MOMENTS OF GRACE

A personal experience

By David Woodbury

It has been my experience that God often uses situations when we are sidelined and unable to participate in the normal routine of life, to get our attention. It certainly has been this way for me. Some years ago I found myself in a hospital bed suffering from a painful back complaint. I had wrestled for many years with God over his calling to full-time ministry as a Salvation Army officer. I had finally, though grudgingly acquiesced to his call, filled in my application papers for the training college, and sent them off to be processed. Since I was past the age where cadets were accepted for training I was fairly confident that my application would be rejected and that would settle to the situation. I had done my part.

A visitor that day was a retired officer from the corps who brought with him a photocopy of a pamphlet which contained the testimony of early Salvation Army officer, Samuel Logan Brengle. A day or two later I picked up the copy and began to read it. As I read I became aware of a growing desire to have this experience of which Brengle wrote. At that moment, I totally surrendered myself to God without reservation. A great sense of God’s presence and peace permeated my entire being and I lay for some hours surrounded, enveloped and encircled by his grace. A few hours later my retired officer friend appeared to visit me. Before I could speak he held up his hand signifying he knew what had transpired.

As I contemplated the moment of grace I now became concerned lest The Salvation Army reject my application for training as a Salvation Army officer and I could not fulfil the task to which God had called me. Gone was the smug belief that I was beyond the age where the Army would accept me as a cadet, replaced with a burning and passionate desire to fulfil the destiny to which God had called me.

Such experiences are almost impossible to put into words but could be described as an intense and unexpected awareness of God’s love and peace which may last a few minutes or a few hours. Though them, God affirms in a remarkable way his love and acceptance of us. Senses are heightened and we are infused with an awareness that all is well and God is in complete control.

These moments of grace are not uncommon among Christians, but perhaps not spoken of as openly and freely as might be expected. They are highly personal moments that are at times, beyond the ability of humanity to express or explain to another. Yet there is within them a great sense of encouragement to others and a powerful testimony to the infinite supply of the grace of God that sustains encourages and nurtures frail humanity.

I suspect that many Christians can testify to moments of grace in their own lives where God broke through in an extraordinary and almost mystical way in a situation where all about looked bleak, hopeless and thoroughly bewildering. Into a landscape of desolation and anguish his love, mercy and peace burst through like the sun following a violent storm.

It may well be that the church and individual Christians need to learn once again, the necessity of relying on God and not on self. In re-learning this lesson we may well plunge into such an experience of God that is overwhelming.

FOR MEDITATION
He giveth more grace - Don Moen
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