“Every once in a while in the Samson story up pops a reminder of the fact that Samson is God’s man, set apart for God’s work, and it is God who is overruling the course of Samson’s actions and experience.  It is this part of the Samson story that gives us hope.  We too live tragic-comic flawed lives, lives full of mistakes and deficiencies, lives in which what we think of as our strengths take us ego-hopping and so become real weaknesses.  But God was God to Samson . . . (and) Samson’s God, who is our God, is a God of great patience and great grace.  Thus there is hope for us all.  Praise his name.”  J. I. Packer[1]

When I finally came under the spell of grace and realized that living a grace-governed life meant staying optimistic about God no matter what, I felt I needed a way to make grace portable.  What I came up with is what I call God’s Grace Pledge.  His Grace Pledge is, “Wherever you are in your story I will give you grace so you can give me glory.”  I believe this is an accurate summary of what God pledges in the scads of biblical verses represented by the following:

Call upon me in the day of trouble and I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail.  And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.[2]

Isn’t God pledging in these verses to give us grace wherever we are in our story so we can give him glory?  I think he is.  And employing his Grace Pledge is the third strategy I offer you for staying optimistic about God.  Let’s take a closer look.

Your life is your story.

No writer’s block curses you.  No blank page haunts you.  Instead, you’re Shakespeare prolific as line after line, paragraph after paragraph, chapter after chapter cataracts from the pen of your choices, decisions, reactions, and responses.  By now your manuscript is New York City phone book thick.  And you’re not finished.

Scary, isn’t it?  I’ll fess up.  Writing my story scares me.  I don’t write well.  I find character development especially bedeviling.  But I don’t fear a rejection slip when I’m through with my magnum opus.  I have the best editor in the business.   The Lord God edits my story.  Yours, too. And he knows how to write.

Someone asked author Shelby Foote about his writing mechanics: how did he go about the task of putting words on paper?  The Mississippi native drawled, “With an old steel tipped pen I dip in ink every few sentences.”[3]  Ask the Lord, “How do you go about editing your people’s stories?” He answers, “With a love tipped pen I dip in my grace every few sentences.” Your story, like mine, is a grace story.  Ours are grace stories because God promises to give us grace wherever we are.  He promises he’ll help us.  And one of the ways we experience his help is by employing his Grace Pledge.  I employ it by quoting it and praying it constantly.  Allow me to share with you two examples of how I use the Grace Pledge, one from my ordinary days, the other from my self-made messes.

I quote the Grace Pledge and pray it to enjoy Grace Pleasures[4] on ordinary days. 

I’m an ordinary man.  I live an ordinary life.  Most of my days pass in metronomic sameness.  But this ordinary man named Charley Chase is also a Grace Person.  This means the extraordinary God offers me Grace Pleasures as I go through my day.  And I am learning to appropriate more and more of them by employing the Grace Pledge.  A couple of for instances; one from the other day, the other from today.  My wife and I have been struggling over something our neighbors have been doing.  A few days ago, I finally decided it was time to talk with them.  So, about 5:30 in the afternoon, I quoted the Grace Pledge and prayed it.  “Father, you tell me wherever I am in my story, you will give me grace so I can give you glory.  You know I need to speak to Harry (not my neighbor’s real name).  Please let him be in his yard and let me have a good talk with him.  Help me to be neighborly in what I say and him neighborly in how he receives it.”  Harry was outside and we had a problem resolving talk.  I went inside giving God glory for giving me grace where I was in my story.

Again, tonight I have to speak about one of our graduates at our school’s annual Senior Honors banquet.  I’m expected to say something meaningful in one minute.  So, I reminded myself of God’s Grace Pledge and turned to him and prayed, “Father, you tell me that wherever I am in my story you’ll give me grace so I can give you glory.  I need your grace help to come up with something fitting for my senior.  Please help me.”  Shortly after that, I spotted and cut a rose from this girl’s character garden.  I put it in the vase of a paragraph, watered it again with prayer, and plan on giving it to her in about five hours.  Then I gave God glory for giving me grace where I was in my story.[5]

These two examples, I give God glory in saying, are becoming the norm for me.  My ordinary life is becoming the venue for my extraordinary Grace God’s goodness as I experience Grace Pleasure after Grace Pleasure by employing the Grace Pledge.  I encourage you to employ it too.  

I also employ the Grace Pledge when I’m in a self-made mess.

