June 1, 2018
My only aim is to
finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me-testifying to
the good news of God's grace. Acts20:24
All who accept God’s
grace are called to share that grace with others.
It’s interesting how philosophies
change with generations, especially in handling the way we deal with common
viruses.
A generation ago, when a child came
down with chicken pox, it wasn’t uncommon for parents to let their kids get
exposed to the child in order to “get the pox over with”. By contracting the disease at a younger age,
children would grow an immunity, and avoid the more dangerous effects of the
disease when they got older. Then came
the vaccine, which would avoid all of the effects of the virus and still
provide the immunity. Now we find that
chicken pox creates a future risk of ‘shingles’, and now people are back to
avoiding the disease as much as possible, or get the vaccines for both when
appropriate. Not that the vaccines are
perfect preventions, but they help mitigate the disease and can often eliminate
the effects.
Much like a virus, we have all been
exposed to the spiritual virus of sin.
It is quite deadly, and is very contagious. Whether young or old, the side effects are
dangerous to our health and the health of others. In fact, contracting the disease is deadly if
we don’t receive a dose of the vaccine called ‘grace’. Grace has the ability to combat the disease,
and even heal us from the effects.
What makes Grace so amazing is the contagious
way IT works. Instead of a vaccine that
must be administered at your local ‘church hospital’, Grace is contracted by
exposure to people that already have it.
If we want to be healed from the sin virus, what we need to do is be
exposed to people who have the Grace cure!
Then, by being contracted with Grace, we can find help for our problems
with sin.
But Grace has this interesting
activator for it to work. Grace isn’t
something we keep inside of us – for it to fix our sin virus, we must ALSO give
it away. By sharing grace with others,
it activates the grace vaccine IN US to work as well!
Paul figured that out – He realized
that His primary calling for the rest of his life was to give grace away to
every person he could. By doing so, it
removed the temptation to sin, and the effects of his past. He simply shared Jesus with everyone around him,
and that spread the grace vaccine to millions of people since.
That’s our mission too – fight off
the sin of our lives by receiving the vaccine of Grace from Jesus, and giving
it to everyone around us. When we do –
it is a spiritual protection to our lives and an antivirus for others.
So go ahead – gives some grace away
today!
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