Pam Davis, author of Pure Gold: Embracing God’s Grace was on the Bob Dutko show (WMUZ radio, Detroit) on 10/30/08 speaking about the abundant life in Christ.

“Grace is the means for life, whether it’s physical life or spiritual life. We would not exist apart from the grace of God. Spiritually speaking, we can look at the presence of grace and see characteristics of life, or we can look at the absence of grace and see characteristics of death.”

Davis offered a few tests to take a personal inventory and see whether we’re living in an embrace of God’s grace, regularly drawing upon it, which will give us an experience of abundant life:

• Spiritually: Do you feel like you’re growing and even reproducing life in others?
• Physically: Do you constantly sense a decrease in force or energy, or are you alive with energy produced by your relationship with the Holy Spirit?
• Mentally: Do you feel like you’re regressing from a state of stability, maybe even feeling lost or having perverse thoughts (characteristics of death)?
• Mentally: Are you vivid and charged? Are your experiences creating pleasant and fulfilling memories?
• Emotionally: Do you feel numb, having a lack of power to respond, or do you feel passionate about life and about your relationship with the Lord?
• Appearance: Is your appearance cold and steely, and are you lacking radiance? Or, are you glowing and animated because of your relationship with Christ?
• Activities: Are they becoming list-like in nature and uniform? The presence of life creates activities that are vigorous and non-uniform. Is there a variety?
• Relationships: Are your relationships stale or would you consider them pure and vital and functioning?