Did You Lose Sight of God's Grace?

Each day I am amazed that God would call me to preach the gospel. I did not deserve this honor. It would have been enough honor for me to wash the feet of the saints. However, He has called me by His grace.

A deacon once asked me what I expected of deacons. I told him that deacons were servants. He wanted to be on a Board of Deacons who made the decisions for the church. I told him that deacons served the Lord's Supper and ministered to the body of Christ. His following question floored me:

"You mean we are just glorified table-waiters?"

He failed to see God's grace.

Many times church members do not understand the grace God has in calling them to serve. They do not deserve waiting on tables. In fact, this "glorified table-waiting" is one of the most honored of positions. It is an honor when a family asks someone to carry the body of someone they love at a funeral. It should be an honor to carry Christ to the body who loves Him in the Lord's Supper.

Any service the Lord calls you to do is an act of His grace. Refusing to respond is the evidence of a heart that has no understanding of grace. I suppose this heart believes that salvation comes to those who are good enough or who have worked hard enough for it. Therefore, service is just work.

The woman who washed Jesus feet with her tears understood this grace. She did not have to say a word. She didn't tell Jesus how important she was. She merely came and ministered to Him. She was honored to wash His feet with her tears and dry them with her hair.

People often lose sight of God's grace when they fail to notice that the service they are doing is for His Body. The church is the body of Christ. Serving in the preschool is for His Body. Cleaning the church kitchen is for His Body. The serving of food in the church is a service to His Body.

Would you see it as God's grace if you were asked to mop up the blood of Jesus spilled after He was beaten? Would you see this as beneath you or would you see that it is God's grace which allows you to do so?

Years ago I was part of a group that sent a college-age young lady to a state that had a very weak witness for Christ. This young lady started cleaning the houses of people without charge to get the opportunity to share Christ with them. She wrote in her report back to me that she was on her knees in one of these houses cleaning the dirt from the cracks in the floor when she thought how beneath her that this was. It was at this point that a realization came to her: Her Lord had stooped much farther to come from heaven to give her His grace.

Then, she understood that it was by His grace that He called her to clean this floor.

The Apostle Paul was beaten, imprisoned, criticized and eventually martyred. He knew it was God's grace to call him to do this. He knew that any service he could do was by His grace.

Have you responded to God's grace or did you lose it somewhere?


Galatians 1:15-16 (NIV)
¹⁵ But when God, who set me apart from birth and called me by his grace, was pleased ¹⁶  to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles,