If God Had Not Stepped In With Grace, None Of Us Would Be Here;

We ask the question that changes how we see our past and our future: where would we be today without God’s grace. We ground everything in 1 Corinthians 15:10 and tell the truth about how grace saves, sustains, protects, and transforms. 
• reflecting on personal moments where grace stepped in 
• anchoring our identity in “By the grace of God I am what I am” 
• breaking down three pillars of grace: gift, multiplication over mistakes, power to grow 
• walking through Old Testament examples of undeserved grace: Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Joseph, Moses, the Israelites 
• learning from Paul’s story of radical change and calling 
• naming the unseen protection of grace: closed doors, spared harm, unanswered prayers 
• sharing grief and loss while trusting grace to carry us through storms 
• celebrating transformation: grace breaking chains and restoring what sin tried to destroy 
• asking listeners to respond personally to the question “Where would you be without grace?” 
If you’re not a child of God today, all you gotta do is sit down somewhere, close your eyes, ask the Lord to forgive you for all your sins, to come into your heart and be your Savior.

Transcript

Welcome And Ways To Support

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You're listening to Bible Talk with Sister Deb Osborne. I'd like to give a thanks to all the supporters and listeners. Hey, go visit our website at HOR421 Show.busbrow.com. Always keep us in your prayers as we spread the gospel of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And if you'd like to contact contact Sister Deb, you can email her at OsborneDebert at gmail.com. If you'd like to support the show, you can support it at PayPal slash HOR421. Or you go through our website at HOR421 Show.busRoubt.com. Now I'll give you your host, the Bible talk, Sister Deb Osburn.

The Big Question About Grace

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Hallelujah.

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Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Wow, I'm so glad to be back here in the studio talking about the Word of God. Wow. Seems like it's been forever, brother. You know? So anyway, I have got a message today. Brother James and I, Brother JD and I have ran into quite a bit of opposition getting this one. It was always a couple different things that stopped us from coming here. So I believe, and I told him the other night, I said, I believe somebody out there needs to hear this. And the enemy is working against us on getting this one out. So praise the Lord, here we are. And I hope you enjoy. Welcome anyway. And I hope you can sit back and relax and just listen to what the Lord is saying. So I have a couple, there's probably a couple of hypothetical questions in this. And so the first one is where would we all be today if not for God's grace? Think about that for a minute. I want you to think back. Some of us would probably still be trapped in yesterdays, our yesterdays. Some of us would still be bound by our failures and crushed up and hurt by our mistakes and overwhelmed by just the storms of life. But grace stepped in. See, grace picks us up and when we've fallen and it it keeps us when we uh it keeps us when we should be lost. Grace carries us through battles, people that we never thought that we would survive through. Amen. So the one thing that I want, the one verse, and it's not even I'm it's only not even the whole verse, it's 1 Corinthians 15, verse 10. The very first sentence of that scripture says, and the Bible says, but by the grace of God I am what I am. Praise the Lord. So today I want to talk to you guys about one thing that every child of God has in common. We're all standing right here today, not because we deserve it, not because we earned it, but because of the amazing, undeserved, unending grace of the mighty God. Amen. So I want you to listen to me. Before we begin, I want you to take a moment, take a moment and close your eyes and think about your own life. Think about the times that you've made mistakes and God forgave you. Think about the times and think about the doors that no one that God opened that no one else could. Think about the accidents that you walked away from, the sicknesses you've survived, the battles you've endured. Think about all the tears that you've cried wondering if if things are ever going to get better. Think about all those things. All the crazy decisions that you made, all the all the craziness that you ended up like me and got yourself into. And now ask yourself, where would I be had God not shown me grace? Amen. See, people, the thing about it is God uh grace is God give he it's God giving us what we could never earn. You know. It it could be withholding what we truly deserved, which I think that's a that's mercy myself. But now grace to me is the hand of God reaching down into all of our brokenness and lifting us up. Amen. And as we journey through this message today, I pray that you will be reminded that every blessing, every victory, every answered prayer, every breath that you take is a testimony to the amazing grace of God. See, the story of every single believer out there today could be summed up in just four words. Four words, and they are, but God showed grace. Every testimony, every victory, every second chance begins right here in 1 Corinthians 15 and 10. But by the grace of God, I am what I am. Amen.

