655 Make the Most of God's Grace - 2 Corinthians 6:1

What are we supposed to do with the grace of God? Have you ever thought about what we do with the grace that God gives us?

Hi, I'm Mike Henry Senior with Follower of One, and I came across a passage today in my own personal Bible study, and it just caught my attention. And so I wanted to talk about it on the podcast.

Thank you for joining me for the Follower of One podcast. We host this podcast to challenge ourselves to go into the marketplace each day and make a positive difference.

And I'm reading from 2nd Corinthians 6:1 in the New American Standard Bible. "And working together with him, we also urge you not to receive the grace of God in vain."

I love this passage and I re-read and studied 2nd Corinthians 6 quite a bit today. First I want to point out that Paul is talking to the Corinthians and this is his second letter to them. And he's reminding them that he's qualified as an apostle. He's been explaining things to them, but here he's talking about and working together with him. "We also urge you not to receive the grace of God in vain."

 I used to listen to J Vernon McGee quite a bit. He's a pastor who's passed away. Jay Vernon first pointed out, as far as my knowledge, that the words "with him" there in the New American Standard, those are in italics, those words, aren't there. In fact, J Vernon talked about how We need to eliminate the line between lay people and pastors or lay people and ministers.

And I can't agree more. I've always felt like that was a false distinction. We work together. It's interesting, the message says, well, let me read the message of the same " Companions as we are in this work with you, we beg you please don't squander one bit of the marvelous life God has given us"

In the message he talks about the life that God has given us in the New American Standard it's talking about the grace of God, "and let's not receive that grace in vain." Do you know why we get grace? I think we get grace so that we can live. We get grace so that we're free to choose. We get grace so that we can trust Jesus.

And then once we trust Jesus, I believe the grace that we are given is grace that we're supposed to distribute. We're given grace not to store it or consume it, but to ship it. Our job is to give that grace to the people that we interact with. Our job is to be distributors of God's grace to everyone that we meet so that they might see God.

Our job is to participate in the distribution of grace with God. In other words, let's not take the grace that we're given and just sock it away someplace. In vain means that it didn't accomplish its purpose. God's grace is designed to bring all of us to him. Even the grace that he gives you or the grace that he gives me he intends for it to bring him glory, not just in our own lives, but also in the lives of the people around us.

And we are each called to this ministry. Not just the pastors, not just the people who are overseas missionaries. We have all been given this job together with Paul and Barnabas and the other people on his team. We've been given this job to work together, to take the grace of God and stick it in the world. We want the grace of God to be visible by the people around us. That's our job as marketplace Christian.

If you'd like to practice that activity, join us in Follower of One, go to https://community.followerofone.org and create a free profile.

We're an online community. And in that community, we do things like our marketplace mission trips, where we challenge ourselves to practice giving away the grace of God, intentionally in our regular ordinary workdays. Join us once again at https://community.followerofone.org.

Thank you so much for being a marketplace minister. And thanks for sharing this podcast with your friends. We are grateful that you join us in sharing the glory and the grace of God among our friends and coworkers. Thanks very much.