BUT I NEED YOUR HELP

After the death of my first husband, my son and I desired to move back to Texas. I had just moved away less than five months previously. I am the type to completely unpack and put things where they belong no matter if I am moving or traveling. When I arrive home from a trip, my suitcase gets unpacked and all the contents are placed where they are supposed to be before I sit down. I know it won’t get done if I don’t attend to it right away. And I don’t do clutter. It stresses me out!

After making the decision and working out the details of a house to rent and a job to return to, I had to pack my entire house and storage shed back up. By myself. Until…my dear friend, Cinda, offered to bring her two children from Texas and help me. What a huge blessing!! I know I never would have finished without her wonderful help. She truly has a servant’s heart. It has been a joy to watch God work in her life in these past few (?) years. Cinda, can you believe how long we have known each other? I love you, my friend!!

My father offered to help me by bringing a U-Haul truck to my house, helping me load it, and driving it to Texas for us. He had two days in which he could help. We had to load the truck on a Wednesday and drive to Texas on Thursday. He then had to turn around on Thursday and drive back to Louisiana for work on Friday with very little sleep. What a sacrifice!

He and I got the boxes and most of the furniture loaded ourselves, but there was one piece of furniture that the two of us could never begin to move, much less lift into the truck. It was my old upright piano. That piece of furniture requires five men to lift it. My dad asked me to call some people to see if they could help us load it on Wednesday evening.

I began calling people I knew—all of them were church-going people. Those phone calls began to teach me about “the church.” I called over 15 people to see if someone could help my dad lift my piano into a truck. No one could help. Some actually told me that “they would have to miss church that night.” Wait, what?

I’m a widow with a son whose father just died. Aren’t we mentioned in the Bible? Didn’t God call His children to help those groups of people specifically? I just needed less than one hour of someone’s time.

I was so very disappointed in those peoples’ attitudes. Then, I realized how often I had done the same thing in the past.

Oh, I still couldn’t believe someone wouldn’t miss “church” that Wednesday night to help me. In fact, the men that ended up helping me were two supervisors from my office, neither of whom had ever talked about God. I am still so thankful for those men.

I was…okay, I still am… a person who loves to check off all the boxes. My Sunday School offering envelope with my name on it had little boxes on it with “duties,” such as, Read My Bible Daily, Giving, Attending Worship Service, Prayed Daily, etc., etc., etc. This was my standard for trying to please God. I wanted to check off all those boxes every single week. Isn’t that how God was pleased with me? By doing the stuff?

Rules! The Law! Works! Obedience to the boxes on the offering envelope!

I had expected someone else to not check one of their boxes and come to my aid. But God began to teach me.

The “church” is not the building or the service we attend. It is not the man-made schedule we enforce.

God’s people, we, His children, are The Church.

I was one of His dearly beloved children.

I had been chosen by Him, believed in His redemption of my sins through His Son, Jesus, and wanted desperately to know Him.

But those walls of rules and legalism had been blocking lessons He so wanted to teach me. So, on that Wednesday evening, He began to slowly help me learn about God’s grace.

It’s not all about the rules. Oh, they are important; but they are not the way to God’s heart. Nor are they the way we are to treat one another. The planned church services are there for us to come together to worship God. But there have been times when I arrived at the church building, saw a sister in Christ with tears running down her face, and heard God tell me to sit and listen to her sorrow.

I also have been that sister that someone else sat with and heard my sorrow.

But we didn’t go to the room and worship! Oh, dear!

On the contrary, we did worship. Worship entails hearing God and doing what He asks. The Bible says that He values obedience above sacrifices. It might mean that I didn’t participate that day in the group worship that was scheduled, but God had other plans for me.

Over these past three decades, I look more carefully and intentionally for God’s grace and His mercy. That is what He is about. Oh, I still have to fight against the “my rules” thinking. I’m trying to learn. Has it been hard? Of course. I love knowing what to expect, how things should go, how people should act, where I need to go next. But nothing ever goes the way I plan in my head anyway.

Grace—the unmerited divine assistance given to humans for their regeneration or sanctification.

Grace! I need it! I need to receive grace, and I need to extend grace.

I can talk all day long about how much I love someone, but I doubt they will hear me until I show them how much I love them.

God is pleased with me because of HIS grace, not my rules.

In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished on us. (Ephesians 1:7)