Three Pillars Of Grace

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So I was looking up grace. I was looking up some things about grace, and and I I heard, I read that there were three pillars of grace, okay? One is it's a gift, it's not a wage. You can't earn God's grace. And we all know right now we live in a world that demands us to achieve, uh, to perform, and to prove our worth. Amen. But see, God's grace says that our value is already secure as a child of God. Amen. Number two, it multiplies over our mistake. Grace multiplies over our mistakes. When we s when our sins and our failures add up, grace is multiplied. And it's deeper and wider than any scope of any of our transgressions that we could ever do. Grace multiplies. If my sins and failures add up to 40, you better believe grace is gonna be way, way up there higher. Amen. And the third pillar, it empowers you to grow. You know, grace forgives our past, it empowers transformation. It it gives us the courage to learn and to live. Grace empowers transformation. And so I hope that's helped somebody today to think about grace, you know. Um, the thing about it is that the Bible is packed with example after example of humans who sin and a God who forgives, of humans who run, and a God that pursues them, right? Of humans who does not deserve grace. Now do we all not fit in this category somewhere? But a God who gives it anyway. Praise the Lord. Where would we be without that grace? But friends, listen to me. If you get to feeling unworthy of God's grace, spend some time reading in the Old Testament, and you will discover that no one is worthy of God's grace. No one, not Noah, not Abraham, not Joseph, not Moses, the Israelites, Rahab, David, not you and not me. But friends, that is why is what makes it grace. We weren't worthy of it, but we got it. So today I want to give you a few examples. Some of those people that I just mentioned, I'm gonna go in just to a little bit detail of their stories. These are these are examples

Old Testament Proof Of Grace

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of God's grace in the Old Testament. Let's take Noah, for instance. You know, when wickedness and and evil was rampant, you know, running rapid among men, uh, you know, God actually regretted creating man. Can you imagine that? But God was ready to wipe out everybody. But there was one man who was righteous, he was faithful, he was committed to walking with God. He wasn't a perfect man. Yet God chose to save Noah's family. That's grace. Genesis 6 and 8 says, But Noah found some faith found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Amen. And then there is Abraham and Sarah. Grace, God's grace was way indoors in in spite of their unbelief. Abraham had so much fear about him that he lied and let people think that Sarah was his sister because of fear. Disbelief. Uh Sarah laughed at God when he told her she was going to have uh give birth to a son in her old age. She laughed at God. And then after laughing at God, she encouraged Abraham to sleep with another woman so she could fulfill the promise that God told her he was she was gonna get. So see, Abraham and Sarah's life was so full of disbelief and disobedience, yet God remained faithful to his promise. That's grace. Genesis 12 and 3 says, And in you all, the families of the earth shall be blessed. Amen. Uh Joseph. You know, when when you read Joseph's story, you uh he you wouldn't even you might think you it was difficult to even see God's grace in his story. And he was despised by his brothers, he was sold into slavery, he was wrongly accused, he was left a rotten prison. But see, that wasn't how Joseph saw things, you know. Genesis 45 and 7. In Genesis 45 and 7, Joseph explains that God sent him to Egypt ahead of them to preserve their family line, to save their lives from severe famine. So God used difficult circumstances to position Joseph as a savior of his people. Friends, that's grace. That's grace right there. You know? Moses. Moses doubted God at every turn. Yet God guided Moses. Moses was flawed as they come. He was arrogant, he was disrespectful, doubtful, he was stubborn. Yet God worked with him faithfully. God had told Moses, go down to Egypt and tell Pharaoh to let my people go. And Moses, you know, they say Moses had a speech impediment. I don't know. They I don't know how they found that out, but uh it it, you know, and God told him, and he said he didn't want to go. But God used Moses to lead his children out of captivity. See, God chose to walk with a man who in his younger days had killed another man with his bare hands. My friends, that's grace. Exodus 4 and 13, Moses said, Pardon your servant, Lord. Please send someone else. Moses wasn't even going to obey the Lord. And the last ones I want to tell you, Israel, the Israelites, the children of Israel. Man, they repeatedly rebelled against God so many times, but yet, graciously, God rescued them. And if you tried to keep track of how many times and how often they disobeyed God and they broke his commands, they worshiped false idols, they gamped, they grumbled and they complained, you would lose, you probably don't have enough fingers and toes to count all that. But time and time again, they turned away from God. They done what they wanted to do, they lost God's protection, they suffered the consequences, then they'd returned to God, begging to forgive them and rescue them, and over and over and over again, God showed more grace than they ever deserved. Now, even though there was some lasting consequences to their bad decisions, God still showed

