The Grace That Makes Us Holy Order Printed Copy

Author: Gloria Copeland
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About the Book

"The Grace That Makes Us Holy" by Gloria Copeland explores the transformative power of grace in the lives of believers. Copeland emphasizes that it is through grace that we are made holy and empowered to live a life of victory and freedom. She encourages readers to embrace God's grace and trust in His ability to transform and sanctify them.

St. Patrick

St. Patrick, (flourished 5th century, Britain and Ireland; feast day March 17), patron saint and national apostle of Ireland, credited with bringing Christianity to Ireland and probably responsible in part for the Christianization of the Picts and Anglo-Saxons. He is known only from two short works, the Confessio, a spiritual autobiography, and his Letter to Coroticus, a denunciation of British mistreatment of Irish Christians. Patrick was born in Britain of a Romanized family. At age 16 he was torn by Irish raiders from the villa of his father, Calpurnius, a deacon and minor local official, and carried into slavery in Ireland. He spent six bleak years there as a herdsman, during which he turned with fervour to his faith. Upon dreaming that the ship in which he was to escape was ready, he fled his master and found passage to Britain. There he came near to starvation and suffered a second brief captivity before he was reunited with his family. Thereafter, he may have paid a short visit to the Continent. The best known passage in the Confessio tells of a dream, after his return to Britain, in which one Victoricus delivered him a letter headed “The Voice of the Irish.” As he read it, he seemed to hear a certain company of Irish beseeching him to walk once more among them. “Deeply moved,” he says, “I could read no more.” Nevertheless, because of the shortcomings of his education, he was reluctant for a long time to respond to the call. Even on the eve of reembarkation for Ireland he was beset by doubts of his fitness for the task. Once in the field, however, his hesitations vanished. Utterly confident in the Lord, he journeyed far and wide, baptizing and confirming with untiring zeal. In diplomatic fashion he brought gifts to a kinglet here and a lawgiver there but accepted none from any. On at least one occasion, he was cast into chains. On another, he addressed with lyrical pathos a last farewell to his converts who had been slain or kidnapped by the soldiers of Coroticus. Careful to deal fairly with the non-Christian Irish, he nevertheless lived in constant danger of martyrdom. The evocation of such incidents of what he called his “laborious episcopate” was his reply to a charge, to his great grief endorsed by his ecclesiastical superiors in Britain, that he had originally sought office for the sake of office. In point of fact, he was a most humble-minded man, pouring forth a continuous paean of thanks to his Maker for having chosen him as the instrument whereby multitudes who had worshipped “idols and unclean things” had become “the people of God.” The phenomenal success of Patrick’s mission is not, however, the full measure of his personality. Since his writings have come to be better understood, it is increasingly recognized that, despite their occasional incoherence, they mirror a truth and a simplicity of the rarest quality. Not since St. Augustine of Hippo had any religious diarist bared his inmost soul as Patrick did in his writings. As D.A. Binchy, the most austerely critical of Patrician (i.e., of Patrick) scholars, put it, “The moral and spiritual greatness of the man shines through every stumbling sentence of his ‘rustic’ Latin.” It is not possible to say with any assurance when Patrick was born. There are, however, a number of pointers to his missionary career having lain within the second half of the 5th century. In the Coroticus letter, his mention of the Franks as still “heathen” indicates that the letter must have been written between 451, the date generally accepted as that of the Franks’ irruption into Gaul as far as the Somme River, and 496, when they were baptized en masse. Patrick, who speaks of himself as having evangelized heathen Ireland, is not to be confused with Palladius, sent by Pope Celestine I in 431 as “first bishop to the Irish believers in Christ.” Toward the end of his life, he retired to Saul, where he may have written his Confessio. It is said that an angel conveyed to him that he was to die at Saul, the site of his first church, despite his wishes to die within the ecclesiastical metropolis of Ireland. His last rites were administered by St. Tussach (also spelled Tassach or Tassac). Legends Before the end of the 7th century, Patrick had become a legendary figure, and the legends have continued to grow. One of these would have it that he drove the snakes of Ireland into the sea to their destruction. Patrick himself wrote that he raised people from the dead, and a 12th-century hagiography places this number at 33 men, some of whom are said to have been deceased for many years. He also reportedly prayed for the provision of food for hungry sailors traveling by land through a desolate area, and a herd of swine miraculously appeared. Another legend, probably the most popular, is that of the shamrock, which has him explain the concept of the Holy Trinity, three persons in one God, to an unbeliever by showing him the three-leaved plant with one stalk. Traditionally, Irishmen have worn shamrocks, the national flower of Ireland, in their lapels on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17.

