Grace.

"Grace will never be amazing to us if we do not understand the suffering that happened on the cross."

I lived my whole life, up until I was about 19 years old, staring at the cross, where I gained an awareness of the appreciation I should feel for the suffering that Jesus Christ endured for my sorry sinful soul. I was guilty. I was the one who nailed Him there. He felt so much physical pain.

But it was not only the flogging of His body that caused the pain that He experienced. While he was beaten by Roman guards, whose sole intention was to kill Him long before He ever had to be hanged, He experienced the suffering that we deserve for our sin. He was separated, forsaken by the Father Almighty, the God we are quick to recognize as kind, gentle, compassionate, and loving. He is all those things. But He's also just and wrathful. To Him the sins we commit are acid to His love. When Jesus bore all our sins, He experienced His wrath, being struck again and again for the punishment of all. God is repulsed by our sin and desires to destroy it. When we cling to our sin, it destroys us, it separates us from the love that God has for us.

Why would we choose that separation when we know Jesus has experienced it for us?

It's a daily struggle for me to accept that. I have a hard time believing that Jesus' death is enough to cover the craziness of my life, the repetitive determination to overcome my sin and defeat it on my own. It's easy for me to be convinced of my sin, but incredibly difficult to be convinced of the grace of the Cross.

My prayer is to remember daily the blood shed on my behalf, so that my response to God, the Father is forever humble thankfulness, causing me to turn from my sin and run towards the Savior of my soul, Jesus Christ.