CHRISTIAN
LIVING, COMMITMENT
AS THE offering tray passed, a little girl took the tray, put it on the floor, and stood up in the offering plate. The usher said, “Honey, why are you doing that?” And she said, “Because they taught me in Sunday school that my whole body was to be offered to the Savior.” This little girl got the point that she was the one who belonged in the tray, and that God does not want donations.89
[Commitment; Sacrifice; Giving; Surrender, Concept of]
Rom. 12:1; 1 Cor. 6:20
THERE IS a story of a chicken and a pig who were walking down the street one day. They came to the grocery store and the grocer had a sign on the window that said “Bacon and Eggs Wanted.” The grocer said, “Can you help me out? I need some bacon and eggs.”
The chicken said, “Well, let’s go help him out. He needs some bacon. Pig, you can give him the bacon, and I can give him the eggs.”
The pig said, “You’re crazy! All you have to give is a contribution. I have to give up the whole thing!”90
LIVING the Christian life is more than religion; it’s a lifestyle. If you eat doughnuts all week long, drinking a Diet Coke is not going to help you. If you’ve operated apart from grace all week long, showing up at church on Sunday will not help you. Coming to church will make you feel better, but it doesn’t solve your problem.91
[Life, Management of; Flesh, Walking in]
MCDONALD’S offers “combo meals.” The company has made it easy for anyone to drive up and get a full meal by just saying a number. They have also trained their employees to take orders and always follow up with the question, “Do you want to supersize it?” The question basically implies that the customer is going to choose between taking a regular order or an oversized one.
In the same way, God continually offers His children the opportunity to “supersize” what He is offering to them. With just a little bit more of an investment of obedience and commitment on the part of the Christian, God will make so much more available.92
[Commitment; Sacrifice; Giving]
Matt. 17:19–21; James 4:8
SOME people participate in a scam. Due to a major event, such as a banquet or ceremony, they will go to a store and buy a dress, suit, or shoes to wear. They will adorn themselves with this outfit for the event, only to go back to the store the next day and return it! They never intend to buy these things to own them; they only want to use the goods for their own purposes and then give them back. Where the store intends to make legitimate sales to legitimate customers, the customers in this situation actually have an entirely different plan in mind. They are running a game on the establishment.
Many of us are attempting to run a game on God. We come to the store—the church—and say what we want and what we are committed to. We make declarations regarding what we want. We take for our own purposes what we want from the establishment, only to tell God later that we can’t use it and don’t want it anymore. We tell God that we want Him and that we are here for His purposes, and then at our convenience we live for our own fulfillment and purposes. That is running a game on God.
The difference is, with God, we can’t run a game. He has the ability to search the heart.93
[Carnal Christian]
Jer. 17:10; Rev. 2:23
AN EVANGELIST was invited overseas to minister in a crusade. The first night of his visit, he was picked up by his host and was to be taken to the church in which he was to give his message. The car stalled. The driver’s guage wasn’t working and he had no idea he was without gas. The driver had in effect attempted to take his passengers somewhere with no tiger in his tank! Both the host and the traveling minister had to get out and push the car.
After awhile, they were able to get some gas and pour it into the tank. The motor began to rev up because the engine had been fed. Prayer wouldn’t have solved that problem. The car even had two holy men in it, but it wouldn’t budge without getting fed what it required in order to run.
Many of us want to give God everything except what God wants. We want to offer God a little of this and a little of that and wonder why our spiritual engines don’t roar. God is requiring what we are not giving, and that is a committed life, using the time we have for spiritual development.94
[Commitment; Spiritual Maturity]
Ps. 90:12; Eph. 5:15–17
IN 1856, Henry Brown, a slave in Richmond, Virginia, decided he didn’t want to be a slave anymore. Henry Brown found himself a box, a small wooden crate, and postmarked it to an abolitionist in Philadelphia, which was free territory. Henry Brown got inside the box, sealed the box from the inside, and mailed himself to Philadelphia.
