What will your legacy be?

When the Lord calls you home to heaven, what impact will you leave behind? A part of your legacy is shaped through your will and your beneficiary designations. Did you know your government provides you with some tax-advantaged ways to remember the Lord’s work—advantages that can increase your charitable gift by up to 50 percent? Leaving a gift for ministry can leave a gospel legacy that will enable others to hear God’s promises of love and forgiveness—a legacy with eternal implications. For more information on ways of sharing a gospel legacy, please contact WELS Ministry of Christian Giving to speak with the Christian giving counselor assigned to your area. Call 800-827-5482. He will be happy to serve you in a free, confidential, and gospel-based way.

Freedom Isn’t Free
Salvation is free—a gift to us from our Father in heaven. Paul makes that point so clearly in Ephesians 2:8-9: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.” We neither earned it nor deserved it. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).
Free to us, yes, but salvation came at a cost, didn’t it? The Apostle Peter tells us, “It was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed . . . but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect” (1 Peter 1:18-19). Jesus paid the price for our salvation. “He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).

We ponder these words of Isaiah, prophesied so many, many years before our Lord fulfilled them. Humility, awe, and gratitude fill our hearts as we remember our “oppressed and afflicted Savior,” who carried all our sins in his body on the cross. How do we say thanks for such a great gift as Christ has given us? How can we express our love for him and his great sacrifice? The same way he expressed his love for us. We love others as he loves us. We give freely as he gave so freely. We share his Word in its truth and purity. We serve in his name, healing and restoring others. We forgive as we have been forgiven. We do all of this by his power and through his grace.

From Epiphany’s Stewardship Committee

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