The Grace of God : The Gift We Don't Deserve, the Love We Can't Believe

In order to be a people of grace, we have to understand the story of grace...and how grace transforms us. Grace is more story than doctrine. It's more than forgiveness or compassion. It's undeserved by definition, essential to salvation. And it turns out that God's grace—though it's the only thing we stand on and the only thing we should stand for—is the very thing that we consistently distort and hesitate to extend to others. Why is that? Even now, as we think about the simple and unconditional nature of grace, our instincts cling to complexity and conditions. We wonder: "What does grace have to do with justice or judgement?" "How does grace overcome repeated misbehavior or bad habits?" To understand the story of grace—what it means and how it's misunderstood, why we need it and how it was given to us—we have to begin at the beginning... Follow Andy Stanley as he traces the story of grace through the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, peering into the lives of biblical characters to discover how each story reveals grace to be God's preeminent characteristic from the very beginning. See the narrative of Scripture in light of this grace as Pastor Andy reveals: Why creation itself was an act of grace. Why grace is inviting to the unrighteous and threatening to the self-righteous. Why grace is so predictably unpredictable. Why no effort of ours can add to God's grace.   Combining biblical study, personal story, and an urgent message to today's Christians and churches—The Grace of God is Andy Stanley's clearest, most powerful message on the thing that defines our relationship with our God and with one another.