The Big Give预览

Another of God’s laws is what I call the law of the harvest. 

The law of the harvest is explained in 2 Corinthians 9:6-15. In this case, I want to start with the last verse in this passage because it tells us why this law is important and sets the preceding verses in their proper context. Verse 15 says: “Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!” Whatever this gift is, you can’t describe it. Even Paul didn’t have the vocabulary to sufficiently describe this gift because it is awesome beyond description.

Now if a gift is that good, I want to know about it. So what is this gift that the Bible says is indescribable? We don’t have to wonder because the answer is right there in our passage: “And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that always having all sufficiency in everything, you may have an abundance for every good deed” (verse 8). 

The gift that God has given to each one of us, the gift that is beyond Paul’s ability to articulate, is the gift of grace. Grace is the doctrine that separates Christianity from every other religion ever known to mankind. All other religions teach a form of works to earn salvation. Only Christianity teaches that salvation is a gift of God completely apart from anything we can do to earn it. In fact, God pours out His grace on us in spite of our sins and failures. 

Now that’s a magnificent, off-the-charts gift! Paul even enhances it in verse 14 when he calls it God’s “surpassing grace.” If you are a believer, you have been given a gift that will blow your natural mind. Now you need to understand that grace also operates according to God’s laws. In 2 Corinthians 9, the concept of grace occurs in the context of the law of the harvest, or the law of sowing and reaping. When it comes to the harvest, grace has to be accessed. So if you don’t know what grace is or how to access it, then you will not be able to maximize the gift of grace that you possess.

My children gave me an iPad several years ago for Christmas. Now I’m a yellow-pad-and-pencil kind of guy. But suddenly, I had a gift that would record, remember things, and take pictures for me. This gift also had apps, something I never had on my yellow pad. If I need a flashlight, I have a flashlight app. If I want to keep stuff in file folders, there’s an app for that. There’s even an app that lets me play ping pong without a table! I mean, this gift is always sufficient in all things for every good deed.

The problem is I’m so used to doing things the old way that I wind up tinkering with a gift that puts indescribable resources and power at my fingertips. That’s how many of us believers are with God’s indescribable gift of grace, which is all sufficient and puts the inexhaustible supply of God’s goodness at our fingertips, so to speak. 

How can you pray for understanding in the grace given to you by God?