Did God Hear Me - Where Was He When My Sister Died

The ancient Hebrew songwriter of Psalm 116 sings with joy, I love the Lord, because he has heard my voice and my pleas for mercy. . . . The snares of death encompassed me; the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me; I suffered distress and anguish. Then I called on the name of the Lord: “O Lord, I pray, deliver my soul!” Gracious is the Lord, and righteous; our God is merciful. . . . For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling. (Psalm 116:1–8) This is the collective testimony of God’s people — he loves us, and we love him. And because he loves us, our Savior has promised that when we pray for anything according to his will, he will answer us (John 14:13–14). In two previous articles, I wrote about how I prayed for my daughter’s life when she was diagnosed with a terminal form of cancer and how Jesus answered my prayer. In nothing short of a miracle, Jesus healed her and delivered me and my wife from inconsolable sorrows (Philippians 2:27). God is good, and he is merciful, and, yes, he hears our cries for help. Then March of this year happened. My sister was diagnosed with a terminal form of cancer. My family was still grieving her 40-year-old son who, just months earlier, died tragically and unexpectedly from a heart attack. The news of my sister’s cancer emotionally overwhelmed us. We prayed for a miracle. Trusting in her Lord with whether she lived or died, my sister breathed her last breath on June 3rd. My heart is broken, and I’m still grieving. There have been days when I didn’t think I would be able to get out of bed. Everything is harder. Writing an article about death is harder. “God hears the prayers of the righteous — and he is still righteous and good when he answers no.” After praying with me for my sister’s life and then mourning with me over her death, Desiring God gave me an opportunity to share from our mourning. So I want to try to comfort others with the comfort of God that I am seeking. I want to help Christians see how enduring suffering rests on an important truth. Our comfort comes from embracing the truth that God hears the prayers of the righteous — and that he is still righteous and good when he answers no. What We Don’t Understand Yet The Bible teaches that when God’s children are in despair, he wants us to pray, knowing that he will answer (1 Peter 5:7). But the Bible doesn’t promise to limit the infinite answers of God to our finite understandings. While God’s answers are always consistent with who he is (good, all-wise, righteous, and merciful), his thoughts and ways are incalculably higher than ours. So sometimes when we pray for God to keep us from the sorrows that fill this broken world, his perfect answer will be, “No, my grace is sufficient for you” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Consider the agony of seeing your miraculously born, perfectly just, and sinless son hanging from a wickedly unjust, cruel Roman cross. Mary didn’t knowingly pray for that. Wasn’t the horror of the cross crushing to her? Yet God ordained the cross, and for the joy set before him, Jesus willingly submitted to the Father and endured it. Before we see him on the cross, we see him alone in the garden. And there, we see him in agony, trembling and pleading with his Father three times to take his cup of wrath away (Matthew 26:39–44). Yes, God is good, and whenever he allows suffering, he has good purposes behind it, even when we don’t understand (Genesis 50:20). Jesus knew that and surrendered to his Father’s perfect will and drank the full cup of God’s wrath. He endured the greatest suffering of all, and by doing so, brought about the greatest good of all, redemption — the overthrow of death, sin, and all that is evil. The Real Problem with Death When we pray for our dying loved ones, what are we really asking for? Like Hezekiah, are we asking God to give them more years (2 Kings 20:1, 5–6)? God heard his prayers and saw his tears and extended his life by fifteen years. When we pray, and our loved ones are with us for another day, or month, or year, we should give thanks through tears. I treasured the three months that God gave us with my sister. She was able to say her final goodbyes, see her grandchildren, and express her unwavering faith in Jesus. She glorified God in her death (Philippians 1:20). However, we should also remember eternity in our prayers. In our pleading with God, we should first pray for our loved