I’m sad to say that my story is sometimes darker than a witch’s heart.  And I’m the reason.  In these times I’m like Alabama QB Kenny “The Snake” Stabler.  He hurt his knee one year, couldn’t play football, and quit going to class.  Soon this telegram came: “You are indefinitely suspended from the Alabama football team.  Paul W. Bryant.”  The next day a second telegram arrived, reading, “He means it.  Joe Willie Namath.”  Stabler was in a self-caused mess.  Like the kind Abraham got in trying to save his own skin by lying about Sarah in Egypt; and David got in by Hugh Hefner conduct compounded with mafia hit man ruthlessness; and Jonah got in by going AWOL; and Peter got in by sleeping when he should have been supplicating[6]  – to name just a few of the godly people who were arrested, booked, fingerprinted, and jailed for self-caused messes.  I’ve shared a cell with them.  Haven’t you?

Being in a self-caused mess is like being buried alive.  You’re in a casket of shame; you feel the jolt as it’s lowered into the ground; you hear shovelfuls of dirt bombarding the lid; you’re clawing frantically to get out; and suffocating with despair.  But I’ve found good news in my coffin:  the Lord is ready to jump down, brush away the dirt, pry open the lid, and lift me out.  His grace pledge is wherever I am in my story he’ll give me grace so I can give him glory.

Lewis Grizzard says “Life’s like a dogsled team.  If you ain’t the lead dog, the scenery never changes.”  That’s funny but false.  Grace is a scenery changer.  Grace changed the scenery for Abraham, David, Jonah, and Peter.  They experienced grace in their self-caused messes.  So have I.  Again and again, as I’ve employed God’s Grace Pledge I’ve found him helping me.  You’ll find him doing the same for you.

One way God gives us grace in our self-caused messes is by refusing to quit on us.
Michael Pitino is the son of basketball coach Rick Pitino.  One summer Rick offered Michael a job at his basketball camp.  Michael opted for employment at a Kentucky thoroughbred farm.  A few days of shoveling something besides hay quickly dispelled the job’s glamour.  Michael was ready for a career change.  He called his dad.  His pitch ended with, “Dad, I just want to come and work at your camp.”  Rick understood.  Then said, “No.”  Michael was a Pitino.  Pitino’s don’t quit.

Neither does grace.  Grace is God telling us, “Nothing will make me wash my hands of you!”  Grace’s wedding day vow to us was “for better or worse . . . I plight thee my troth.”  Even when we give grace grounds for divorce, it never files.  Does an emergency room doctor refuse to treat a patient bleeding from attempted suicide?  Don’t be ridiculous!  He’s an emergency room doctor for heaven’s sake!  So is grace.  Grace is there when you’re wheeled in on a gurney, hemorrhaging from self-inflicted wounds, pulse barely detectable, close to flat lining.  Grace’s Hippocratic oath is “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”[7]  Even in a self-caused mess God won’t quit on you.  Are you in one now?  Don’t listen to Satan.  God hasn’t given you up.  And won’t.

A second way God will give us grace in our self-caused messes is by forgiving us the moment we confess.
I’m not a computer genius.  Best Buy will never hire me as a geek.  But I’m a whiz with one computer skill.  I’m the Bill Gates of deleting.  I get plenty of practice with advertisements slipping over my spam border.  Two of the most annoying are for Viagra and Valium.  (Yea, I think so too.  What do they think they know about me?)  When these ads show up I delete them on their merry way.

I say with no irreverence, in fact, just the opposite, with awe: God has a delete button.  “If we confess our sins we will find him faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”[8]  When you confess sin, even the sin of a self-caused mess, the Lord deletes it so completely nothing’s left on your hard drive.  The blood of Jesus cleanses from all sin!  Believe this when you’re in a self-caused mess.  Defy Satan’s lie that you’re hopeless, lean not to your own understanding, remember the Lord’s thoughts are not your thoughts and his ways are not your ways, and confess and experience again how amazing grace is.

A third way God will give us grace in a self-caused mess is by helping us in the mess.
Sometimes his grace will don its SWAT team uniform, kick down the door, and rescue you from the mess.  You find him doing this with Abraham, Lot, Jonah, and Hezekiah.[9]  He may well add your name to this list.

At other times God will leave you in the mess.  Like a father pep-talking his just beaned Little Leaguer back into the batter’s box to remove the boy’s fear of getting hit again—and giving the boy the opportunity of turning the tables by becoming a hitter pitchers fear—the heavenly Father doesn’t lift us out of a problem we’ve caused ourselves.  He does something else: he gives us whatever we need to handle things submissively so that we come out with improved character.  You find him doing this with Jacob, Zacharias, and Peter.[10] He may well add your name to this list.

