IDEA: Grace leads to service.

PURPOSE: To help listeners see how service coming from grace empowers the other person.

Do you ever struggle with applying the Bible to life?

If so, why?

Unless we can take a biblical concept and ground it in life, it’s like packaging fog.

I. We’ve been talking about covenant marriage and the kind of spiral that leads our original commitment to deeper and deeper love.

How did the spiral develop?

Grace which shows itself in forgiveness leads to serving the other person.

II. When we think about service in marriage, how do we think about it?

It is often how another person should serve me. But that is the opposite of service growing out of grace should look like.

Service is usually linked with power.

If I think of someone serving me, then I have power over that person.

If I think of my serving them, they have power over me.

Love and grace lead to serving the other person rather than being served. We don’t use power over another person; we use power on behalf of another person.