I’m not a pastor or Bible scholar; I’ve never been to seminary or through any sort of catechism class. I’m just a Christian trying to figure out how to live a Christ-centered life. Through prayer, I asked Jesus, and continue to ask (Philippians 4:6), to teach me how to live. God can use anything, even worldly things, to teach us, if we’re open to His leading.
All that being said, several years ago, my boys and I started indoor rock climbing. If you’ve never rock climbed, as you progress the toe-holds get smaller and smaller. One of the challenges we faced was putting all our weight on a nub and push ourselves up with our legs. We knew what we had to do, but we were scared to do it. We didn’t trust our toes and legs to be able to get us to the next hand hold.
We began to tease each other, “Just stand up!” Finally, we learned to take a deep breath, lock our toes on the nub and stand up. We could make it to the next hold! As we did this more and more, we learned no matter how scary it was, our legs and toe-tips would hold us.
As time passed, the Lord allowed me to realize that this exercise of “just stand up” was just like walking with Him: it may seem really scary to do something, but the more we practice the better we get at it. It’s about having faith in Him, not ourselves, to accomplish His goals. So how shall we live? As it is written in Habakkuk (Hab 2:4), but the just shall live by faith, not faith in ourselves but in Christ.
“Just stand up” became our phrase of encouragement. Hopefully, it will be an encouragement to you as you walk with our Lord.
I wanted to call this website Just Stand Up, but it seemed a little bossy and lacking in grace, right? And I wanted to express His grace. After all, it’s only by the grace of Jesus that any of us stand; we only stand by the grace of Jesus… Thus, Stand By Grace became the title.
So today, trust in Jesus, and “just stand up.”