Disruptions In The Grace Supply Chain

“For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.”

John 1:16

Over the past couple years, many of us have probably complained at some point about different supply shortages that popped up as a result of the pandemic disruptions. 

I was talking to the owner of the coffee shop in our town earlier this spring and I asked him what the hardest item was for him to get. At that time, he said the hardest thing to find was regular Special K cereal to make their Special K bars. We’ve all probably experienced these shortages at some point the past few years. 

But I would say the greatest supply shortage that has hit our communities, our nation, even the world is a shortage of grace. 

A Grace Shortage

We see the effects of this grace shortage everywhere. 

We see it every time someone tries to cover their own sin and shame apart from Jesus. 

We see it every time someone makes a hurtful comment to someone else to build themselves up. 

We see it in every judgmental thought that deems someone else not worth the effort of showing them grace. 

We see it in the cancel culture mentality of our society.

We see it in the political division in our country. 

We see it in increasing rates of loneliness, depression, and hopelessness. 

People are in desperate need of the grace available to us through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

A Graceless Life Is Crushing

A life lived without knowing, without receiving, or without being reminded of God’s grace is crushing to people. 

To live without grace piles up burden after burden on people’s backs so that daily life becomes harder and harder for them to bear. Feeling like you never measure up. Like you’re never good enough. Like you’re always disappointing someone. Like you can never be free of your past mistakes. 

That’s life without grace. And that’s crushing to people. 

Supply Chain Disruptions

The gospel is the greatest supply of grace ever. So when I say there’s a grace shortage, I don’t mean God hasn’t provided enough grace in the world. Ephesians 2:7 says God has saved his people, raised them up, and seated them with Christ Jesus “so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

God is rich in grace and has provided more than enough grace through Jesus for all eternity. But at times there seems to be a disruption in the grace supply chain. 

In many ways, the church hoards God’s grace. We sit on the supply, seeming to keep it for ourselves. We’ve received grace ourselves from God but then for some reason we either forget or seem unwilling to extend that grace to others. 

But guess who God wants to use to distribute this supply of grace to our communities? That’s right. His church. 

He wants to use His people who have already received and experienced the grace of God to pass it on to others. 

A Gospel Wellspring

At Rock Haven Montevideo these past several weeks, we’ve been looking at Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. So much of what we see in these passages is Jesus teaching us what it looks like to be formed by grace in every dimension of our lives. Jesus teaches us how to live in worshipful response to God’s saving grace. 

That’s why our vision at Rock Haven Montevideo is to become a Gospel Wellspring – to be a source of continual supply of the message of grace to all people as we seek to guide them ever deeper into the gospel. God wants to use us to meet this grace shortage in our communities. 

We need to recognize how profusely the grace of God is overflowing in our lives so we can keep the grace supply chain flowing freely from us to other people.  

True relationship, both between us and God and between us and other people, is powered by grace. That’s why Jesus is calling us to be people formed by grace and to see that grace is embedded in every fiber of our being. To be formed by grace is to pass on God’s grace to others.

Photo by Paul Teysen on Unsplash