Prayer for October 5, 2021

Prayer for October 5, 2021: Please pray with me. God grace, why is grace so difficult for humans to accept? Why are we so addicted to transactional faith and relationships. In transactions we give something of value and expect to receive something of equal or greater value. In fact, we believe we deserve it. That we earned it. Ahhh — there is it. Humans prefer transactional faith because then we get to think that you, Lord, owe us something. We get to dictate to you the terms. We get to earn something. We get to claim we deserve it. Grace goes against this. Grace isn’t transactional at all. Grace is getting something we don’t deserve or earn. No wonder that is difficult. Our economy values transactions. Our work is based on transactions. Many of our relationships are too. So why wouldn’t assume that faith works the same way too? But it doesn’t. And we should be eternally grateful for that too. Because if faith were transactional, we’d never have enough. Amen.

Call to Action: Can you imagine not having to do transactions for anything? For today, do something for someone without a transaction. Just do it for them. Pick someone who doesn’t deserve it and didn’t earn it. And don’t tell them about it either. Just give. And don’t seek out recognition or seek to tell them about it — because their thanks would be their end of the transaction. Just give and walk away. That’s grace. Now how do you receive it? That’s also grace.

Originally published at https://pastormatthewbest.com on October 5, 2021.