Exert from Devotions cont....

As I read over the same passage today: Titus 2:11-13... again contemplating how it is that Grace might be a teacher of rejection toward ungodliness and the lusts of this world. As I inquired of God I felt a strong yearning to ask my roommates about it. Both Neil and Patty seemed quite engrossed in their own studying and I didn't want to interrupt. The Spirit began to debate with me.

"It is good for iron to strengthen iron."
...but they're reading.. trying to have a good communion with You.
"I'm teaching them, but they can always come back to it."
...I don't want to intrude...
"The book Neil is reading will have good insight ON YOUR QUESTION."

In the end, it came down to how annoyed with myself I would feel if I rejected the prompting... So I asked them.

Of course, the book Neil was reading had everything to do with the question. Just as I had asked the question he read this sentence out of "Disciplined by Grace" by J.F. Strombeck.

"Grace also teaches us to deny worldly lusts."

It was a total God intervention and preparation. We discussed the different things that Grace truly means besides just being merciful with difficult people, as well as things they had been learning in classes about having full provision of all needs through Him via grace.
Later Neil read this passage from Strombeck:

The disciple of grace brings to the mind and soul the goodness and beauty of God and the riches of His grace; the pleasures, preferment, honor and wealth of the world lose their glamour. They are seen as temporal in contrast to the eternal values of God. The believer who realizes that through grace, and grace alone, he has been saved out of the lost and condemned world unto an indescribably glorious eternity with God sets his affection on things above--not on things of this earth. It is the work of grace to create and sustain this attitude.
Ethics can teach men to deny the dishonest, immoral, and debased things of this world; but grace alone can teach the believer to deny himself the beautiful, attractive, and pleasant things with which God is not identified

So, I've found that Grace teaches us to say "NO" to ungodliness very simply by being apart of God's love story. Grace has given us full provision through His love and salvation of us... full provision to live God-like because of our salvation through Christ. Therefore conviction comes to us by the Holy Spirit that indwells us from the day we confess our dependency on Christ. That conviction tells us those things we ought not to do or be. That full provision continues to give us the strength to reject those temptations that come up so often. If we are fully aware of that provision and focus on that Love that God so richly gives, the wonderful blessings He bestows, His beauty, and His Almighty power, then we will not desire those sins because of our total awe of Him.