It's kind of funny how each of my guys have faith and trust in their sports teams. Every game they expect them to win and then are upset when they don't. They say, "Well they should have won," "If they didn't put him in they would have won," and "I can't believe they did that!" So much faith in a game where a team has to win or a team loses, every single time. I try to comfort them by telling them that, but it's to no avail.
As a country we put our faith and trust in our leaders, hoping they will make the right decisions. Then when something happens we blame them for not taking care of us. We trust our police force to keep us safe and protect us, then we criticize them when something isn't to our satisfaction. We have faith in the fire and rescue department when our house is on fire or someone in our family is having a medical emergency. Then complain if our house is completely destroyed or our family member doesn't make it.
We trust that other people are going to stop at red lights and stop signs. We have faith that when we are in public everyone is going to be courteous and share or step out of the way when we need to get by. This is sometimes hard in the grocery store when others are concentrating on their list or what's on the shelf in front of them. Have you ever been stuck in an aisle behind one of them?
So if all we need is faith and trust then everything would be great right, but there is some thing I forgot GRACE. We need more than faith and trust we need God's grace. You see his grace is a gift freely given to us because he loves us. None of us our perfect, yes even our sports teams, political leaders, police officers, firefighters, paramedics, doctors...each one of us is human. We make mistakes.
But there is one who never made a mistake-Jesus! He endured being beaten to the point of death and died on a cross to take on the sins of each and everyone of us. He became the ultimate sacrifice and without this sacrifice we would stay separated from God. That isn't a good place to be. Jesus conquered death so that when we die we can conquer death too. There is no cost on our part, which is where the gift of grace comes in-God's Riches at Christ's Expense, all we have to do is open the gift and claim it as yours.
Will you open it and be rich with God?