Henry Brown was banking on the U.S. Postal Service to deliver him. He was in slavery and needed to be delivered. The abolitionist got the crate. When he opened the box, Henry Brown stood up, after being in that box for three weeks, and said, “How do you do, sir. My name is Henry Brown and I was a slave. I heard about you being an abolitionist, so I’m entrusting my future to you.” That was a big risk. It was an oxygen risk, a risk of being discovered, and a risk of going hungry. But when Henry Brown stood up in Philadelphia, he was a free man. Henry Brown rejoiced because the risk was well worth the inconvenience. Living a committed Christian life involves taking a risk. It involves having faith that Jesus is going to come through for you. But living a committed Christian life is a risk that is well worth the inconvenience.95
[Risk; Trials; Commitment]
Phil. 3:7–11
GOD will always test you for the big things by looking at the little things. I knew at eighteen years old that God wanted me to preach. But, I started out on street corners and bus stops, not churches. I would go to bus stops and I would stand in front of the bus stop and there would be people waiting on buses and I’d go at it. There was no pay involved. There was no notoriety involved in that. In fact, I looked like a pure fool sometimes. But I was walking in what He wanted me to do. The church came later. A lot of us are waiting for this big blessing and God can’t get us to move out of the seat we’re in. If He can’t get you to do little acts of good works, why should He entrust you with greater opportunities for good works?96
[Faithfulness; Calling]
Matt. 25:14–21
A MAN one day was writing the love of his life … her name was Betty. He wrote:
My dearest Betty,
I love you beyond words. Webster does not have in his dictionary the necessary vocabulary to explain the depth of my love for you. Thoughts of you dance across the portals of my mind. You are my all-consuming passion. So enraptured am I regarding my love for you that the Pacific Ocean would be like a pond if I had to swim it. I could do it as long as I knew you were awaiting me on the other shore. The heat of the Sahara Desert would never impede my progress to you, knowing that you would be the oasis that would refresh me when I arrive. There would be no inconvenience I wouldn’t endure for you. Climbing Mount Everest would only seem like getting over an ant’s hill if I knew you were at the precipice. All I’m simply saying to you, my darling … is that my love for you transcends time and space.
Signed, Sam.
P.S. I’ll see you Saturday night if it doesn’t rain.
Now I’m sure you would agree with me, Sam was only full of a bunch of noise. Sam could talk a good game but he didn’t go very deep. While he could verbalize overcoming the elements to get to his love, a little bit of rain would keep him away. It’s easy to verbalize being an overcomer. It’s easy to say the words, “I am victorious. I’ve been made victorious in Christ.” But it’s a whole different thing to not let the rain slow you down. It’s a whole different thing to take your position as an overcomer and turn it into your practice of overcoming.97
[Victory; Overcome]
A LITTLE girl came to her father and asked him for a nickel. The father reached in his pocket, but he didn’t have any change. All he had was a twenty-dollar bill. He knew that was a lot of money, but he figured that his daughter had been a good girl. He decided to give her the twenty.
The little girl said, “Oh no, Daddy. You don’t understand. I want a nickel.”
“No, honey, you don’t understand. This is a bunch of nickels. This is a twenty-dollar bill.”
But the little girl didn’t understand. She said, “Daddy, why won’t you give me a nickel?”
He tried to explain. He tried to tell her how many nickels were in a dollar, and how many dollars were in a twenty-dollar bill. She wasn’t getting it.
So she started crying and having a temper tantrum. “Daddy, you said you were going to give me a nickel. Why won’t you give me a nickel?”
That’s exactly what we do. We settle for a nickel when God offers us twenties.98
[Spiritual Life, Manifestions of; Blessing]
Eph. 3:16–19
MANY of us use sugar substitutes like Sweet’N Low. Sweet’N Low is used by people who want to taste some sweetness without having any caloric effect.
A lot of Christians want to be sweet, and low—sweet in their talk, but low in their walk.99