to call it self-made. That’s the miracle of grace: it doesn’t make you passive; it makes you alive. God’s grace gives energy to obedience, courage to witness, and endurance to keep showing up when you’re tired. “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance as our way of life” (Ephesians 2:10). You’re not trying to invent your purpose—you’re walking into what God already prepared.

This also protects you from pride and from despair. When fruit comes, you don’t have to puff up; you can thank God. When you feel weak, you don’t have to quit; you can lean in. “But He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness.’” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Grace is not just God’s kindness toward you—it is God’s power at work within you.

Grace That Refuses to Be Wasted

Paul says grace was not “in vain.” That’s a sober phrase. Grace can be received and then neglected—treated like a comforting idea rather than a transforming reality. Today, grace is calling you to respond: to forgive someone, to repent quickly, to serve quietly, to share the gospel plainly, to take the next faithful step. “See to it, then, that you do not fall away from the grace of God” (Hebrews 12:15). Not because God is stingy, but because our hearts can drift.

So what would it look like to honor grace today? Maybe it’s diligence instead of delay, prayer instead of panic, holiness instead of hiding. “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to everyone. It instructs us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live sensible, righteous, and godly lives in the present age” (Titus 2:11–12). Grace trains you—not as a harsh master, but as a faithful teacher who wants you free.

Father, thank You for Your grace that forgives and empowers. Help me not to waste it today—lead me to obey quickly, work faithfully, and give You the glory in all I do. Amen.

A sinful man should be afraid; he has plenty to be afraid of. The consequences of his sins, death, judgment and hell are all awaiting him and he cannot escape them by looking the other way. While he lives on earth there are dangers of every kind facing him and everyone he loves. Any religious teacher that exhorts him to ignore these dangers is unrealistic, false to the facts and a deadly enemy to his soul. The prophet of tranquility is indeed another source of danger to him and should be considered one more object of fear. Where there are mortal perils and no place to hide, fear is the only sane reaction. To dismiss fear while the danger still exists is little short of insanity. Until the danger has been removed, fear should remain. Only that man has a right to be unafraid who has fled for refuge to the mighty Savior. Such a man knows the danger is there, but he also knows that his Almighty Lord will bring him safely through and present him at last faultless before the presence of God. There are in the Scriptures innumerable exhortations to put away fear; but they are all addressed to Gods own children, never to the children of this world. Someone must care, and if a man has not cast his fears on Christ, he must bear them himself. The safety of the Rock is for those who have put their trust in the Rock. All others must face their enemies alone.

All chastening seemeth for the present to be not joyous but grievous; yet afterward it yieldeth peaceable fruit unto them that have been exercised thereby. - Hebrews 12:11

I HAVE already said that, even in the most wise and unselfish training by an earthly parent, there will mingle subjective elements, peculiarities of view and thought, and sometimes of passion and whim and other ingredients, which detract from the value of all such training. The guiding principle for each earthly parent can only be his conception of what is for the good of his child, even at the best; and oftentimes that is not purely the guide by which the parent’s discipline is directed. So the words (Hebrews 12:10) turn us away from all these incompletenesses, and tell us, "He for our profit" - with no sidelong look to anything else, and with an entirely wise knowledge of what is for our good, so that the result will be always and only for our good. This is the point of view from which every Christian man ought to look upon all that befalls him.

What follows? This, plainly:- there is no such thing as evil except the evil of sin. All that comes is food, of various sorts and various complexions, but all generically the same. The inundation comes up over the fields, and men are in despair. It goes down; and then, like the slime left from the Nile in flood, there is better soil for the cultivation of our fields. Storms keep sea and air from stagnating. All that men call evil, in the material world, has in it a soul of good. If it be that all my life is paternal discipline, and that God makes no mistakes, then I can embrace whatever comes to me, and be sure that in it I shall find that which will be for my good.

Ah! it is easy to say so when things go well; but, surely, when the night falls is the time for the stars to shine. The gracious word should shine upon some of us in to-day’s perplexities and pains and disappointments and sorrows - " He for our profit." That great thought does not in the least deny the fact that pain and sorrow and so-called evil are very real. There is no false stoicism in Christianity. The mission of our troubles would not be effected unless they did trouble us. The good that we get from a sorrow would not be realized unless we did sorrow. "Weep for yourselves," said the Master, "and for your children." It is right that we should writhe in pain. It is right that we should yield to the impressions that are made upon us by calamities; but it is not right that we should be so affected as that we should fail to discern in them this gracious thought - "for our profit." God sends us many love-tokens, and amongst them are the great and the little annoyances and pains that beset our lives; and on each of them, if we would look, we should see, written in His own hand, this inscription: " For your good." Do not let us have our eyes so full of tears that we cannot see, or our hearts so full of regrets that we cannot accept, that sweet, strong message. The guiding principle of all that befalls us is God’s unerring knowledge of what will do us good. That will not prevent, and is not meant to prevent, the arrow from wounding, but it does wipe the poison off the arrow, and diminish the pain, and should diminish the tears.