But either way—by rescuing you from your self-made mess or helping you face it in a way that brings him glory and you good—he will be there with you and for you.  Even in a self-made mess you will find him “a very present help in trouble.”[11]  And the thing to do when you’re in such a mess is remind yourself of his Grace Pledge and pray it to the Father whose pledge to you it is.

It’s always—ALWAYS—best not to sin. 

No sin is “little.”  Each is what Joseph called “great wickedness against God.”[12]  It’s always—ALWAYS—best to follow Moses and choose “to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.”[13]  Yet fall you may.  When your story becomes a chapter about a self-made mess you’ll be sorely tempted to despair.  Satan will tell you your situation is hopeless.  Your own heart will agree.  But God won’t.  Even when you find yourself in a self-caused mess of epic proportions, he will not quit on you; he will forgive you; and he will help you handle it his way.

Somerset Maugham called Monaco “A sunny place for shady characters.”  God’s Grace Pledge assures you that’s what his grace is when you’re a shady Christian.  You have his word on it.  Maybe even as you read this you’re in the shade.  You can come back into the sun by reminding yourself “Wherever I am in my story, God will give me grace so I can give him glory,” and turning to him and saying “Father, I’m in a self-made mess in my story.  I need your grace.  Please forgive me and either deliver me or help me handle what I’ve done in a way that honors you and brings good to me.”  Do that and you’ll see: Wherever you are in your story, God will give you grace so you can give him glory.

You begin giving him glory all day long.

When you begin employing the Grace Pledge in your ordinary days and self-made messes you find something wonderful happening as God gives you grace:  you begin giving him glory all day long.  Employing the Grace Pledge turns ordinary living into an adventure that makes Indiana Jones’ days and nights seem tame as kissing your sister.  God becomes real to you.  Instead of being someone you chat with for a moment in a Quiet Time, then forget about like a pencil put behind your ear, he becomes so present, paramount, and participatory in your life that you wake up looking forward to what his grace has in store for you today.   As you stay in touch with him through employing the Grace Pledge every day, all day long, you begin enjoying him.  And precious things like joy, peace, praise, thanksgiving, and obedience become daily realities.  In other words, as he gives you grace wherever you are in your story, you begin giving him glory as never before.

Employ God’s Grace Pledge

Strategy number three for staying optimistic about God works.  Because it does, I recommend that you employ God’s Grace Pledge.

Charley Lynn Chase is a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is a teacher at First Presbyterian Day School in Macon, Ga. This article is a chapter in his forthcoming book “Grace Focused Optimism: Learning to Live the Grace-Governed Life of Optimism About God.”

[1] J. I. Packer, Never Beyond Hope, (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 31.

[2] Psalm 50:15; Psalm 23.6; Luke 22:31-32; Romans 8:38-39; Philippians 1:6.

[3] This quote comes from C-SPAN’s Brian Lamb’s television interview of Foote broadcast a number of years back.

[4] Grace Pleasures are the good things God is willing to give us, per Matthew 7:11, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”

[5] I give God glory by testifying that, after the banquet, this student’s mother told someone that what was said about her daughter was meaningful and appreciated.

[6] Abraham, Genesis 12:14-13:4; David, 2 Samuel 11; Jonah, Jonah 1-2; Peter, Luke 22:31-34; 54-62.

[7] Hebrews 13:5.

[8] I John 1.9.

[9] Abraham: Genesis 12:10-13:4; Lot: Genesis 19:15-16; Jonah: Jonah 2; Hezekiah: 1 Kings 22:32-33.

[10] Jacob: Genesis 48:15-16; Zacharias: Luke 1:5-23; 1:57-79; Peter: Luke 22:31-34.

[11] Psalm 46:1.

[12] Genesis 39:9.  Charles Spurgeon reminds us, “Whatever the grace of God may do for us, it cannot make sin a right thing, or a safe thing, or a permissible thing.  It is evil, only evil, and that continually.  O children of God, be not enslaved by fleshly lusts!  O Nazarites unto God, guard your locks, lest they be cut away by sin while you are sleeping in the lap of pleasure!  O servants of Jehovah, serve the Lord with heart and soul by his grace even to the end, and keep yourselves unshorn by the world!”  Charles Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Volume 33, (London: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1969), 15.

[13] Hebrews 11:25.