Friday, June 26, 2015

Focus Friday: Let's Focus on Gifts

The Butler County Fair is going on in our town this week. It has been fun to go up to the fairgrounds and watch many of the events. Our church has a booth where people can pick a duck from a tank full of water and win a prize. Most people can be convinced to stop when we just say, "Would you like to pick a duck?" Of course, many of them look at you like you're crazy until you explain how easy it is to win a prize. Every duck is a winner! The interesting thing has been seeing how many people refuse to pick a duck. They seem suspicious and they give their head a little shake and move right along to the next booth. They give up a sure prize because they don't trust our intentions. Our church just wants to offer people a free gift and put a smile on people's faces as they visit the booths at the fair.

As I saw quite a few people react that way to our free gift offer, I thought about how many people reject God's free gift because they are also suspicious. God offers us eternal life if we just believe that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and that His death means eternal life for us. 

They would rather keep going along in life just trying to do the best they can, not relying on anyone else for anything. They reject the gift because they think there are strings attached. God's grace is free, but we have to make the decision to accept it and live in it. We can't ignore it and keep walking along in life trying to do things on our own.

Would you like to pick a duck?

"For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 6:23)

Are you suspicious of God's free gift offer? How can focusing on God help you to accept that gift and look forward to eternal life?

5 comments:

  1. Great analogy, Robyn!
    p.s. You are so faithful and self-disciplined in getting your post out on time : )

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    1. Thanks Connie! I almost missed it this week...our county fair is going on and I couldn't think of anything on Friday until I came up with the ducks. :-)

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  2. This is so true about what people think about free things. It is so sad that many will just turn away from God when He offers the free gift of grace to all who accept Him. Just wondering what free gift you gave away at your booth? We should try this in our town.

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    1. Thanks for the comment, Jolyn! We do some kind of game every year at the fair - one year it was a bean bag toss, one year we did a "Plinko" game, this year it was picking a duck. If they got the one duck with a star on it they won a pen with our church info on it (and a little flashlight built in), #1 got a bottle of water, #2 got a freeze pop, #3 got a kids' toy (we ordered a bunch of stuff from Oriental Trading Company) or a Werther's caramel candy. It went over very well - lots of happy faces no matter what they won. We also had a drawing for 3 more prizes: Jesus Calling, Jesus Today, and Do You Believe? (we preordered the DVD and we'll get it to them in August when it comes out) We had 207 people sign up for the drawing! We made sure they knew we would only call them if they won - no calls to bug them about anything else. If you do the ducks this summer you can probably borrow ours - otherwise I think I just ordered them on Amazon. (Learned later that I should have plugged the holes in the bottom with a glue gun so they wouldn't get water in them...hopefully ours don't get moldy.) Okay, I've rambled on long enough about the duck game...you're probably thinking, "What a quack!" :-)

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