God’s enabling grace wasn’t what my husband and I expected to see when we attended Dr. Paul Tripp’s marriage video series, What Did You Expect?,  at our church. After all, we reassured one another, we weren’t there to shore up our marriage. But as part of the research for my new book for special needs families that includes a marriage component.

As you might expect, the Holy Spirit used the series to reveal that realigning to His will certain attitudes within our marriage, rather than my book research, was the primary reason He’d prompted us to attend. It was a time of conviction and repentance for both of us, and our marriage benefited from it.

But, in what I have come to comprehend is the economy of God, He also used Dr. Tripp’s words in the final Sunday morning video to assure us and other couples of His constant presence and love. Dr. Tripp reminded us of a truth that brought me to tears because I immediately saw that it applied not only to the tough spots in our marriage, but to the hard places we’d experienced while parenting our son with special needs.

Dr. Tripp called this truth God’s enabling grace.

I was too busy hunting for a tissue as the words soothed my weary, convicted soul to scribble down Tripp’s exact definition. But an excerpt from his post about 6 kinds of grace explains it well:

“…grace reaches us where we are and takes us where God wants us to be. You see, God’s not simply content to give us salvation and then leave us alone until eternity. Rather, He wants us to become more like His Son and work for the furtherance of His Kingdom right here, right now.

But remaining sin leaves us lame and weak and unable. God’s grace intervenes to give us power and strength. It’s gives us the ability to do what we’re called to do but what we could never do on our own.”

To ready the rest of this post, go to the Key Ministry’s blog for special needs parents.

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