Baking Illustration Included
In Luke 6:38 Jesus tells his disciples that however they give, he'll give to them. His illustration is great though! He said he'll 'press it down, shake it together to make room for more'. Now, if you've ever made a cake you know you can accidently add more flour to it than you need. You've got sift the flour and separate it or else it'll be too packed in and your cake will turn out dense!
Who likes dense cakes!?!? Jesus does! (ok, Jesus probably doesn't like dense cakes but he likes to give way more than we deserve to get!)
The gifts Jesus wants to give is like if you took a Tupperware container of flour and packed it down as much as you could. Then you added another cup of flour and packed it down. Then another cup and packed it down, then another and another and another until the container was as dense as you could possibly get it. I'm talking where it looks like it should only way 5 pounds or so and when you pick it up it seems to weigh double what it looks. Jesus looks at that and says, 'Hmm, I can get some more in there!" and he fills it up to where you've got flour pouring over the top!
Now you ask, what are these gifts he wants to give us? They're the same things he wants us to give to others…mercy, grace and forgiveness. Dang! I was hoping it was going to be a good singing voice or Wii or something!
The Christ wants us to quit judging people and give them mercy when they screw up or we don't agree with them. He wants us to stop criticizing people who aren't like us and give them grace because we can't even live up to the standards that we want other people to live up to. He wants us to forgive. That's it, just forgive. 7 little letters with a world of consequence. If we forgive we can't hold things against people anymore, we can't let the seeds of division and divisiveness grow in our hearts anymore.
What we give, we will receive. Except we'll receive a big Jesus-sized Tupperware container of mercy, grace and forgiveness. And as fun as a Wii would be, when it comes to eternity I'll take the mercy, grace and especially the forgiveness!
Created over 2 years ago
