There are a lot of bad definitions of God's grace out there. I think a lot of people, confuse it with mercy. They think that God's grace or that grace is God's willingness to overlook their failures and their shortcomings and love them despite their sin.
But that's not grace. That's mercy if anything else. Another poor definition I've heard for grace is that it's unmarried or deserved favor. And frankly, that definition is even worse. John 1:14 tells us that Jesus came from the Father full of grace and truth. And Luke 2:52 tells us that He grew in favor with both God and man.
So grace for us, isn't something that's unmerited because it was given to Christ and because He abides in us, we're made worthy.
What's the point? If we look back at John chapter one, verse 16, it informs us that for, "From his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace." Now, this is part of our going from strength to strength in that is mentioned in Psalms 84.
Grace is more than favor or a blessing. It is a divine empowerment. It is, I believe, the empowering presence of God that abides within you, that power that transforms you, grace is what enables you to become the man or woman that God sees when He looks at you.
You see God's perception of you is through the lens of Jesus. It's not according to what you've done, or according to your behavior. Grace is something that each of us desperately needs and depends on. You need to not just acknowledge, but you need to embrace the grace of God because grace also empowers you to believe and experience Christ's fullness.
God knows you. He looks at you from a place of completion, not from where you started or from where you are now. I like to remind people that God invented time and He exists outside of time and He holds it in His hands. But when He looks at you, He's always seen you across the span of time. And so He not only sees you where you are now, He sees you in the future. And that's where God fixes His gaze on you, just as He did with Gideon, who the angel addressed as a "mighty man of God," long before Gideon fit that description.
It's how He looked at Moses before, Abraham, or Joseph, or Ruth, or Mary Magdalene, or any of the disciples, and basically any and every child of God. He sees us full and completed.
So, here's what you need to understand in your heart: He loved you in the past. He loved you first, before you loved Him. He loves who you are now. He loves who you are becoming and He knows far better than you do the process of growth that takes you from where you are, to where you will be.
And the important thing is, is He has patience for it. He loves you through that process. There isn't any part of us that God doesn't love because He is love.

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