The Train Ticket Story That Explains God’s Grace

You know that restless feeling when you want reassurance now, even though the moment hasn’t arrived yet? We start with a story from Corrie ten Boom about walking to a train station as a child and begging her father to hand over her ticket early. He keeps it safely in his pocket, and only gives it to her when it’s time to present it. That small scene turns into a surprisingly deep picture of the grace of God: we don’t always get it early, but we do get it on time.

Transcript

Welcome To Starting Right

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Good morning and welcome to Starting Right. I am Danny Mack, and I'm going to be here every Monday to Friday to help you get a great start to your day. So grab your cup of coffee, sit back and relax for the next five minutes as I help you start your day by starting right.

Corrie Ten Boom’s Train Ticket

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Corey Kenboom is most well known for her book The Hiding Place, in which she tells the story of how her family hid and helped numbers of Jews who were trying to escape from the Nazis after the Nazis had actually invaded their homeland, which was Holland during World War II. After the war, Corey wrote that book along with many others that tell about her story even as she was growing up in the early 1900s. One of those stories involved a trip that her and her father were going to take on a train. They were walking out to the train station, and her father had purchased the tickets ahead of time and he had them in his pocket. Corey being the young girl that she was, she wanted to hold on to her ticket herself. She wanted it in her hand. And she kept pestering her father, Dad, can I hold my ticket? I want

Why Grace Arrives On Time

SPEAKER_00 1:19

to hold my ticket. And he kept saying to her, No, Corey, I'm going to carry it for you. She said, But Dad, I really want to hold my ticket. And he would say, No, I'll give it to you when we get there. I'm going to carry it for you. They would walk a bit further, and Corey would pull on his hand and his arm again and say, Dad, give me the ticket can I please, please, can I have the ticket? And he said, Corey, I will give it to you when you need it. Just as they arrived at the cashier's office at the train station, Corey's father took the tickets out of his pocket and he gave one to Corey so that she could present it to the cashier at the office. Her and her father then went through and were able to sit on the bench there at the train platform waiting for the train to come along. Her dad used this as a teaching time now to tell her something about how God works and the grace of God. He said, Corey, you know that train ticket is a lot like God's grace. Sometimes we think we need it right now. Sometimes we get so upset about why we haven't seen what we want and that we can't get a hold of what we're searching for. And we get more uptight and we more anxious because it's not coming. And what if I don't have it when I really need it when I get to where I'm going? He pulled Corey close to him and put his arm around her and said, That ticket is just like God's grace. You thought you needed it when we were walking here, and you didn't need it then. But when we got here, I gave it to you because that's when you needed it. And when you need God's grace, when you need God's love, that's when God will give it to you. We need God's grace in our lives. We need his power and his grace working through us, particularly in situations where we don't know what the answers are, what we don't know where we're going and what we're doing, and we don't know how to get through. And we cry out to God, we say, Lord, hear me, answer me, give me what I need right now. Please, God, give me what I need. And he says, Not yet. Not yet.

Paul’s Thorn And Sufficient Grace

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Paul experienced that in the book of 2 Corinthians. He'd been crying out to God saying, Lord, I have this thorn in my flesh, and it's distracting me, it's hindering me, and God, I need you to remove it now. Please take this away from me. And each time God responded with the same thing. He said, My grace is sufficient for you. It took three times for that message to get through to Paul. But then Paul finally realized what that meant. It meant that God was going to give him everything he needed to get through everything he was going through exactly when he needed it.

Lean On Grace For Today

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Here we are right now for our own lives, and whatever we're going through, whatever we're struggling with, we have a promise from God, a God that loves us so much that he will give to us by his grace, his goodness, his direction, his supply, his healing when we trust him. And his grace is sufficient for us. Because those times when we are the weakest are the times when he is the strongest for us. If we let him do that, God's got enough grace for you for today. He loves you so much that he's not going to let you go through it alone. Let his grace be sufficient for you today and lean on it knowing that God loves you and God's with you. Take care, gang. I'll talk to you tomorrow.