A gospel song from long ago gathered the hope of millions into a yearning vision of peace: 

“Someday, a bright new wave

Will break upon the shore; 

And there'll be no sickness

No more sorrow, no more war;

And little children

Never will go hungry any more . . .”

That bright new world hasn’t yet arrived. The headlines rage. The nations totter. Famished children in refugee camps wait for promised bread and water. 

But for believers in Jesus, our reality has already begun to change, even as we long for the day when God will make all things new. The greatest shift in history has already happened: “For He has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of His dear Son, who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins” (Col 1:13-14). 

That bright new world arrives as, one by one, we accept the grace of Jesus, and then pick up His work in this world—healing; comforting; peacemaking; embracing displaced, frightened kids. 

“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day” (2 Cor 4:16).

The greatest change is a change of heart. Yours can begin today. 

Then stay in grace. -Bill Knott

It never was a straight-line thing, this love we call the grace of God. It circles and surrounds, embraces and includes, until the throngs that praise God’s name are far too vast to count. 

In grace, Jesus forgives me. With gratitude, I offer you forgiveness. Because you have been liberated, you pass that grace to one who has offended you. And he in turn, when I offend him, offers me forgiveness. “Be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you” (Eph 4:32). 

So grace begins with us as individuals, but never rests until communities are built that flourish with forgiveness. Have you been freed? Then free another. Has God in kindness humbled you? Then serve your neighbors with humility. Have you learned to sing “Amazing Grace”? Then teach it—all four parts for harmony—until a chorus of redemption rises from this broken, fragile world. 

Grace isn’t grace if it stops moving, turning, changing lives. When it is blocked; when mercy slows; when forgiveness is extended only to the ones we deem as worthy, the Spirit cannot heal the world, and we sink back into that pinched and parched existence we once knew. 

But when we offer what’s been offered us, the river flows; the fields yield; and resurrected life will blossom everywhere. 

Keep passing it along. 

And stay in grace. -Bill Knott

Those the world calls saints weren’t typically the brittle, stained-glass figures of our pious imagination. The reason their stories are still told is that they trusted God more fully, accepted His freely-offered love, and opened their lives profoundly to His grace. 

Their story can be yours as well, for the Bible calls every believer in Christ a “saint.” The apostle Paul interceded for every man or woman who has ever trusted the grace of Jesus: “I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (Eph 3:18-19).

Your behavior may be far from perfect. Your faith may waver in the tough moments. Your heart may tell you that God is far away and usually unhappy with you, but “God is greater than our hearts, and He knows everything” (1 John 3:20). 

The best news is that grace changes everyone who trusts in Jesus into a saint. You are defined, not by how well you love God, but how deeply He loves you. Your value is determined, not by what you give or how heroically you serve, but by the price heaven paid to rescue you, and make you a saint. 

So stay in grace. -Bill Knott

We can’t make ourselves more loveable to God by years of good behavior. And yet, because of grace, we seek to do what pleases Him.

We can’t earn even half an hour in heaven by acts of sympathy or kindness. And yet, because of grace, we spend unnumbered hours caring for the least of all His little ones.

Those shining moments when we sometimes rise to our potential don’t make us even one bit more beloved by God. His love for us cannot be amplified, expanded, or improved.

Grace cancels everything we think we’ve earned, and makes us utterly rely on everything God gives us. It is the end of all our goodness, and the place where faith begins.

Abandon hope in all you’ve done, but deeply trust what God has done.

And stay in grace. Bill Knott

No one can grasp the grace of God unless God teaches him, embraces him, and holds him in an unexpected kindness.

There’s no intellect so vast; there’s not a mystic so devout that he can plumb the depth of love by private contemplation.

“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord. “And My ways are far beyond anything you could imagine” (Isa 55:8).

Only the mind of God could Father-forth the grace of God. Only the Son who fully knows God’s mind could satisfy His justice and still manifest His love. Only the Spirit, moving softly in our hearts, could teach us of the height, the depth, the breadth—the strength—of love that will not let us go.

The cleverest among us must learn: the genius must be taught. The keenest mind will still confess, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too great for me to understand!”(Psa 139:6).

That’s why we linger on our knees. We bow before the mystery that always chooses to invite us, to correct us, to forgive us, and redeem us.

