This morning I had the great honor of preaching at Evergreen Community Church in Pine City, MN. I spoke on transformation and how Jesus offers us that as both our teacher (in how we should live) and as our savior (in freedom from the punishment for our sin). At any rate, during the preaching, I started considering how our culture makes accepting the free gift of forgiveness very difficult. My experience is that we have a very difficult time accepting gifts from others.
I thought back to the time when my son and I walked around Pine City during their all-city garage sale in the summer of 2006 pulling a wagon full of pop on ice and giving it away. I told my son that we would not accept any money for doing this. It turned into a petry dish on the human psyche. People had a horrible time accepting the pop for free; some insisted on paying us, others grilled us with questions about our motives, and some even outright turned us down. Our culture seems to promote that freedom is never feeling indebted to anyone.
I am considering a discussion I had today with someone who is struggling financially and someone just blessed them with a vehicle that they could keep; this person was having difficulty accepting that without feeling indebted. I tried to convince them that they needed to just say thank you and enjoy the blessing. If they continue to feel indebted they diminish what was done for them and also take away the blessing enjoyed by those that gave them the vehicle.
We need to learn how to accept gifts without feeling indebted for life. It is this "no free lunch" attitude that I feel makes it very difficult for some people to accept Jesus' free gift of forgiveness. In my message I shared that something has to take the hit for our mistakes (the wages of sin is death) and if we don't accept Jesus willingness to take the hit for us, we are stuck taking the hit for ourselves. The pride we have in not allowing others to do something for us can get in the way of decisions that could have eternal consequence.
It is better to give than receive, but if we never receive we never allow givers to be blessed.
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2 comments:
It is hard to receive.. although if no one receives then those who like to give will not be able to be blessed
I have a hard time receiving as I don't think I am worthy of any gift, but thank God that He gave even though I am not worthy.
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