How To Give Grace To Others Even When It's Hard - She Is A Message (2024)

Struggling with how to give grace to others even when it’s hard and painful. Use this guide to learn three powerful ways to do just that!

Hey sis! Giving grace to others can be hard, especially when you feel like the other person is evil or that they don’t deserve it. The wonderful thing is that though we are still sinners, and though we mess up daily, God still extends grace and kindness to us.

In the same way, we are expected, as women of faith, to show grace to each other no matter the circ*mstance, or how hard and painful giving grace to others might be.

Here are a few wonderful ways that we can show grace to others each day no matter how hard or painful it might be.

How To Give Grace To Others

What Does It Mean To Give Grace To Others?

Showing grace to others isn’t hard. It’s not a complicated ten-step method. When we show grace to others, it’s about showing kindness to someone else even when they don’t deserve it.

Grace is going out of our way to give your compassion, kindness and love to someone even if they might not appreciate it, or return the favour. On the grand scale of things, it is choosing to act positively towards someone who might even hate the sight of you, or have done wrong to you in the past.

Think of it like this:

In the book of Genesis, we read about the story of Noah. In the days of Noah, wickedness was at an all-time high and the people did not care about God at all. This made God angry enough to destroy everything on earth.

So how did God show grace to His people?

He instructed Noah to go ahead and build an enormous ark. He also told Noah to let everyone know that a massive flood would be coming (He gave them time to prepare) and invited them to join Noah’s family on the boat (He gave them an avenue to safety).

Unfortunately, day in and day out, the people watched Noah building the ark, and instead of accepting, God’s gracious gift, they mocked Him and in the end, they perished.

There are multiple other examples of God being gracious and kind to His people in the bible.

In the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, God instructed His servant to find even ten decent people in all of the land and He would spare the people.

In the story of Moses, God extended grace towards the Israelites and Moses himself multiple times in spite of their disobedience and rebellion.

God could have destroyed them instantly but He gave them chances to repent.

Giving grace to others can be summarised in the bible verse found in Romans 12:21 which says “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

Why We Should Extend Grace To Others

There are so many reasons why we should extend grace to others.

First of all, God’s love for us as sinners is so great and so mighty that He sent His son to die for a world that neither cared for nor loved Him back. God’s love and grace are able to penetrate our hearts, as cold as it might be. God’s grace never quits.

Every good thing that we have ever received in this life that we live here on earth is only because of God’s grace. All our accomplishments, in school and at work, are only by His grace.

Because of who God is, and all that He wants to accomplish within us, God wants us to extend grace to others. He wants us to forgive them, to love them and to be kind to them even if they make it really hard to justify doing so.

When we show grace to others, the grace that we show is multiplied back to us.

It helps us to grow in the Lord and to become stronger in our walk with Christ.

It wasn’t always easy for me to be gracious to others because I grew up believing the “do unto others as they do unto you”. This meant that if a person was mean or disrespectful in any way that I should dish out the same treatment to them. I also believed that revenge was a dish best served cold.

Back in 2014, I made a series of bad decisions that went on to mess up my walk with Christ and ruined some very good relationships. In my darkest hour, when I felt like God would never love me, accept me or extend His love towards me, He did just that.

God sent some amazing people into my life to pick me up from that dark place that I had been living in and loved me into repentance until I eventually started on the path that I am currently on. I am incredibly grateful.

We shouldn’t show grace or kindness or love to others because we want something from them. No.

We should show grace to others because God demonstrates His own love for us each and every day.

Each morning we wake up is a show of God’s grace. If you’re able to drive to work in a car or have money to take the bus, those are displays of God’s grace and mercy.

The only way for us as Christians to be better each day, rather than bitter, is to extend the same grace to others that God extended to us through Jesus Christ.

What Does The Bible Say About Responding With Grace?

The bible actually has a lot to say about grace. In fact, grace is one of the most important concepts in the bible. We are told that grace is an unconditional love that you can show to others regardless of the way they treat you.

