True Spiritual Grit

“The will of God will never take you to where the grace of God will not protect you. To gain that which is worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else.”

~Bernadette Devlin

I am sensitive about writing too much on this topic. But it can seem that everyone who believes in God needs daily or at least periodic encouragement for enduring this life. And sometimes it can appear that the strongest looking individuals are actually floundering. It is far too easy to become isolated in copious and prevalent spiritual warfare. And when we live truthfully, refusing to be anaesthetised by the many comforts of worldly life, spiritual warfare has even a more diabolical effect.

In the tradition of the great Westerns, then, comes the idea of true spiritual grit.

And to coin a phrase out of the movie True Grit (2010), “There is nothing free except the grace of God.” And this is the golden clue regarding the resource of a grace-fed resilience in and through true spiritual grit.

Don’t Expect Anything Improbable

God can manage the impossible and certainly from our viewpoint grace can seem to have been an impossible prospect, pre-Jesus. Our Saviour changed everything!

With God all things are possible. But we tend to be fooled into believing in the improbable.

The trouble seems to be that we have faith in many things besides God these days. This is a practical concern for just about everyone. Our minds are lulled into many imaginings surrounding our desires, and we only realise we have been deceived when it’s sometimes too late.

It pays not to expect anything improbable. Yet, it is the impossible that is easy for God; if it is God’s will.

Grace, the once-impossible, is the great exception. Grace is the great surprise. It is the great hope. And this grace that defines our salvation, and reclassifies our lives as thoroughly renewed, is worth everything.

We realise this when all is taken away. Grace is the great compensation.

Grace is Everything – Particularly When We Have Nothing

When we are required to show true spiritual grit, when our hope has nosedived, and life has reached a deathly dearth, grace is what makes our lives flourish.

When the heart is ripped out of the man or woman in Job-like fashion, yet they cling to the Lord, stoically resisting the wiles of the enemy, by faithfully continuing to surrender their will to the Divine will, their true spiritual grit shines like a beacon for all to see.

Grace is everything, and never more when we have nothing. With grace we have hope that God can make the impossible, possible. For faith in the impossible we employ true spiritual grit.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Image Credit: Paramount Pictures.