If you could pick something in your life to be overflowing, what would it be? Money? Relationships? Time? When was the last time you lived out of an overflow of anything? Many of us, or even most of us, often live life out of a depletion, a lack, a scarcity. Life uses up our time, or crisis after crisis seems to deplete our trust, our hope, our reserves. Once we finally build those things up again, life seems to take us back down to depleted. Today we are going to look at what Scripture has to say about serving others in the name of Jesus. Not only are we to be disciples, but we are also given the privilege of being disciple makers: those who proclaim the excellencies of what Jesus has done for us in the good news of His saving grace. But the problem with that in our American lives is that when the Bible or the church talks about reaching out to others or being a witness to those around us, if we read those parts of Scripture while we are feeling depleted, as we often are, they just come as a burden. In fact, the invitation to serve God often comes in the form of guilt or being made to feel like we don’t do enough as it is. And maybe we don’t. But that isn’t God’s heart at all. The sharpest edge of any sword is grace rather than guilt. So this morning let’s see what the Bible has to say about living and serving out of an overflow rather than out of constant emptiness.
