Although I’ve heard about the grace of God most of my life, starting with my childhood upbringing in Southern Baptist churches, it was only a few years ago that I began to understand the concept and then to experience living a grace-filled life.

I started by looking up the word in the dictionary, where I discovered that grace means:  “the unmerited divine assistance for humans for their regeneration and sanctification.”

Of course, I next had to look up the word sanctification or sanctify to learn that it means: to be free from sin.

Pulling these two together, living a grace filled life means to experience the unmerited divine assistance of God so that we can live a life free from sin.  Now, I don’t know about you, but with my Southern Baptist roots, the word “sin” carries an enormous negative charge, so let’s look a bit closer at its meaning.

According to Eric Butterworth, sin is an ancient archery term that literally means, “off the mark.”  In olden days if you missed the bull’s eye of the target you had sinned – you’d missed the mark.  From a life purpose perspective, being off the mark is the same as being off purpose — another way of talking about those times when your life is being shaped by fear, lack and struggle.

Living a grace filled life means we can enjoy and benefit from Divine Spirit assisting us to live a life on purpose and we don’t have to earn it because it’s a given – it’s unmerited. So, if you’ve ever thought, “Life isn’t fair,” you’re right!

Life is actually rigged in YOUR FAVOR!  

And if you’re not experiencing being in the flow of life, you’re working hard to resist the flow of the Universe.  Many years ago while attending the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine I took up white water canoeing along with some of the other vet students.  Our guide was a wise and knowledgeable college professor who also loved canoeing named Dr. Dawe, who took us under his wing so that we wouldn’t drown before we graduated.

His first safety lesson was very simple.  “When you fall into the waters at a set of rapids, be sure to keep your feet out in front of you, your head up out of the water, then relax and enjoy the ride.”

What if we approached our lives like this, instead of resisting the ride, we simply sat back and enjoyed riding the rapids of Universal flow?

This is why one of Life On Purpose Institute’s key Purpose Operating Principles is to “flow with what’s flowing, and work on what’s working,” rather than get caught up in whatever might not be flowing.

So, a few purposeful pondering questions to help you integrate today’s insights into you life:

Where are you resisting the natural flow of the Universe?

How could your life be enhanced if you were willing to “flow with what’s flowing, and work on what’s working?”