The Gift

Sometimes, when Brooks and I are asked what we do, the simplest thing to say is that ‘We are missionaries.’

However, when we say that, you can often see the wheels in their brains turn as they are thinking, “Oh, so you go to foreign places in order to convert people from their religion or belief to yours.”

And then we want to say, “No, that is really not it!”

The truth is, we have no desire to convert anyone from one religion to another. The reason is that all religions—including many of the ways that Christianity is practiced—are all based on the same premise: what must we do to please or appease God or the gods so that we will then be blessed or have good fortune or obtain peace/joy/happiness. Thus, all religions and superstitions around the world have one thing in common: man trying to be good enough or right enough or dutiful enough or pious enough or achieve awareness/enlightenment enough.

In stark contrast is the Gospel (the Good News) of Jesus Christ. Arguably (from my perspective) not a religion at all but a profound and powerful gift that is so magnanimous it can only be received and never earned. A gift. A free gift. From God to people whom He deeply loves. The difference? God has initiated and acted in history, by sending His own Son, in order to give gifts that we, in turn, freely receive. Jesus did not come to get people to subscribe to a religious system but to receive what He gives… “I have come to give…” “For God so loved… that He gave…”

In fact, this Good News would be better described as an array of gifts beyond imagination initiated by God to us:

• Forgiveness
• Healing for our broken conditions
• Life
• Eternal life
• Indwelling presence (Holy Spirit freely filling us)
• Relationship with God
• Freedom from forces of darkness and/or oppression
• Peace, Joy
• Ability to be loved and to love

This “gift” turns all religion on its head because it declares that:

On our own, humankind is irretrievably broken and the solution to this brokenness cannot be humanly solved or earned. But God Himself, via the cross, has done so. The gift is given. The gift can be received. The gift is sufficient!

So, we, you and I, in turn become Gift-Givers. Gift-Bearers. How can we not be? How can we not want to be?