We marvel that God loves us when we’re broken—that He still seeks us when we run away. Like toddlers playing hide-and-seek, we are discovered in plain sight. There is no depth from which He cannot lift us, and no place He will not go.

We are amazed by grace we never fully understand.

But we receive. And stay in grace. Bill Knott

The gospel is only as good as the God who asks us to believe it. If He’s the disappointed, vengeful deity we have pictured in our frightened imaginations, then we do well to hide, to stay away: why would we risk ourselves with Him?

But if Christ is, as His Word says, the Lord whose love for us survives even our worst choices and most defiant behaviors, then we may crawl out from beneath the bed and step out from the shadows.

When I am loved at my lowest and embraced even at the height of my foolishness, then I can safely trust myself to grace.

“By grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” (Eph 2:8).

I now believe in Him who has always—unequivocally—believed in me.

So here I’ll stand—and stay in grace. -Bill Knott

A muscular young athlete, bench-pressing massive iron; stonemasons, deeply-focused, chiseling the capstone for a tall cathedral spire; a driven young executive, burning midnight oil as she assesses market data.

What do these pictures have in common? All celebrate intense, prodigious effort, spent to take the doer to the top in sport, in craftsmanship, in business.

Our world’s awash in images like these: they are the icons of our functional religion. We learn so early to depend on no one else’s effort. Faith, we say, is chiefly what you think about yourself.

And so we are unsettled by the unexpected gospel: “It is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (Eph 2:8-9).

When there is nothing we can do; when “all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death”; when we at last despair of scaling heaven by our sweat or skill or passion, grace given us in Jesus speaks for us, embraces us, and binds us to the heart of God.

Grace honors only trust, and welcomes only gratitude.

So stay in it. -Bill Knott

It’s not called “practicing” for nothing.

On some great future day, the liberating, life-affirming grace we each receive from Jesus will also be the grace we give as freely to those who wound us, irritate our peace, or call out for our love and care.

Between the “now” and “then” there’s a lot of practicing to do—a daily repetition of kind words, forgiving acts, and chosen, holy silences. Like hours we spent as children with pianos, violins, and flutes, we learn the patterns of the Jesus life—not all at once, but with increasing Spirit-skill.

On many days, we get the fingering all wrong: we point unrighteously at those who really need our grasp and our embrace. But just because the grace that saves us keeps on saving us from us, we build up skills in loving, holding, healing, helping.

Great music—gracious music—is never perfect on day one.

Keep practicing. And stay in grace. -Bill Knott

If you’ve ever been forgiven; if you’ve been held when you were wrong, or bitter, or confused—you know the grace that never can repay the giver. 

So we surrender to the goodness God implants in human hearts. “We know how dearly God loves us, because He has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with His love”

(Rom 5:5). 

We come to understand God’s grace when we are loved extravagantly, without apparent cause, and with no expectation of response. We vow with everything within that we will love as we’ve been loved—without return; without reward; just for the Lord. 

This “common grace” is strikingly uncommon, but always welcome, always valued, and indelibly remembered. “Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God” (1 John 4:7).

The grace that reached to you now reaches from you to the loveless, the careless, and the thoughtless. 

Grace never was for you alone. 

Keep giving grace. 

And it will stay with you. -Bill Knott

“When I’m deep in a hole, lower a rope, not a shovel.”

The last thing we need when we’ve dug ourselves profoundly into pain or confusion or sin is more of the same. Our best efforts got us there: our best efforts won’t deliver us. The pit only gets deeper—and so does our frustration. As Scripture says, “There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death” (Prov 14:12).

Rescue only comes from above—from Someone who both sees our plight and can do something to change it. God’s Word reveals that Jesus fully understands how desperate our condition is—and He—uniquely—can change the ending of our story: “This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for He faced all of the same testings we do, yet He did not sin. So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive His mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most” (Heb 4:15-16).

Common sense can tell us to stop digging. Wisdom urges us to accept the grace that doesn’t leave us where we are. “He lifted me out of the pit of despair, out of the mud and the mire. He set my feet on solid ground and steadied me as I walked along. He has given me a new song to sing, a hymn of praise to our God” (Psa 40:2-3).

Let yourself be lifted.

And stay in grace. -Bill Knott