“My God will supply all my need” was my thought as I stepped into my home tonight. It is a good thing. I feel a little bit victorious! I made it! I survived the series on money at my church. I knew it was going to be brutal. I even considered (mostly unseriously) trying to get out of participating in it, but I survived. I am so glad I did not check out because it changed me.
It was not that I thought I knew everything there was to know about money. I know very little about money. Well, I know a little. But when one makes closer to 10% than 20% of the average income of the town in which one attends church, the numbers people talk about make me feel really, really unrich and unable to matter. 401k? Not so much in my near future or a part of my dreams. Budget? I have one of those. It is basically one rule. Buy nothing you do not need, ever.
That is bad humor and petty. God has blessed me with a lot of things I do not need in the last four months. Birthday and Christmas is good for that. The point is I made it through this conversation without getting more than a tiny bit envious of America’s idea of wealth.
Tonight at group I thought of how the only times in life when I had enough is when I had almost nothing. How the more I had, the less I had. It tempts me to take all that I have, give it to the poor and follow Him.
Recently I keep stumbling upon the passage in the gospels where Jesus says whoever loses family or houses or property for Him will receive a hundredfold. In Mark Jesus says they will receive it in this present age. I have lost family and other things as I have followed. He is right. He has given me one hundred times more than I had before I knew Him. I don’t have to wait until heaven to receive it. He has given it to me now. I am so thankful. Why do I cry when I take those next steps of faith?
I had a rough day today. I woke up with a nightmare again. I knew I shouldn’t have confessed to being thankful for them being gone! I was actually pretty upset, and it was hard to shake. It was almost the end of my quiet time before I did shake it. My connection time, I mean. It has been helping me in my quiet time to make sure I am not just reading or doing inventory, but connecting.
Then Peter began to speak up. “We’ve given up everything to follow you,” he said.
“Yes,” Jesus replied, “and I assure you that everyone who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or property, for my sake and for the Good News, will receive now in return a hundred times as many houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, and property—along with persecution. And in the world to come that person will have eternal life. But many who are the greatest now will be least important then, and those who seem least important now will be the greatest then.” – Mark 10:28-31
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