Out Of The Ditch

I remember seeing a car that was almost on its side because it ran off the road, and the ditch was so deep that the angle almost turned the car over. There was a wrecker doing its best to get the car back upright and then on the road again. Ditches are tough,

And if you don't keep your eyes on the road, a ditch is waiting for you, and they can be very hard to get out of when you drive into one. In our faith walk, we realize quickly there are ditches everywhere, and satan makes them deep so we cannot get out of them. This is where God's grace gently lifts us out of the ditch and back on the narrow road, and we walk freely again in His forgiveness, all because of the blood of Jesus.

What happens when we get out of that ditch? His grace does a mighty work of drawing us deeper into God's righteousness, and it makes us realize where the ditches are, and we walk anew and upright in God's grace. The above car I mentioned got out of the ditch finally, but I am sure that in dragging it out, there was some damage done, and maybe a brake line was severed, or even worse. God's grace pulls us out of the ditch, and we are back to living our faith walk with His power and my salvation intact. That's just the way God works. If we try to qualify God's grace in "human" terms, we will fall short of its power every time. Keep in mind it is "God's" grace, not ours. Our grace is faulty and full of imperfect forgiveness, but God's grace is "complete" and much different than what the world offers.

There is a sad effect of not letting God completely pull us out of the ditch we find ourselves in. Our life might be busted during the effort to pull us out, as I mentioned about the car's brake lines being severed. Perfect grace and perfect forgiveness are a Godly grace that is like a stick of dynamite going off in our soul, because we encounter God in our deepest area, our soul, and that grace cleans out everything. This is why Paul wrote the following in 2 Corinthians 5: ¹⁷ Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. ¹⁸ Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, ¹⁹ namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.

God pulls us out of the ditch even when we don't realize the full extent of what He is doing, and then shows us His favor as forgiveness. This is not something we "work" for, but something He freely "gives" as an example of purity in His grace. I don't understand it, but I am thankful for it when I take my eyes off the road and run into "the ditch." The problem of running into the ditch is that without God's light on the road, we will hit the ditch without sometimes even realizing it. But God helps even in our blindness, and God spoke these words through the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 42: ¹⁶ “I will lead the blind by a way they do not know, In paths they do not know I will guide them. I will make darkness into light before them

And rugged places into plains. These are the things I will do, and I will not leave them undone.”

God's answer to the ditches in life is perfect grace, perfect power, and perfect redemption again and again.

The Pilgrimage Continues,

David Warren