Last week I was reading in the good book about good works. Ephesians 2:10 says, “…we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Some translations say we should spend our lives helping others.
I have a friend who started a movement called Grace Bomb (www.gracebomb.org). The idea is that we see good works as grace bombs, not random acts of kindness but intentional acts of God’s love. In other words, we drop grace on people to represent the love of God.
The ultimate goal would be not only to encourage people (who doesn’t need that in 2019) but that those without Christ as their Lord and Savior would see us and know that we have been with Jesus and ask us, “What must we do to be saved?”
Grace bombs in many ways are our Jesus moment, our own personal turn water to wine moment, our feed the 5,000 moment, our healing the leper moment as we point people to the power and the presence and the plan of God.
What I’m saying is we get to do what Jesus did just on a much smaller scale and through these grace filled blessings we get to be those ambassadors of reconciliation that too often we only read about.
James 2:14-26 reminds us that if we say we know Jesus, if we say we have faith we must have these grace works. If not we should question our relationship with Christ. Verse 20 says, “Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless?” And verse 26 shares a hard truth, “faith apart from works (grace bombs) is dead.”
Pastor and writer Max Lucado tells the story of being a young, single pastor at his first church. They would have big potluck style suppers and he didn’t now how to cook and was not sure what he should do.
Pastor Lucado would go to his pantry and pull out half eaten bags of potato chips or half empty jars of peanuts and he would bring those items to the potluck. The women of the church would accept his meager offering and place it on the long table with the rest of the food items and then hand Max a plate and say, “Don’t be shy, eat up.” And he would, “mashed potatoes, gravy, roast beef, fried chicken.”
“I came as a pauper,” Max says, “but I ate like a king.” These women were dropping grace bombs, it’s what Jesus does and it’s the good work we have been called to do as well.
Jesus said in Matthew 10:8, “freely you have received, freely you should give.” Go ahead, go drop some grace on some undeserving people. It’s what we were saved for and created to do, to spend these lives helping others.
He told me to tell you that.
- Log in or Subscribe to post comments.