Adoring God Leader’s Guide
Chapter 14: Amazing Grace

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SUGGESTIONS FOR PRE-LESSON DISCUSSION TOPICS

Quiet Time

Do you ever find yourself going through the motions of quiet time while your mind and heart are somewhere else? What practices have you used to help when this happens?

Do you have any notable quiet time experiences you’d like to share – either good or bad – that the group could possibly benefit from?

Reflections from last week

After our study on the mercy of God, did opportunities come your way this past week where you could share His mercy with others who were hurting and needy?

Learning from Christ’s examples in the New Testament, what are some best practices for showing mercy to others?

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LESSON AGENDA

OPENING PRAYER

Consider singing this verse from “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” (Robert Robinson, 1758)

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be;
Let that grace now, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

 

INTRODUCTION

We commonly associate the law with the Old Testament and grace with the New. John 1:17 even says “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” And yet 2 Timothy 1:9 tells us that this amazing grace of God was available “before the beginning of time.” Before Adam drew his first breath… before Eve took the first bite of the forbidden fruit… God’s grace was in place, ready to rescue us from our fallenness. Both are necessary. We need the mirror of God’s law to show us that without His rescuing grace we are hopelessly and eternally undone.

 

GOD’S GRACE DEFINED

Read this entire section (pp 205-206). How may we begin to think through God’s grace in a way that creates a deeper appreciation and adoration of the God of all grace?

 

GOD’S GRACE IN SALVATION

Read the last paragraph in this section beginning with “Grace means that God gives sinners…” (p 208). Because this is such a sticking point for many who believe they are going to heaven because they’re “good,” what insights did you gain that really impacted you while meditating on this doctrine in your quiet time this past week?

 

GRACE IS THROUGH JESUS CHRIST ALONE

Read the first paragraph (p 208) and the last three paragraphs (pp 210-211) that begin, “Had it not been for Christ…” When we process through this truth (keeping God’s other attributes in mind), what reasons do we see that tie grace directly to the cross? Discuss how grace was made available to those who lived prior to the cross. How is God’s grace exemplified and magnified in His Son’s sacrifice on the cross?

 

DESPISING GOD’S GIFT OF GRACE

Read this entire section (p 211). In what ways can we be guilty of idolatry by misinterpreting or misappropriating God’s gift of grace?

 

CHEAPENING GOD’S GRACE

Read this entire section (pp 212-213). Discuss how the idea of being good enough to “earn” God’s favor is an absurd lie that distorts the doctrine of grace entirely. Read 1 Peter 4. How do we reconcile being a steward of God’s grace?

 

GROWING IN GOD’S GRACE

Read this entire section (pp 213-214). What journal entries would you be willing to share in response to the questions asked at the end of this section?

 

EXAMINING OUR HEARTS

Read this entire section (pp 214-215). While asking God to examine your heart in your quiet time, did you have any particular realizations of areas where sins of self-centeredness and self-reliance were causing you to despise God’s gift of grace? How has this study on the God of grace caused you to embrace His gift more fully, to draw nearer to Him, to adore Him more? How may we better pray for each other this coming week in that regard?

 

CLOSING PRAYER

“Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.” Amen.  (2 Peter 1:2)

 

 

COLLECTED QUOTES ON GOD’S GRACE

“Lord I crawled across the barrenness to you with my empty cup uncertain in asking any small drop of refreshment. If only I had known you better I’d have come running with a bucket.” -Nancy Spiegelberg

“A man must completely despair of himself in order to become fit to obtain the grace of Christ.” -Martin Luther (1483-1546)

“The growth of grace is like the polishing of metals. There is first an opaque surface; by and by you see a spark darting out, then a strong light; till at length it sends back a perfect image of the sun that shines upon it.” -Edward Payson (1783-1827)

“The law detects, grace alone conquers sin.” – Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430)

“Grace isn’t a little prayer you chant before receiving a meal. It’s a way to live. The law tells me how crooked I am. Grace comes along and straightens me out.” -Dwight Lyman Moody (1837-1899)

“When the mask of self-righteousness has been torn from us and we stand stripped of all our accustomed defenses, we are candidates for God’s generous grace.” -Erwin W. Lutzer (1941- )

