Olympic Observations VI: Grace (Richard Chambers)

Ephesians chapter 2 helps us to recognize some of the dynamics of God's grace:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, lest anyone should boast. 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.   When we think about grace, God's amazing grace, His undeserved favor, the riches of God to which we have access because of Christ's sacrifice, we realize that He has wonderful plans for our lives - He desires for us to be saved and experience the presence of Christ in us, but from that point, He wants us to develop in grace, to live in dependence on Him, to grow according to His will, and to identify those unique abilities that He has given to only you, and to follow Christ's plan for your life. The apostle Paul recognized that the achievements of His life were products of the grace of God that had been bestowed upon him - he wrote in 1st Corinthians 15:
10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.


Today, we shift to an athlete from Great Britain named Richard Chambers - he and his brother Peter are two of the four men who won a silver medal last week in rowing, in the event called Men's Lightweight Four Without Coxswain.

According to a piece on the Sports Spectrum website, he said that he developed an interest in rowing essentially because he wasn't too good in anything else:

I was at school (at age 14) and I saw the bigger, taller guys going around and thought that would be quite cool to be one of them. Went down to rowing. I wasn’t really good at cricket, couldn’t throw a ball, couldn’t catch a ball, couldn’t really run very well on the rugby pitch.

Richard, like all of us, was challenged to find his gift, to discover his God-given ability, the area in which God's grace was present.  About his faith journey, he said that he grew up in a Christian home, with Christian parents and Christian grandparents, who were a "massive" influence on his life.   He became a Christian at age 8, and relates:

...as I grew into a teenager, and I’ve grown older, I’ve learned about more of who Jesus Christ is, what He wants me to do, and what it takes to be a follower of Him

He says that being a Christian is difficult, especially in sport, but ",,,I still follow Him. I still try to be the best for Him, but I don’t always achieve that. It’s the price He paid so that I can be where I am today."

So he, like all of us, falls short, but He recognizes that by the grace of God, who sent His son to pay the price for us, he is in the position he is, in order to bring glory to Him.   When you study grace, you realize first and foremost that salvation, as well as our new identity in Christ, are free gifts that we do not deserve, nor can we attempt to attain.    Once we receive God's grace, then we seek to recognize what God wants to do in our lives - the special, unique abilities that He has given to us...that we can give Him credit for.   So, Richard realizes that because of grace, God has placed him in a very unique position.   And, I think it's important that we all realize our place in the Lord, so that we can walk in the very center of His will and follow what He intends for us to do and to be who He has ordained us to be.