Daily Encouragement: Day 276

Adapted from: Handbook to Spiritual Growth

HE CHOSE US

“You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain” (John 15:16). God’s grace is always previous to our response; whenever we pursue Him it is because He has already pursued us. Whenever we love Him, it is because He has first loved us (1 John 4:8–21). Whenever we offer up prayers, it is because He has already invited us to do so.

Nevertheless, God holds us accountable for our responses to His initiatives. Indeed, the quality of our relationship with Him and the entire direction of our lives are determined by the nature of our responses to His loving impulses in our lives.

We have been given a response-ability, an ability to respond to or neglect these divine initiatives, and from a human standpoint, our relationship with God is determined by our willingness to reciprocate. Without an ongoing response of our personality to God’s personality, our relationship with Him will be shallow or nonexistent.

Have you responded to His gift of grace? How are you continuing to respond to His grace in your life?