Paul’s Only Explanation For Change

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them grace over and over and over and over. People, if not for God's grace, we would still be lost. Just like Paul. Paul never forgot who he was before Christ. He persecuted the church, yet God extended grace. You see, you know, there's probably a lot of things in life that we can explain. You know, we can explain our education, we can explain out our jobs, we can explain our careers, our accomplishments. We can probably even sit down and explain some of our failures. But see, there comes a time in our lives that we have to admit, people, the only explanation for where we are today is the grace of God. And I'll be the first one to tell you that about me. You know, Paul looked back in his life and he realized there was no other way to explain where he was. I mean he opposed the church, you know, he persecuted chip uh Christians, you know. Paul stood against the very Savior that he would later later later preach about. But God. But God. You know, Paul he didn't Paul didn't say I am what I am because I worked hard. Paul not He said, By grace, I am what I am. And that's true for each one of us today. Brothers and sisters, let me tell you something. There was a time when we were lost. We weren't searching for God, but he was waiting on us. We were running from him, ignoring him, living without him, but his grace kept reaching and kept searching. Amen. When Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, they hid. Yet God came looking for them. That's grace. When the prodigal son wasted everything that he had, grace was waiting on the road home for him. Amen. Thank God Grace never gave up when we wonder. Because when I left here wondering, Grace was with me. I know it. See, some of us have stories that we never tell. We remember all the mistakes and all the regrets and all the poor decisions and all the times that we failed God, yet his grace kept calling us, kept loving us. You know, as I look back on my life today, there were a lot of dangerous things that I done. I realized that there were dangers that I never even saw. You know, there were accidents that I could have had that could have happened. There were diseases that could have taken me right on out of here. There were situations that I got myself into that could have destroyed me. There were moments in my life when I made poor decisions, and I mean, wow, a whole bunch of poor decisions. But God protected me anyway with this grace. And we often think, we think, we thank God for the prayers that he's answered. But people, let me ask you this. What about the prayers that he answers that we when we didn't even know how to pray? What about the prayers that he answers that we didn't even pray? He he knew we were in trouble. He seen us, he was watching us, he saved, you know, he came into my life and saved me for times such as this right now. You know? How many times did God send an angel before us? How many times did God close a door that we wanted opened because he could see what we could not see? Amen. Thank God for some unanswered prayers, right? Right? How many times did he spare us from harm that we never even knew

Protection You Never Even Saw

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existed? And I can I can really think if if God were to pull back the curtains and show each and every one of us all the times that his grace protected us, people we would spend the rest of our lives praising him. But the thing about it is he shouldn't have to pull back the curtains and show us. We ought to realize that. We ought to realize that we are not where we are, we are not where we are right now if it weren't by his saving grace. David said, Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. He didn't say some days, he didn't say easy days, he said all the days of my life. So if it wasn't for God's grace, many of us would not even be here today. Because surely goodness and mercy followed us. Praise the Lord all the days of our life. Now we all know life has a way of bringing storms. There's valleys where we wonder that if we're going to be able to take another step. There is nights probably when tears become your pillow. There are disappointments that break our hearts. We have losses that leave us feeling alone. And I feel that right now. I've felt that since uh December, maybe. I lost my Uncle Homer, who was my spiritual father. Uh I lost my Uncle Donnie before that, who was my spiritual father. Not only that, these two men actually stepped up to the plate and helped raise me as my father. But these losses left me feeling so alone. And I but I knew somehow I was gonna move forward, I was gonna keep moving forward because I will see them again someday. And I did that by God's grace. Because God's grace is sustaining power. You see, sometimes God calms the storm and then sometimes he carries us through the storm. But either way, his grace is enough. Amen. Amen. And I can say one of the greatest miracles of God, of grace, is transformation. Because grace doesn't leave us where it finds us. Praise the Lord. And I'm going through that still in my life. Amen. The woman caught in adultery, she was changed by grace. Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus was changed by grace. Peter was restored by grace. Paul was transformed by grace, and Deborah Osborne was transformed by God's grace. Amen. And right now, here today, I not I might not be everything that God wants me to be, but praise the Lord and thank

