What Grace Means To Me

This is an edited version of a note I once wrote on facebook. I thought it was worth reposting here.

It is no secret to most of you that in our home we do not promote or practice the typical Christian means of disciplining. We are of a minority of Christian believers who spare the literal rod (though not the figurative one) and instead use what’s been coined as Grace-Based Discipline also known as GBD.

When one becomes a parent, they quickly learn that there are many parenting styles and choices out there. However most parenting philosophies typically fall somewhere on a line between one of two extremes: punitive or permissive. Having a punitive parenting style is having one that “aims to inflict punishment.” It is a form of behavior modification, attempting to make the child feel bad so that they won’t perform the behavior again. Permissive parenting on the other hand is accepting and allowing a behavior to happen over and over and over again. This can be seen in the common parenting style called “Taking Children Seriously” or TCS.

I think a common misconception of GBD is that it falls on the permissive side of parenting. There is somehow this misunderstanding that “Grace” = “Permissive” and that if you are applying Grace-Based Discipline to your child you must be a permissive parent. But if Grace is permissive, than this would mean God is permissive. Is God permissive? If not, than what *is* grace?

The most common definition of grace that we hear is “unmerited favor.” This is a very true definition of grace as we all know that none of us deserve, nor could we ever earn, the love, favor, mercy, grace and acceptance that we have from our Heavenly Father. However, I want to take the concept of grace a step farther and explain some of what I have learned in my parenting journey.

GBD has many handy tools to use as parents. One of them being The 5 Steps. If you read the link you will see that Step 3 and Step 4 are “Offer Help” and “Help.” It is within this parenting tool that I gained a revelation and began to understand a new meaning to Grace. See Grace is not just letting someone do something over and over and over again and forgiving it. Grace is setting a standard, and when that person cannot reach that standard, it is stepping in and helping them to reach that standard. This is exactly how I see God’s grace. God had a standard of Righteousness that not one of us could reach. In order for us to attain this standard He had to send us help by becoming flesh and dying and shedding his blood for us. His grace gave us the ability to achieve Righteousness before God when we had no ability to do that.

God extends this same kind of grace to me everyday. When He sets a standard in my life, usually it is something too high for me to attain on my own. It is only because “His grace is sufficient for me,” and it is only because “His power is made perfect in my weakness” that I can ever live up to the godly standards that He sets. I could never do these things on my own. I remember one time when God had prompted me to approach someone and ask them to forgive me for a wrong I had done them– a very humbling and scary thing to do. My first reaction was to resist this urge and ignore it. If God’s Grace was permissive, He would have allowed me to keep ignoring what He really wanted me to do. But God’s Grace is NOT permissive. Instead God 5- stepped me. I heard a still small voice say “Can you do this or do you need some help?” My reply to Him “I need help!” Suddenly the grace of God filled me and gave me the strength to do what I did not have the strength to do before. That my friends, to me, is the true meaning of God’s Grace! It is not wimpy and permissive. It is strong and bold and freeing! God’s grace enables the alcoholic and drug addict to be free from their addictions! God’s grace enables the person so bound by their anger to reach out and offer mercy instead of wrath. God’s grace frees us from our sins and sets us to a higher standard. God’s grace is “unmerited favor” to mold and shape us to be more like Christ when we have nothing within us that would be Christ-like. And this is how I choose to parent my children: to offer grace, to offer help, when they cannot reach standards that we have set for them. It is NOT allowing them to continue their destructive behavior, but true Grace-Based discipline is teaching, modeling, and offering help when a child cannot do it on their own for whatever reason. It is extending to these little people what God extends to me.