Imagine you’ve been driving a car that barely runs. The heater’s out. The brakes grind. Every trip is a small act of faith that you’ll make it. Then someone fixes it, really fixes it, and you get it back running the way it was supposed to.
What do you do with that?
You drive, of course. But if you’re the kind of person most of us want to be, you also start noticing other people whose cars are dying. People who can’t get to work or get the kids to school. And if you can, you help, because you remember what it felt like when someone helped you.
That’s the simplest answer I know to the question of how to serve others as a Christian. You don’t start with a program. You start by remembering what was done for you.
Grace moves
In Under the Hood I wrote, “People who have received grace are called to give grace. People who have been loved are called to love.”
This isn’t an advanced course for super-Christians. It’s what the good news of Jesus naturally produces in a person. A fixed car drives. A forgiven person forgives. Someone who has been given much starts looking for ways to give.
Jesus set the standard himself: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:12–13).
Notice the words “as I have loved you.” Not as you feel like it. Not when it’s convenient. As he loved us: at real cost, without waiting for the other person to deserve it.
That’s a high bar. But Jesus isn’t holding it over our heads to make us feel small. He’s describing what love looks like when it’s fully alive in someone, and inviting us into it.
“But I’m not a mechanic”
Here’s the objection I expect from a lot of readers. I can’t fix cars. I don’t have money to give. I’m not good with people. I don’t have anything to offer.
That’s almost never true.
At The Garage we have thirty to forty volunteers, and we’re always looking for more, mechanics and non-mechanics alike. Think about what any ministry like ours needs. Somebody has to turn the wrenches, sure. But picture the person who welcomes a nervous customer at the door, or the one who sits with them while they wait, or the one who prays for them by name. None of that takes a mechanic. Nobody brings everything. Everybody brings something.
And even if you truly couldn’t pick up a wrench, write a check, or give a Saturday, the book is clear that there’s still something you can do. “You can tell someone what happened to you. You can pass on the story of grace.”
What “laying down your life” looks like on a Tuesday
For most of us, laying down our lives won’t mean anything dramatic. It will look like small, costly choices made over and over. For example:
- Time. Giving an evening you’d rather spend on the couch.
- Skill. Using what you already do every day, whether that’s cooking, bookkeeping, carpentry, or driving, for someone who can’t pay you back.
- Presence. Showing up at the hospital, the funeral home, or the kitchen table and staying a while.
- Honesty. Telling a friend the truth when it’s easier to say nothing.
- Your story. Telling someone, in plain words, what God has done for you.
None of those require a garage. They require someone who has been loved and is willing to let it spill over.
Small faithfulness adds up
I keep coming back to Michael, the man who started The Garage. He began in his own driveway, fixing a few cars at a time because someone had to. That was it. No strategic plan, no building.
That simple faithfulness, over years, became something. Other people caught the vision. The church invested. A facility was built. Today we serve several hundred people a year.
Michael didn’t set out to build that. He just kept doing the next thing in front of him. That’s usually how love multiplies. It starts small, and it doesn’t stay in one place.
Where the road points
Before Jesus left his first followers, he gave them their assignment: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:19–20).
In plain terms: go, tell, teach, help people follow Jesus. And he promised he’d be with them while they did it.
A repaired car doesn’t stay in the shop. It goes out and carries people. If you’ve received grace, that’s you.
One thing to do this week
Here’s a question from the back of the book that I’d love for you to take seriously: “Is there someone in your life right now who needs practical love, not advice, not prayers alone, but something concrete? What’s one thing you could actually do?”
Write down a name. Then write down one specific thing: a meal, a ride, a phone call, an afternoon of help. Put a day next to it. Then do it.
You don’t have to be a mechanic. You just have to remember what was done for you, and pass it on.
If you’d like the full picture of where this kind of love comes from, Under the Hood tells the story from the beginning. And if you’re already serving and want help to keep showing up for the long haul, Full Service was written for people who serve with their hands.