Grief, Storms, And Sustaining Grace

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God I am not who I used to be because of his grace. Because you see, grace breaks chains, it heals wounds. Grace restores what sin tries to destroy. You know what I mean? Amen. You know? People, if it if it's not, if it was not for God's grace, we would all still be carrying around yesterday's chains. And listen to me. Listen to me, friends. One day, one day, this life, this journey is going to end. And these battles are going to be over. And these burdens are going to be laid down, and all of our tears are going to be gone. They're going to be wiped away. And the saints of God will gather around the throne. And friends, when we arrive there in heaven around that throne, it won't be because we earned it. We won't be standing there because we were good enough. We won't be standing there because we deserved it. We will be standing there around the throne because of the never-ending grace of God. Because his amazing grace will save us, it'll sustain us. His amazing grace will bring us through each and every storm, each and every valley we walk through, and his amazing grace will carry us safely home. And friends, let me tell you right now, as I look back over my life. I see the fingerprints of grace everywhere. Everywhere.

Transformation That Grace Produces

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When I was sitting at the table waiting on my turn at the crack pipe, Grace was there. Woo, praise the Lord. When I was sitting at a table, when it planned and plotted a strong arm robbery with a friend of mine, Grace was right there. And listen to me. When I smoked so much crack on a pipe that I couldn't even feel myself swallow. I could not even feel that I had lips. Grace, whoo, praise the Lord. Grace was there. Grace found me when I was lost. Grace sustained me when I was weak. Grace changed me when I was broken. And praise the Lord, Grace, his amazing grace, will carry me home when this journey's over. So, friends, I want to ask you today, where would you be if not for God's grace? Would you still be lost? Bound, broken? Listen to me, the truth of the matter is we can all say, each and every one of us living and breathing under God's green earth today, can say, if not for God's grace, we would not be where we are today. I stand here right now. I sit here right now as living proof that God's grace is real, it's powerful. And praise the Lord. God's grace is enough. Amen. God's grace is unearned, unconditional. It's not a one-time event. It is a continuous journey. It's not a gentle pardon. It's a tidal wave of unearned favor. God's grace. If it weren't for God's grace, we would not be where we are right now. Friends, I'm gonna close with this. As I said, when I sit and I look back on my life, I don't see a perfect life. I see a faithful God. I see grace meeting me at every crossroad, every valley, every failure. God's grace has brought me this far. And I know his grace is gonna lead me home. And ask yourself today, if not for God's grace, where would you be? Because I'm gonna tell you what, I thank God that grace had the final word in my life. Because he saved me for times just as this right now. For somebody to hear this right here, for somebody to open up their hearts and say, Wow, God's grace. And if you're a child of God, thank God every day for your grace. Thank God every day for that grace that He gives you. Every time you open your eyes, every time you take a breath, when you pull His breath into your lungs, thank God

A Raw Testimony Of Rescue

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that is grace. And people, if you're not a child of God, if you're not a child of God today, all you gotta do is sit down somewhere, close your eyes, ask the Lord to forgive you for all your sins, to come into your heart and be your Savior. Give it all to Him, tell Him to take it all, and you will experience God's amazing, unending grace. And you won't be sorry about it, I'm telling you. I hope this has blessed you as much as it's blessed me to bring it to you. I hope you heard and listened. Please, people, just take this in. God's grace sustains you. Where you are right now is by and through God's grace. Don't ever forget it. God bless everybody. I'm gonna end with a prayer. Lord our Father in heaven, we hope and pray, Lord, that I ask you to let these words go to the people's heart that needs to hear it. Let them open up their hearts and their minds, Lord, and to understand where each and every breath comes from, where every step they take, where every roof over their head, every food they take, where that is your grace. Praise the Lord. Let them understand that. Let them let whoever needs to hear this, let whoever needs to open up their hearts and their minds to you. Let it go to those hearts tonight, today, right now, Lord. Let them hear it. Let them hear what the Spirit's saying. We thank you, Lord, that we could be here today. God bless each and everybody, Lord, that's listening. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. God bless everybody.

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Stay

Invitation To Receive Grace And Prayer

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on Jesus. So I'm singing.

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If you've been listening to Bible Talk with Sister Deb, hey, go visit our website at HOR421 Show.bussprout.com. For more content and information, recorded at the 421 Studio for content and information. For contact information, you can email at HOR421 Ministries at gmail.com. Phone numbers 2398-4915-02.

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I woke up this morning with my mind. Stay on Jesus, so I woke up this morning with my mind. Stay on Jesus.