Kingdom Minded

We are so grateful for the amazing people God has placed in our lives with a vision for His Kingdom and a willingness to step up and work along-side of us!

Tony and I are avid supporters of World Vision and love what they are doing across the globe. In fact, our sponsorship of children peppered around the world was a huge catalyst in opening our hearts to international adoption. We have both been reading different books by Richard Stearns, the President of World Vision and the result has been life altering discussion in our home. 

Yesterday, while reading Stearns book "The Hole in our Gospel" I stumbled across a passage of scripture I have never understood so clearly as I do at this very point in my life. In 2 Corinthians 8 Paul is basically telling the Corinthians to give Titus a hefty sum of money to carry back with him to benefit other believers who have found themselves in difficult circumstances. To press home his point Paul says this:

"Now as you excel in everything- Faith, speech, knowledge, and in all your diligence, and in your love for us -excel also in grace. I am not saying this as a command...I am testing the genuineness of your love. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ: Though He was rich, He became poor for your sake, so that by His poverty you might become rich. Now I am giving an opinion on this because it is profitable for you... It is not that there may be relief for others and hardship for you, but it is a question of equality - at the present time your surplus is available for their need, so their abundance may also become available for our need, so there may be equality. As it is written: The person who gathered much did not have too much, and the person who gathered little did not have to little."

It is in the spirit of this passage that we even began to consider adoption. Tony and I felt the pressing abundance in our lives, our overflow was ripping the seams of our hearts and mercifully, in His great way, God provided an avenue for the very fabric of our life to grow in a way we never dreamed. Loving our son from thousands of miles away has already begun to show us what we are made for and as the overflow of our lives gets poured out on him we find ourselves living, even more, our abundant life!

We are grateful, that in our time of emotional and relational abundance, we have others in our life who are willing to share of their abundance of time and funds. Friends and family have provided care and money and hands and ears in ways that give life and joy to our very souls. We have experienced deeply what it means to live in equality, sharing with each other and loving each other with the heart of Christ.

I love that Paul calls this type of genuine love "excelling in grace". Grace is such a beautiful gift. It is not the setting of our hearts, it is deep and nuanced, affected by life experience and shaped by the hand of God. Grace, freely given, is what Christ offers us on the cross. It is what the Samaratin offers the beaten man. It is what the father offers the prodigal.

Paul later tells the Corinthians, "...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." Grace is the basis for all of our goodness. It is our sufficiency. It is our abundance.

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Originally Posted: 9/3/2014 on our YouCaring site.