It’s easy for us to take people and things for granted and grace can, sadly, become something which fails to thrill our hearts if we do this. ‘Familiarity breeds contempt’, the proverb says. The problem with so much of ‘everyday church’ is that we equate ‘every day’ with commonplace, routine or ordinary and then fail to appreciate all that God is and is doing for us. We need to allow God to develop in us gratitude and thankfulness for the blessings He bestows on us every day.
God’s common grace is available to all, sustaining the universe (Heb 1:3) and giving us all a conscience (see Rom 1:19). Common grace is seen in God’s continuing care for his creation, his restraining human society from becoming altogether intolerable and ungovernable, his making it possible for mankind to live together in a generally orderly and cooperative manner, and maintaining man’s conscious sense of basic right and wrong behaviour.
God’s saving grace makes it possible for us to be forgiven and to come to salvation through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. We are saved by grace through face (Eph 2:4-5, 8-10) and by God’s love and mercy (see Rom 3:23-24, Rom 5:8). God’s prevenient grace goes before us, searching for the lost in the same way that the shepherd sought the lost sheep (Luke 15:1-7, Luke 19:10) Grace is how we start the Christian life and is how we continue in it (see Gal 3:2-6). Grace is necessary, therefore, not simply for our salvation, but also for our ordinary, everyday lives because God is there, working in our ordinary, everyday lives and the way that He works does not change.
Everyday church acknowledges that the Christian life is possible only because God is with us, promising us His presence as the constant in our lives, showering grace on us so that goodness and love follow us every day of our lives. (Ps 23:6) Let’s not get bored with everyday church, for every single day of our lives, God’s grace is available to us; He is our healer, our provider, our strong tower, our place of refuge, our best friend, our Lord. He is the reason that we sing; the reason we can get up every morning and live lives which may seem monotonous, routine or dull to others, but lives which actually we know by faith are filled with divine purpose and eternal significance. (2 Pet 1:3-4)
‘Teach me, my God and King,
in all things Thee to see,
and what I do in anything
to do it as for Thee.
A servant with this clause
makes drudgery divine:
who sweeps a room, as for thy laws,
makes that and the action fine.’ (‘Teach Me, My God and King’)