The Gift of Faith | A WLI Share Your Story Blog

It brings me no joy to say this, but I’ve never really been good at receiving gifts.

I’d love to receive every gift I’m given with great joy, but in reality, I usually have this nagging thought in the back of my mind when someone gives me something: “Now I have to return the favor.”

There are three circumstances under which receiving a gift makes me the most uncomfortable:

1. The gift is a complete surprise. It comes at a time when I wasn’t expecting to receive a gift or from a person who I didn’t think would give me something
2. The gift that someone gave me is something much nicer than the gift I gave them or was planning on giving them
3. The gift I’m receiving is something I couldn’t possibly hope to repay anytime soon

If you know me personally, I don’t share this information in hopes that you will never give me a gift again. Instead, I aim to shed light on the fact that I, in my pride, constantly need to balance the scales. I don’t want to feel like I owe someone something, even if they insist they don’t expect to be repaid.

“We walked a lot,” was my short response to a simple question: “How was the mission?”

It was the summer of 2021. I was nineteen years old and about five weeks into a three-month internship with Wordsower Africa, whose founder, Kim Smith, is an American missionary and one of Woodside’s global partners. I was in Liberia, a small country on the coast of West Africa that was once an American colony settled by formerly enslaved people. I was there as a missionary, and despite barely being able to speak Liberian English and still having a very trivial understanding of the cultural context surrounding me, Kim was eager to give me many opportunities to share the message of salvation found in Jesus Christ.

On this particular day, I was on mission with one of Wordsower’s Liberian missionaries, Prince. We had motorbikes drop us off early in the morning, and we spent the day walking between villages and sharing the gospel. It was early in the afternoon when we stopped a man approaching us on the road and asked to borrow his machete so that we could open a coconut. His name was Solomon. We took the opportunity to share the gospel with him and agreed that someone from Wordsower would come find him the next day and bring him to our Bible school to learn more.

It wasn’t until Solomon arrived at our Bible school the next day that I found out his title: “Regional devil.” He was the local leader of a very violent and demonic spiritual group. For him, converting to Christianity would not only be a renouncement of demonic practices; it would mean risking his life.

Solomon professed faith in Christ, and Kim and I baptized him in a river about a week after our initial conversation. He then returned to his village to share the gospel with the very people he had once terrorized. The whole event was perhaps just a little bit more exciting than my initial assessment of “We walked a lot.”

I have retold that story many times. I sometimes feel so far removed from this event that it almost feels like I’m telling a story about someone else. Today, I’m not in Liberia. I’m back home in Michigan. I don’t often walk up to people carrying machetes, and I still get nervous before sharing the gospel.

As I write this story, December is approaching, which means the Christmas season is almost here. That means most of us are preparing to give and receive many gifts.

There’s a profound irony associated with the uncomfortable feelings when receiving a gift, because the very salvation in Christ that I profess is itself a gift received by grace through faith. As stated in Romans 6:23: “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

For many of us, it’s easy to look at a story like Solomon’s and to recognize that his salvation was a gift. He wasn’t looking for someone to share the gospel with him on the road that day. He was actively participating in violent, demonic faith practices. Had we already known who he was, we may have written him off as too far gone. There’s no way he could have earned his way into heaven. God’s grace is truly amazing!

But salvation is also a gift for people like me, who grew up going to church their whole lives, have followed Christ from a young age, and have responded to a call to ministry. What I have realized more and more over the last few years is that the gospel is no less of a gift to me than it is to Solomon. And it’s also the very type of gift that makes me the most uncomfortable to receive. It was not presented to me according to my timeline or preferences. I could never dream of repaying it in a thousand lifetimes, and anything I could ever offer in return is nothing more than a dirty rag compared to a never-ending, never-fading, eternal treasure. The scales are not balanced. And they never will be.

There’s another gift that God has given to those who follow Christ: The gift of participating in His mission to redeem the world.

Consider Ephesians 2:9-10. “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God. not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” This text reaffirms that salvation is a gift. But it’s followed up by verse 10: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Our salvation in Christ can’t be separated from the good works that God has prepared us for!

This was perhaps the biggest lesson that I learned from my experience sharing the gospel with Solomon. Looking back, there was nothing particularly special about the words I said. I wasn’t as prepared as I could have been. I was still pretty unfamiliar with the culture and the language. Honestly, Prince did more work than I did. God didn’t need to use me to share the gospel with Solomon, but he did. I didn’t earn it. It wasn’t a repayment for my salvation. It was a gift. One that ought to be received with humility and joy, prompting me to devote myself wholeheartedly to worship. I fear that too often, I have boasted in my own works instead.

Fellow believers, our faith is a gift. Every day, there are opportunities to receive as gifts the opportunities God gives us to share His truth and love with the world. Even though I am still learning to receive gifts well, I hope my story motivates you to receive Christ’s blessings with a heart full of joy, humility, and worship.

“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” – James 1:17