The free gift that we could never earn

When I experience discouraging days in Argentina on the mission field (of which there are plenty!) I try to remember the days that God showed up in great ways and encouraged me in a very visible and obvious way. Tuesday was one of those days.

Two days ago, my STINT team and I went to one of the college campuses in the city to participate in an evangelistic outreach that was organized by Patricio, a student who studies there, is a leader in Vida Estudiantil, and wants to reach the students taking summer classes there now. Wow! It's so exciting to see students taking the initiative to not only share the Gospel themselves, but invite others to come alongside them!

Along with our team and Patricio, there were 3 other students who are also leaders in Vida Estudiantil on this campus, plus 4 more Christian students who study there, but knew nothing about Vida Estudiantil and had never shared their faith before on campus. I was able to share the Gospel alongside one of the new girls, Vanessa, and God blessed us with two opportunities to share the complete Gospel with three different girls. Two of the girls, Sol and Leila, we talked with at the same time. Both said they were Christians because they believed Jesus was God's Son and "came to save the world" but that they thought it was arrogant when people say that they are SURE that they are going to heaven when they die. I knew that if they clearly understood the Gospel, they would see how these two beliefs they held were in complete contradiction to each other.

For about an hour, Vanessa and I shared the complete Gospel with them, explaining that we can be sure that we are children of God because of the path that God provided for us through Christ. It's not arrogant for us to say we're sure that we're going to heaven, because we're not crediting anything we did--it's all because of what Christ did. Both of them asked really good questions about salvation not being based on works but instead on grace and faith like Ephesians 2:8-9 says: "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast." 

Christ took the punishment we rightly deserved and all we must do is place our faith in Him and accept His free gift of forgiveness, surrendering control of our will and our lives completely to Him. Because as sinful humans we could never reach a holy God, God reached down to us. I could tell that both Leila and Sol had never heard this truth before. They kept saying that they just couldn't believe that salvation from sins could be that easy. Surely they had to do something to restore their relationship with God. For someone to offer a free gift so great is craziness. Vanessa and I looked at each other and chuckled, admitting that they were exactly right. The fact that God is freely offering all mankind the incredibly great gift of salvation seems insane.

That's what makes the grace and mercy of God so mind-blowing.

But how else would we ever be able to enter heaven and have a personal relationship with Him? There's nothing we could possibly do to earn that, so God, because of His immeasurable love for us, wanted to provide a way for us to restore our relationship with Him, so He had to reach down to us with the free gift of salvation and pay for our sins with the blood of His innocent Son. It makes no sense why the perfectly self-sufficient God of the Universe would ever think to make such a great sacrifice for us, but He did.

And this is why He deserves the complete surrender and devotion of every second of our lives.

I told the girls that many times we struggle with the idea of the free gift of salvation by faith alone because as human beings, we want to say that we earned everything we have. We don't want to be given such great gifts for free because we are admitting that we are indebted to the giver, which is very humbling, especially if we know that we could've never done anything to earn the gift we were given.

Though the girls said they were not ready to make Jesus Lord and Savior of their lives, they were extremely interested in talking more with us, so we exchanged contact information and left them with the Gospel booklet we had just discussed in detail.

Not only was it exciting to have such a wonderful conversation that hit on the deepest and richest truths of the Gospel, it was also so amazing to see Vanessa watch me lead in sharing the Gospel, but then become increasingly comfortable explaining the message and sharing her personal experiences. By the end of the conversation, she was leading the conversation just as much as I was. Wow. Praise be to God.

Please pray Vanessa can meet back up with Leila and Sol and see them accept Christ one day as Lord and Savior so we can meet one day in heaven and celebrate together the incredibly great and free gift of God's redemption and salvation that we did nothing to earn.