Gifts...

I was reading in Romans today and was struck anew by both the simplicity and difficulties of the Gospel message.  The simplicity is that salvation and eternal life is a gift.  The difficulty is that salvation and eternal life are a gift.  There is nothing we can do to earn them.  We live in a culture where you don’t get something for nothing.  Where there is no pride, actually there is much shame, in accepting help and in admitting that you can’t do something on your own.  We’ve cultivated the “self-sufficiency” mindset, and then we look around and wonder why there are so many problems.  To a child, the message of the gospel is easy.  They are accustomed to accepting help, they are accustomed to having their parents do things for them that they can’t do.  So the picture of Jesus coming to die for us, to do for us what we can’t do for ourselves, isn’t such a stretch for them.  But once we reach a certain age, we are expected to do for ourselves.  And explaining to an adult that there are things they need help with takes a certain swallowing of pride, and is often very difficult.  We’d rather accept the mediocre that we can accomplish than the excellent that we have to accept from someone else.  We mistrust things that are labeled “free” because there has to be a catch somewhere.  If something appears too good to be true, we feel that it probably is.  And sadly, this is nothing new.  Paul talks about it in Romans, how many of the Jews refused to accept righteousness through faith and were instead pursuing whatever righteousness they could gain through works.  And works and the law just showed them how very spiritually lost they were.  No matter how much they tried and how many good things they did, it never was enough, never could be enough, to cover over the times they had screwed up.  They could never gain perfection by doing good to cover over the bad.

As I’m prayerfully entering the stage of fundraising, I’m reminded anew just how much I can’t do anything on my own, and how much I need to be dependent on God’s timing and provision.  There are times when this all feels very overwhelming, and I need to remind myself that I don’t need to raise this money, God needs to raise this money.  And when the money is there, He will get the glory!