The Offering of Grace

Just when the money was due for the mission trip to Costa Rica, our big van needed tires and hadn’t had an oil change in a year.  One week later Jon’s car kicked the bucket in the middle of an intersection and couldn’t be raised from the dead. It always happens that way.

We were down to one car for our family of eight which made it hard when one of us had to be somewhere at the same time someone else had to be somewhere else, and it wasn’t working out so well. 

 Then one morning we got a call.

Our friends offered to let us borrow their car for a few months.  They weren’t going to need it since Jay would be traveling out of state to donate his kidney to a relative and would be gone for a few months.

What?

Who does stuff like that?  I mean, who travels across country to have their body cut open and part of it taken out and given to someone else, not because they had to but because they wanted to. To save a life.  Who risks this even though they are the breadwinner of family of nine adopted children?  Oh, and since I’ll be gone donating a kidney you can borrow my car? Who does that?

People who have been changed by grace.

People who know that when you’ve tasted radical grace, the only response is living a radical Thank You.

People who aren’t busy trying to earn God’s favor, but people who know they already have it.

Because when you’ve been taken from the garbage heap and been given grace and goodness and God and you know that you never could have deserved it, you live differently. 

You live grace.  To give God glory.

You offer what you have, you give whatever you’ve got because you just can’t stop yourself from wanting to do something to tell His story of grace, redemption, love.

“Therefore, I urge you brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifices holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship.” Romans 12:1

Listen, if you’ve seen grace, you want to give.

In view of God’s mercy, since we’ve seen grace, been touched by it, been transformed by it, become alive from the dead because of it, how can you not want to offer something, anything, everything, how can you not want to offer your very life in thank you?

And so we offer our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God.

Because this offering, it is worship.

It tells His story.  The story of the One who gave his body for us, to buy us out of slavery to sin and death.

We give because He gave first.  He gave everything.  And we give out of the abundance of what we’ve already been given,…Life eternal.

Because we are an offering, willingly laid down. 

Because He is worthy of it all. 

And when you’ve glimpsed the Treasure buried in the field, you want to sell everything you’ve got to buy that field, because that Treasure is worth giving up everything for.

And we don’t have to, but we want to.  Because He is the Treasure worth selling the farm for.  Because He already gave it all for us. 

What is the risk of giving your life on this earth when you’ve already been given Life without end and life abundantly?

The greatest enemy has already been defeated, even death. 

And so we live as people who have seen God’s grace through Jesus, and so we offer what we have in worship to the only One worth living for.

Because we’ve been given great grace.