A Gift from God!

A post from Pastor Kathy:

since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. (Romans 3:21-24)

Everything that we have and are is a gift from God. Each of us is a unique individual; God provides the raw materials and we are shaped by our experiences and the choices we make in this life. It is our task to develop and use the talents and gifts we have at birth. I once had a student who told me her voice was a gift from God and therefore she needed no voice lessons or coaching. I responded that my vocal ability was a gift from God and I took years of lessons so that I could develop and use that gift as well as possible.

All of us have received spiritual as well as physical gifts from God. As a Lutheran Christian we believe that even our faith is a gift from God. Our challenge is to use God’s gifts wisely and well. Unfortunately, as Paul wrote so concisely in Romans, “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” None of us is perfect. We fail to use our gifts as God intended. We think that it is all about us and we concentrate more on what pleases ourselves rather than what pleases God.

We cannot earn God’s forgiveness and love…ever. God’s love is unconditional; God loves us regardless of our failures and imperfections. Paul says that we are “justifed by his grace as a gift.” We Lutheran Christians use the term justified frequently although I am not certain we understand precisely what it means. At the core, it is a legal term declaring an action or a person to be proved right. As believers in Christ God declares us innocent of sin and, in mercy, frees us from the penalties of our sins through the redemptive actions of Jesus and because of God’s grace.

Paul wrote to the Romans, “Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” This newness of life that comes as a gift of God’s grace separates us who are believers from those who are unbelievers. We recognize that we belong to God (God does not belong to us.) Because we belong to God, he expects us to use the gifts he gives us wisely and well.

I recently attended a presentation on Stewardship given by Rev Kurt Nordsby. Much of what he said resonated with me and my understanding of how and why we give. In his materials Pastor Nordsby writies, “Our giving is a thankful response to the joyful abundance of God’s rich grace in Christ.”

The congregations I currently served have said that our God-given mission is to share the love and joy of the Lord with everyone. We experience that love and joy for ourselves when we encounter God’s grace in our lives. By God’s grace, we know that God is always with us and we have the experienced unconditional love. We are serving God when we share that love with others.

Too often, when we talk about giving to God we think only terms of money. Our society runs on money and it is certainly an important part of our giving. The money we give to God through our offerings at church is a reflection of our faith in God and our response to how much God has given us. My father-in-law used to say that he determined how much to donate to church by dividing the budget by the number of members/giving units. Unfortunately, he was missing the fact that not everyone receives the same gifts and not everyone has the same financial resources.

Sometimes we Christians fall into the trap of thinking that as long as we give money we have done enough. God does not just want our money, he wants us to use our abilities and our time in responding to his grace.

Sharing the love and joy of the Lord means sharing ourselves with others. To share means that we spend time interacting with other people, building relationships, reaching out in love as God has reached out to us. A pastor I once knew liked to end his sermons by saying, “Be a blessing.” When we live in God’s redemptive love, responding with love and joy that spills over to others, we are truly being a blessing to the world.

In Christ, Pastor Kathy