More Grace Than Cost
“I look at my life and I see more grace than cost, more gift than sacrifice.”
That was the proclamation of a congregant-turned-missionary this weekend at our church as our family worshipped together. It was striking and impactful to me because what I saw in her life was abundant cost and sacrifice. I saw the relinquishment of comfort, abundance, and ease. I saw the loss of personal safety and protection. I saw the limiting of ambition and acclaim. I saw the desirable but humble reality of dying to self for the gain of others.
I saw something good yet immensely costly. I knew what she was saying to be true, but what I saw was more cost and sacrifice than grace and gift, and it leads me to ask the following of each one in our community today:
“Do you have eyes to see the grace and the gift, or do you first notice the cost and the sacrifice?”
As I personally reflected on this question, it hit me hard that both sides of the equation are always present. When Peter walks on water in Matthew 14, both Jesus and the waves are there. They are both real. It is not as though Peter had to acknowledge one and deny the other to stay above the water. Instead, it was a matter of what Peter chose to look at. It was a matter of what he saw.
Peter, upon being called by Jesus, got out of the water and began walking to Jesus. The mere act of stepping out of the boat confirms Peter’s fixation on Jesus. The only way he could make that decision is by seeing Jesus as bigger than the storm around him.
Conversely, it was when Peter “saw the wind” (Matt. 14:30) that he became afraid and began to sink. Jesus was quick to rescue Peter, but the illustration brings us back to the same question:
When both great grace and great cost are present, are you choosing to see the grace above the cost?
It is an extraordinarily simple and obvious principle, and one I will intentionally leave unembellished. We are to fix our eyes on Jesus (Heb. 12:2). We are to choose to see Him and Him alone. It is not that cost and sacrifice are not present—they are! It is that “where sin increased, grace increased all the more” (Rom. 5:20).
My friend, it is all intermingled. Grace and gift; cost and sacrifice. The question is, which one will you choose to see? The one you see is the one that will loom large in your life!