Being Instruments of God’s Grace to Others

Think about the last time someone showed up for you at just the right moment. Maybe it was a neighbor who knocked on your door with a meal when life had fallen apart. Maybe it was a stranger who offered a kind word when you were on the verge of tears in the grocery store. Maybe it was a friend who simply sat with you in silence and didn’t try to fix anything. In those moments, something holy moved through an ordinary person. Grace wore a human face. And whether that person knew it or not, they were doing something ancient and sacred — they were answering a call.

That’s exactly what we see in Abraham. In Genesis 12, God speaks to a man who has no roadmap, no guarantee, and no idea where he’s going. “Go,” God says, “from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you” (Genesis 12:1, NRSVue). For us, it is one of the most extraordinary moments in all of Scripture — not because Abraham was extraordinary, but because God chose to work through someone willing to take a step. And the purpose of that call wasn’t just personal blessing. It was bigger than Abraham. God says, “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3b). Abraham was called to something so that he could be a blessing for someone.

This is the Wesleyan heartbeat of what we might call prevenient grace — the grace that goes before us, that finds us before we find it, that stirs something in our hearts and whispers, there’s more for you, and through you, than you can imagine. God was already at work in Abraham before Abraham took a single step. And God is already at work in you — nudging, drawing, calling you toward something larger than yourself. Perhaps you feel the tugging of the Holy Spirit in your own life.

The Apostle Paul, writing to the Romans, reminds us that this pattern of grace has always been the way God works. Abraham “believed God,” Paul says, “and it was reckoned to him as righteousness” (Romans 4:3, NRSVue). This wasn’t about earning anything. It was about trust. Abraham didn’t have a checklist to complete or a theological exam to pass. He had a promise and a God he chose to believe in. Paul is clear: the promise “rests on grace” (Romans 4:16). Grace is the foundation. Our response — our willingness to trust and move — is the door we walk through.

And then there is Nicodemus, coming to Jesus under the cover of night. He’s a learned man, a religious leader, someone who has spent his whole life trying to do things right. But something in him is restless. Something is not quite settled. And so, he comes, quietly, with his questions, to the one who seems to hold the light. Jesus doesn’t turn him away. He doesn’t shame him for coming at night or for not understanding. Instead, Jesus opens up the whole cosmos: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16, NRSVue). That word world is enormous. Not just the religious. Not just the prepared. The whole, beautiful, broken, beloved world.

This is sanctifying grace at its most expansive — God’s love not as a gated garden but as an overflowing river, meant to move through us and out into every corner of the earth. We are not just the recipients of grace. We are, by God’s design, its instruments.

So what does that look like on a Saturday afternoon? It may not look dramatic. It rarely does. It might look like pausing to really listen to someone who feels invisible. It might look like forgiving a debt, literal or emotional, that you have every human right to hold onto. It might look like showing up at a school board meeting, a food pantry, or a hospital room. It might look like writing a letter, making a phone call, or simply praying for someone by name. Perhaps you are to reach out to a refugee or someone who is homeless. The Psalmist reminds us that “our help comes from the Lord” (Psalm 121:2) — and that same Lord sends that help through people like you and me.

Here is a gentle invitation for this week: Ask God to make you aware of one person who needs to experience grace through you. Not a grand gesture — just one moment of attentiveness. One act of kindness that costs you something small. One willingness to be moved. You don’t have to have it all together. Abraham didn’t. Nicodemus didn’t. Neither did the neighbor with the meal or the stranger with the kind word. You just have to be willing to go.

God is not finished with this world, and God is not finished with you. The same voice that called Abraham out of his comfort and into a story larger than himself is still calling. The same grace that met Nicodemus in the dark is available to anyone who reaches toward the light — and that grace wants to move through you to reach someone who desperately needs it today. You were blessed to be a blessing. That is not a burden. It is the most beautiful invitation you will ever receive.

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May you go this week with open eyes and a willing heart. May you sense the grace of God moving in and through you. May your ordinary moments become holy ground, and may someone’s life be touched because you said yes to the call.

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Let us pray...

Gracious God, thank you for loving this world so completely that you would send your Son, and thank you for trusting us to carry that love into the places where we live and work and struggle. Forgive us for the times we have turned inward when you were calling us outward. Stir in us again that ancient restlessness — the one that moves us toward the neighbor, the stranger, the forgotten, the afraid. Make us instruments of your grace, not because we are sufficient on our own, but because your Spirit goes before us and walks beside us every step of the way. As Abraham trusted your promise and stepped into the unknown, give us that same faith — the kind that takes a step even when the road ahead is not fully clear. We ask this in the name of Christ, who came not to condemn the world but to save it. Amen.