Oh, how we desperately need the grace of our loving God! Grace is the essence of our Triune God’s nature of shared life and love poured out into us. The one true living God of Holy Love continuously offers Himself to every person.

He designed us in such a way that we cannot flourish without Him personally dwelling within us. But sin tore us from God’s intimate presence. The result is that we’re merely dry clay, empty of life. We all thirst for life because until we turn back and give ourselves entirely to Him, we’re living a desolate wilderness existence. Our soul gasps for Him as a parched land (Psalm 143:6), and we don’t even realize our thirsty, hungry behavior is wrecking everything our heart truly needs.

We thirst for the living God. Everything within us cries out to Him (Psalm 42:2)!

God cries out to us, “If anyone is thirsty, let them come to Me and drink” (John 7:37)! 

When we picture the grace of God, what we see is His love, His compassion pouring Himself out toward us like a torrent of abundance into our deathly desert. Grace is holy love filling our empty void with Himself. 

Scripture reveals that God’s created purpose for all people is to be holy. That simply means the reason for our existence is to be fully loved by the Holy One, by being filled with His life. The only source of our holiness is the grace of the Triune God. We can’t be holy simply by wanting to be or trying really hard to have holy behavior. We are created for intimate union with God, mutual indwelling love. There is no other holiness apart from that reality in our lives. 

The grace of God is that He longs to love us so deeply, so completely that we’re utterly saturated with His life, satisfied and made completely whole.

How can this happen?

Young John Wesley was exhausted by perfectly disciplining his life striving to be holy. At last Wesley was encountered by love Himself. He grasped that sanctification was dependent upon receiving the grace of God’s life into our own; that an entirely sanctified life is rest, not striving! Therefore, instead of “spiritual disciplines” he preferred the “means of grace” to describe how to receive God’s holy love. 

Our barren lives must develop channels to receive the grace of living water into our wasteland. We must respond to grace. So, we face reality and humbly turn our attentions toward the fountain of life, drink of His pleasures as out of a river (Psalm 36:8-9). We position our gasping souls in such a way that He continuously has access to our inner being, pouring His gracious mercy into our thinking, our believing, and our living.

“Means of grace” is a phrase that describes how to posture oneself in continual dependence through an intimate face-to-face relationship with God. We don’t want to neglect our relationship with Him. If we do, we will return to empty, sinful, arid captivity (John 15:6).  

Our culture pulls constantly to distract our attention from our intimate dependence on God. So don’t be deceived; the “means of grace” are absolutely necessary for living a sanctified life, because the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives is holiness. The “means of grace” transform our neuropathways, creating new pathways for us to receive the God of love. Self-centeredness, which is the essence of sinfulness, can be washed away in the satisfaction of the abundance of His loving presence. He is the well of life.

The “means of grace” are daily habits we intentionally choose so we can receive His real life of love and give our lives to Him. They are personal responses of faith, acts of worship that give Him access to our beings, by which we receive His gracious self-offering. Bible study, prayer, small groups, corporate worship, Sabbath keeping, tithing, fasting, etc., are gifts from God. Through these the Holy Spirit pours Himself into our spiritual, emotional, rational, and physical lives forming us, joining us to Jesus, creating union with God, and enabling us to abide in mutual belonging with Him.

The “means of grace” are the ways we relate with Him. He has invited us through these into a feast of fellowship with Him, communion with the Holy One so that He can make us holy as He is holy.

Jesus alone can make us completely whole, to the very depths of our being. He is inviting us to “drink of joy from deathless springs,” to cling to Him through His Word. Then we will be united with Him in His resurrected life as God cascades His life into us.

Questions

1. Where am I currently striving to be holy (or to do the right things) instead of resting in and receiving God’s grace—and what would it look like to shift from striving to receiving?
2. Which “means of grace” (Bible study, prayer, small group, corporate worship, Sabbath, giving, fasting, etc.) am I neglecting right now, and what is one concrete daily/weekly habit I can start to better position myself toward God’s presence?

Photo: Judith Frietsch/Unsplash | This article was originally titled “Means of Grace” in the June 2026 issue of The War Cry.