By the Grace of God

This weekend I had a retreat for the servants/leadership team in my youth group. It was a wonderful experience to be able to open up to the Lord and recommit my life to Him over again, as it is important to continually give our lives over to Him. Giving ourselves to the Lord isn’t a one time thing. We started Saturday morning with mass and finished the day with confession and adoration. For me, adoration was amazing, as I’m sure it was for everyone else. Lately, I have really been struggling to see the beauty within me and to see myself as Jesus sees me so I praying all week and starting Friday night in our communal prayer asking Christ to show me myself in His eyes. He kept giving me the verse Song of Songs 4:7 “You are all beautiful, my beloved, there is no blemish within you”. So I was just giving myself to the Lord telling Him I give everything that is mine and completely emptying myself so that He may fulfill my every need and become the strength I need to keep pressing on, but also to spread the word of God and share His glory with others. After our Holy Hour everyone wanted to be crazy and play ridiculous games, but I knew the Lord wasn’t done speaking to my heart. I really wanted to bond and grow in fellowship with my brothers and sisters, but I knew God was calling me to Himself to speak to me in a more intimate way.

You see, during adoration I ended up just sitting with my arms open and completely opened myself up asking the Lord to come into my heart. Now He wanted to speak to me. First I started by reading An Introduction to the Devout Life by St. Francis de Sales to help me come back to my quiet place. That night we also began our consecration to Jesus through Mary done by St. Francis de Montfort, so I began by reflecting more on the day one readings and journaling what had been on my mind during my meditation.

Following this I began to read from my Volume II Conversations with the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus written by Anne the lay apostle(http://www.directionforourtimes.org/). The passage I came to was about something we had heard in one of the talks earlier that day. Jesus was reminding us to examine our intentions of our actions to be sure we are acting from our heart as Jesus desires. He was also reminding us to not become discouraged when things don’t go as we suspect or hope which goes around to trusting in His divine will and that whatever happens must be a part of His will which was nice for me to hear since this year I will be having life changing decisions to make. So finding that passage God was reminding me to be His servant and strive to serve Him with the purest of intentions.

With this I still felt God more to say and He did. I started flipping through my bible hoping the Holy Spirit would guide my pages and surely enough He did. I came to few passages I’d read before, but one really hit home, and it was a new one. The Lord showed me 1 Corinthians 15:10 “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them-yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.” This verse, I felt, described me perfectly. Having converted to the Catholic faith many tell me that I am amazing and what I’ve done is amazing, but it was not I who did this. It was not I who nagged at my heart to the point where I could no longer resist, but Jesus. Only by the grace of God am I here! If it weren’t for God placing certain people in my life when He did I wouldn’t even be alive today of this I’m sure. If he hadn’t placed Jaime and Tim in my life I would have never been introduced to the faith. Therefore, it is only by the grace of God that I am where I am. Were it not for His divine will, his mercy, and his glorious grace, where would I be? Where would you be?




If it were not for the grace of God where would you be today?

Keep praying!
God bless!

In Jesus&Mary,
amber