one’s salvation — that whether they live or die, they make their calling and election sure. For even if God extends their lives, what are years in light of eternity? All our lives are just a vapor. The real problem with death isn’t when we die . The real problem is that we will die . The sage of Ecclesiastes bluntly writes, “No man has power to retain the spirit, or power over the day of death” (Ecclesiastes 8:8). Jesus came for that reason. He came to abolish death and bring life and immortality to light (2 Timothy 1:10). Because the wages of sin is death, the Son of God became man, so that he could live a sinless life and then give that life as the payment for our sin (1 Peter 3:18). Prayer for Your Mourning Jesus’s resurrection validated his victory and authority over death. He is the resurrection and the life. Our loved ones who die in Christ go directly into his presence. We can comfort ourselves with that truth. No one has to mourn without hope when their loved ones die in Christ (1 Thessalonians 4:13–14). In the end, Christ will remove death from creation when he makes a new heaven and a new earth (1 Corinthians 15:26; Revelation 21:4). Until then, we do deeply mourn (Philippians 2:27), but because of Christ we have a balm to heal our broken hearts. In a confession of desperation, when facing an insurmountable enemy, Judah’s King Jehoshaphat cried out to the Lord, “We are powerless against this great horde that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you” (2 Chronicles 20:12). May I encourage you to make this your prayer as you mourn? “You won’t always understand why you suffer, but you must believe that God does.” Perhaps you have prayed and asked God to heal your loved one. Instead, you’ve been struck like Job by the cruelty of our mortal enemy — death (Job 1:4–5, 18–19). Your songs aren’t songs of joy. They are laments from a heart that is reeling from the jarring pain that comes with the death of a spouse, a child, a sibling, a best friend, or someone whom you’ve deeply loved. You won’t always understand why you suffer, but you must believe that God does. You can, therefore, pray and ask God to comfort you, knowing that he is good even when he ordains that you suffer. How I Comfort My Soul As you mourn, perhaps your prayer can sound like this: Jesus, I believe that you love me. You went to the cross for me and saved me. Fill my heart with the light of your love when the darkness of sorrow encompasses me. Jesus, you are the infinite, all-powerful Son of God, and you became man so that you could be my sympathetic High Priest, who feels all my weaknesses and pains (Hebrews 4:15). Help me to mourn. You know the pain of death. You wept over your friend Lazarus, and you mourned with his sisters. Remind me that you are bottling up every tear that falls from my eyes (Psalm 56:8). Jesus, you are not indifferent to death nor to my struggle with it. You hate death (John 11:33; Ezekiel 18:32) and came to put death to death. When you rose from the dead, you conquered death, and you shared your victory over death with all who believe in you. Comfort me with the reality that you are the resurrection and the life, and because of this, my believing loved one has eternal life in your presence. Lord, you appoint the day when everyone dies and stands before you in judgment (Hebrews 9:27). I can’t put people into heaven or hell. You are the judge of all the earth, and you always do what is right even when I can’t comprehend it (Genesis 18:25). You mourned over an unbelieving Israel (Matthew 23:37). Help me to know that you are good even when I mourn the death of unbelieving loved ones. Father, all good gifts come from you. Through my tears, I thank you for giving me my loved one, and for the time that you gave me as I mourn the years that I won’t have. This is how I am comforting my soul. I thank God for making my sister to be our family evangelist. She brought me to church when I was twenty. I heard the gospel, and God saved me. I thank God for giving her eternal life so that she never saw death (John 8:51). When she breathed her last breath here, she opened her eyes looking into the radiance of the glory that shines from his face. And I thank God for his word that teaches all of us that Jesus is the ultimate gift, and God is enough to satisfy our souls (Psalms 73:25–26). Until Christ comes or brings us home, I pray that God will comfort our hearts with these precious truths so that we can comfort others who are mourning.