“A man can no more take in a supply of grace for the future than he can eat enough today to last him for the next 6 months, nor can he inhale sufficient air into his lungs with one breath to sustain life for a week to come. We are permitted to draw upon God’s store of grace from day to day as we need it.” – D. L. Moody

“Grace is given to heal the spiritually sick, not to decorate spiritual heroes” –Martin Luther

“Grace is but glory begun, and glory is but grace perfected.” –Jonathan Edwards

“God’s grace turns out men and women with a strong family likeness to Jesus Christ, not milksops.” -Oswald Chambers (1874-1917)

“Grace is the good pleasure of God that inclines him to bestow benefits upon the undeserving. It is a self-existent principle inherent in the divine nature and appears to us as a self-caused propensity to pity the wretched, spare the guilty, welcome the outcast, and bring into favor those who were before under just disapprobation. Its use to us sinful men is to save us and make us sit together in heavenly places to demonstrate to the ages the exceeding riches of God’s kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” -A. W. Tozer (1897-1963)

“Men may flee from the sunlight to dark and musty caves of the earth, but they cannot put out the sun. So men may in any dispensation despise the grace of God, but they cannot extinguish it.” -A. W. Tozer (1897-1963)

“Abounding sin is the terror of the world, but abounding grace is the hope of mankind.” -A. W. Tozer (1897-1963)

“As mercy is God’s goodness confronting human misery and guilt, so grace is his goodness directed toward human debt and demerit.” -A. W. Tozer (1897-1963)

“For grace is given not because we have done good works, but in order that we may be able to do them.” – Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430)

“Grace can pardon our ungodliness and justify us with Christ’s righteousness; it can put the Spirit of Jesus Christ within us; it can help us when we are down; it can heal us when we are wounded; it can multiply pardons, as we through frailty multiply transgressions.” -John Bunyan (1628-1688)

“Grace grows best in winter.” -Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661)

“Grace is love that cares and stoops and rescues.” -John R. W. Stott (1921- )

“He who has not felt what sin is in the Old Testament knows little what grace is in the New. He who has not trembled in Moses, and wept in David, and wondered in Isaiah will rejoice little in Matthew, rest little in John. He who has not suffered under the Law will scarcely hear the glad sound of the gospel.” -R. W. Barbour (1900- )

“I need thy presence every passing hour; What but thy grace can foil the tempter’s power?” -Henry Francis Lyte (1793-1847)

“If God wants you to do something, he’ll make it possible for you to do it, but the grace he provides comes only with the task and cannot be stockpiled beforehand. We are dependent on him from hour to hour, and the greater our awareness of this fact, the less likely we are to faint or fail in a crisis.” -Louis Cassels (1922-1974)

“The negro boy down in my Southland years ago wanted to join a church. So the deacons were examining him. They asked, ‘How did you get saved?’ His answer was, ‘God did His part, and I did my part.’ They thought there was something wrong with his doctrine, so they questioned further, ‘What was God’s part, and what was your part?’ His explanation was a good one. He said, ‘God’s part was the saving, and my part was the sinning. I done run from Him as fast as my sinful heart and rebellious legs could take me. He done took out after me till He run me down.’ My friend, that is the way I got saved also.” – J. Vernon McGee, Romans, Vol. 1.

“As Copernicus, the great astronomer, was dying, a copy of his great book, The Revolution of the Heavenly Bodies, was placed in his hands. But it was not his brilliant work that was on his mind. Instead he directed that the following epitaph be placed on his grave at Frauenburg: ‘O Lord, the faith thou didst give to St. Paul, I cannot ask; the mercy thou didst show to St. Peter, I dare not ask; but, Lord, the grace thou didst show unto the dying robber, that, Lord, show to me.’ There is no one who cannot come to God under those terms.”

“But for Grace, my soul had perished,
Withered as the desert sand;
Gone to shadows, and tormented,
But for Grace’s perfect plan!
But for God’s unceasing Mercy,
But for Calvary ‘s sacrifice;
I had wandered, blind and thirsting,
Fell to Satan’s grim device.
But the blessed blood of Jesus,
Shed upon that cruel tree;
Called me from the ling’ring shadows,
Saved my soul, and rescued me!
But for Grace, O Grace perfected,
But for love’s undying flame;
I had never hoped in Jesus,
Ne’er had even known His name!”
-Carlos C. Beam