GRACE - 3 (RECEIVE THE GIFT)

Hello Dear Believers, 

So Far, we have discussed Grace 1 (In need of a Saviour) and Grace 2 (Welcomed back into the family). 

Still on the series #Grace, 

{Romans 6:23 } - For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

 

The first thing we should know when dealing with Grace is that it is a GIFT and not a REWARD. You didn't deserve it, you don't deserve it, and you will never deserve it. You were completely dirty, out in the dark, beaten, sick, dead, and JESUS came to the rescue. He came to give a gift, and not a reward. That is what a friend does, and not a taskmaster, or an employer. A friend appreciates you by getting you a gift, while a taskmaster waits for you to work and deserve the gift before giving it to you. You know that there is no way in the world that you would ever have done anything to deserve Grace.

Just like you are paid salaries at the end of the month, you receive the salary with joy because you know that you worked a whole month for the pay. The salary is the reward for your stress, work and effort. If you don't do the work, you know that you shouldn't expect anything. If Jesus were to wait for us to work and deserve the gift, He would be waiting for all eternity because we will never be able to. The gift is only a gift because you don't deserve it. So what do we do with it?

When someone comes to your house and gives you a gift on any day outside a celebration, maybe on a random day, what would be your first reaction to the gift? The truth is that your mind begins to wander and to think of what you did to warrant and deserve that gift. We begin to think that maybe the giver is trying to repay us for something we did. This way, we never treat a gift as a gift, instead, we see the gift as a reward. We either think that the giver shouldn't have gone through so much stress just to get us a gift, or we think that we do not deserve such expensive gift and then we see it as a waste.

In the same way, many of us see ourselves in such a way that we think that Jesus shouldn't have gone through the stress of giving His life, or we think the gift of His life is so expensive that we think He just wasted His life, and could have done something better with it. Jesus is at the door of our lives with the gift of Grace and Righteousness (Rev. 3:20). He wants to give us that gift. He knows we don't deserve it, and that we didn't work for it, but He wants to give us all the same. It only describes how special we are to Him. All we need to do is open the door for Him to come in, receive the gift, say thank you and enjoy the gift.