Last Sunday, I had the privilege of preaching from Luke’s gospel about being greedy or grateful. If you missed it, you can watch it here.

Echoing the woman’s example from the story and the parable Jesus shares with Simon the Pharisee, I want to provide some practical examples of how you can express your gratefulness through worship for the redemptive work Jesus is doing in your life.

First, it’s important to remember that everything we have, including our time, treasure, and talent, comes from God. As an act of gratefulness, God calls us to steward our resources in a way that glorifies him and serves others. Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 9:7 that we are to do this sacrificially and cheerfully even if what we have to give seems small, like the woman in Mark 12:41-44. When we give of our resources, regardless of the amount, we demonstrate our gratefulness for the resources God has provided.

Aside from corporate worship on Sundays, which includes prayer, singing, and Communion, there are three main ways in which you can express your gratefulness: giving, serving, and leading.

If you’ve paid attention to the recent numbers in The Weekly, giving at the Ballard Campus has not been great. In fact, many of the other campuses are subsidizing our budget to keep us afloat. One way to show your gratefulness is to contribute financially to the church. If you’re not currently doing this, click here to find out how.

But giving isn’t the only way we can express our gratefulness. There are also numerous opportunities for people to use their time and talent to serve the church and the city. On Sundays we need people to do everything from hospitality to production to cleanup. If you call Mars Hill Church home but aren’t helping to take care of our home and welcome more people into it, then stop by one of the Connect Desks in the foyers on Sundays or visit the “Find a Service Team” page on The City.

During the week we need people to lead Community Groups, which are not only where much of the care and discipleship occurs, but also where people are able to be the church to our city. For those of you in Community Groups, be sure to thank your leaders, support them, rally behind their mission, and consider pursuing leadership yourself so you can serve and not just be served.

Ultimately, this is a call to get involved and move from being greedy to grateful. What we know and believe in our minds and in our hearts should be evident in our words and actions.

The work we do is not in vain because Jesus is redeeming people at our campus. Here are two stories I received about people who Jesus saved this past Sunday:

This week I invited one of my best friends to come with us to church. I had been talking with her and praying for her to get saved for at least a year. Well, this Sunday she came to Mars Hill with Jared and me. As soon as you said you would be preaching out of Luke 7, I was so excited. My friend Tamara sat there, rereading the passage in my Bible and got all teary a couple times. When the sermon was over, I asked her what she thought. She responded, “I feel like I’m that woman.” I asked her if she wanted to pray with me to become a Christian, and she did. We were both crying. I got to explain Communion to her and she took Communion for the first time. She said that her whole life is going to be different, and she’ll have to change the way she looks at everything now. She told us she’d felt bells going off in her head for a while now, but had pushed them away as being over-analytical. “I just thought today, ‘How much longer am I going to keep pretending I don’t have to make a decision about this?’” She’ll be coming to church with us now, and she’s planning to attend the Community Group we’re in on Wednesday nights.

Meghan McDevitt

From Deacon Billy Clem:

There was a guy named Brandon, who I met after the 7pm service on Sunday. He was from Texas and was in town just for the weekend helping his long time friend and roommate move to Seattle to start a new Job. He came up to me after the service and told me that his whole life he felt like he was a good person. Most of the people around him drank more than him, slept with their girlfriends, talked worse than him. He felt like he was pretty good and because of that didn’t need God. He wasn’t against God, just felt like he was pretty ok without him. He came to MHC alone on Sunday because a friend of his in Texas told him he should visit while he was up here. He heard the sermon and realized that he was like Simon the Pharisee and didn’t feel like he needed very much forgiveness. I talked to him and walked him through some of Romans 3 and talked to him about how all sin is bad enough for Christ to need to die and face the full wrath of God. He said he wanted to be repentant and wanted to be like the woman at Jesus’ feet instead of the guy across the table and he prayed to accept Christ.