Before we were even born, before we repented and came to accept Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Saviour, God extended His loving-kindness towards us in the person of His son Jesus Christ. God loved us so much that He sent His son into the world to die on the cross for our sins.

This, to me, is the ultimate act of giving people grace.

There are also multiple verses that tell us about the grace of God and how He extends His love towards us daily and I will list a few of these verses below:

2 Corinthians 12:9 – “And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”

Romans 11:6 – “And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then it is no more grace: otherwise work is no more work”

Ephesians 2:8-9 – “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.”

1 Peter 5:10 – “But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you.”

2 Corinthians 9:8 – “And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work:”

Hebrews 4:16 – “Let us, therefore, come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.”

Ephesians 1:7 – “In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace;”

Giving grace means giving ourselves and others permission to be God’s work in progress.

How Can We Show Grace to Others?

In the same way that there are multiple examples of grace in the bible, we can show grace to others in our daily lives.

The bible says in Proverbs 15:1 that “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” and that is the basis for how we can show grace to others.

Here are three ways you can extend grace to others:

1 How To Give Grace To Others: Forgive

Forgiveness is an amazing way to show grace to those who, we don’t believe deserve it. In the bible, Jesus tells us that in the same way we forgive others, our Heavenly Father will forgive us. Is it always easy? No, it is.

Forgiving someone who has wronged you takes a great deal of strength but it isn’t just for the other person’s benefit. It is for our benefit as well.

When you are able to tell someone who has hurt you that you are letting go of the pain and the hurt, it is such a freeing feeling. I know many people who walk around for years with guilt and shame because someone they asked for forgiveness did not show them the grace they needed at the time.

It took me almost 5 years to forgive my husband and his friends after a very difficult period in my life. But I don’t regret it at all. Forgiveness has freed me to become the woman God desires me to be and forgiveness has freed him to become the man God ordained for him to be.

Forgiving other people who wronged us or hurt us or embarrassed us is not easy, In fact, sometimes it seems impossible. But that is what God did for us and what He asks for us to do to others.

2How To Give Grace To Others:With Our Words

Our words are incredibly powerful and what we say to and about others can completely change their life, believe it or not.

In the bible, Proverbs 15:4 tells us that “Gentle words bring life and health; a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit.” In the book of Matthew, Jesus also reminds us that the words we speak to others are actually the overflow of our hearts.

People might not always remember what you say to them but they will remember how those words made them feel. So make it an intention to always leave someone feeling better than they were before they spoke to you.

I might never remember everyone’s names that I have met in my life, but I almost always remember those people who made me feel inadequate, unloved and unwanted.

When someone does something to hurt us, our human nature almost always wants to bite back and put that person in their place. God tells us to do otherwise. He asks us to turn the other cheek and to uplift even when it hurts because, in the end, you might be the only bible that person will ever read.

Strive to use your speechto encourage and uplift others.

3How To Give Grace To Others:Let It Go

I talked about forgiving others as a way of extending compassion and grace, but I believe that learning to let go is also a powerful way to be gracious. For many of us, we hold on to everything that happens to us and we build long lists in our minds of the people we don’t like or that we don’t want to be around.

Letting it go means not taking everything that happens to you personally. It also means understanding that each of us is different and how we might view a specific incident is not the same way that someone else might view this same incident.

Recently I had a chance to put this into action. A friend of mine was going through a really tough time and I wasn’t getting the attention I thought I deserved from them. Soon I became bitter and a bit resentful towards them because I believed that I deserved better.

I had to be reminded that what they were going through was more than likely affecting their ability to be present, and they didn’t mean to hurt me. Once I let go of all the negative thoughts and feelings towards them, I felt so much better and so much lighter.

Slowly our relationship got better and they were able to open up to me about some things.

It might hurt to let go of the pain you’re holding on to, but oftentimes it’s even more painful to keep holding on.

What Do You Think?

• How do we extend God’s grace to others?

• What does God say about giving grace?

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All my love,