#155: Grace Beneath the Waves: How to give grace to others

Grace In Real Life podcast

Learn the four powerful steps of forgiveness, three ways to practically show people grace in your real life, and 10 simple ways to lead with humility in Episode 155.

People frustrate us, right? We bump up against each other’s sharp edges when we live, work, and play together. To live and love as Christ calls us to live and love, we must extend grace to others.

I would imagine many of you have hard people in your life. Maybe you have a neighbor who hosts loud parties every Saturday night, and it disrupts your sleep. Maybe you have an in-law who passively aggressively makes comments about your parenting and cooking, so you never feel quite enough around her. Maybe you have a boss who drops comments about what an unsatisfactory job you’re doing.

Or maybe you can’t think of a “hard” person to love in your life, but your kids or your husband – who you adore – drive you crazy sometimes. No matter how often you tell them to feed the dog, put their dirty laundry in the hamper, or rinse their glass before putting it in the dishwasher, they cannot figure it out.

The redundancy of having to tell people over and over what to do and how to do it is driving you bananas! Y’all, giving grace to humans is hard work.

In today’s episode, you’ll learn how to offer grace to others through

• The four steps of forgiveness
• Three ways to practically show people grace in your real life,
• And 10 simple ways to lead with humility

How do we go about showing grace?

Where do we go from here? How do we give grace to others, whether they are people we adore or people who drive us nuts, or people who have wounded us?

What does showing grace to others look like?

Grace leads us to repentance. Before we can offer grace to others, we need to repent. Of what mindset about the people in your life, or of what response or reaction to the people in your life do you need to repent?

Grace leads us to forgive others. The process of forgiveness involves counting the debt, canceling that debt, releasing judgment, and allowing God to fill your deficit.

Grace leads us to show grace to others. Here are three ways we can practically offer grace to people in our real life: Set boundaries, know your people, and lead with humility.

Showing grace can look like forgiveness

You might need to forgive someone for:

• Hurting or dismissing your feelings
• Saying unkind things about how you looked in high school
• Excluding you from a girls’ night out
• Cutting you off in traffic
• Talking back and defiantly disobeying you
• Or even physically violating you

We can tell we’re living in un-forgiveness when we tend toward:

• Anger
• Judgment
• Anxiety
• A heavy heart
• Rehearsing arguments
• Avoiding the other person or situation
• Not sleeping well
• Bitterness… I mean, the list can go on and on.

Forgiveness is not our default. Forgiveness is not

• Easy
• A feeling
• Condoning bad behavior
• Saying what happened to you is okay
• Forgetting what happened
• And it’s not a free pass for someone to keep hurting you.

Quotes about showing grace

• “The only natural response to receiving grace is sharing grace with others.” - Jill E. McCormick
• “Grace leads us to repentance.” - Jill E. McCormick
• “God is grace, and He offers Himself to you, so you can offer grace to others.”- Jill E. McCormick
• “Before we can offer grace to others, we need to repent.” - Jill E. McCormick

If you’d like to learn more about how to offer God’s grace to others, check these out:

• #34: How to be a grace-giver this election season
• #67: Easy and practical ways to give your kids grace [Grace in Parenting series]
• #124: God, Grace + Emotions: Giving grace in anxiety and depression with J.S. (Joon) Park

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• #153: What does God’s grace mean?
• #154: How to receive God’s grace
• First Freedoms by Jennifer Barnett

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