Hoi thanh

By Lisa Crum
This week's topic: Serving Others

Last night while driving home from a small group meeting, the term “residual value” came bobbing like a message in a bottle into my thoughts, and I immediately began to pray and ask the Lord to reveal the lesson to be learned here. Ever notice how He baits you in, and only after you’re good and curious does He unwrap a nugget of His wonderful truth? When God next spoke to my spirit that His children have a residual value which far exceeds their “sticker price,” immediately I got excited, and the fatigue of a long day was replaced by energy of the anticipated. 

The phrase, commonly used in finance agreements, lease contracts and the like, basically means “the value of the part that is left after some of it has been used up or taken away.” How is it that in God’s kingdom less is more? Used is more valuable than new? We can’t do the math with a carnal mindset, because the world places such significance on the unused, the untouched! Folks will spend a fortune on uncirculated coins to hide away in an album; or they’ll sink thousands of dollars into a collector car whose engine will never purr, whose tires will never kiss the open road. Mint condition. New in box. I’m happy for ones who can find pleasure in having something that neither they nor anyone else can ever actually use, but it makes no sense to me. If you can’t really get your hands on it, test its limits, share it with others, where’s the fun of owning it?

Don’t you imagine God is a little the same way? He created each of us for purpose, and we’re born with gifts and talents to be used for His glory…or not. We can spend a lifetime lining up our credentials in neat frames on our walls, building our castles on foundations of sand, yet never realize our value in Christ. Our true worth does not lie in what He cannot use…but rather, what He can. As a matter of fact, those “collectible” features in our lives will be the dross burned away when our works pass through the
fire!

Follow the brother of that sealed coin—the one who doesn’t wind up in an album—on his journey. A postage stamp for a letter to a loved one. A phone call home from a faraway place. A cold beverage on a dry, hot day. His role seemingly carries little celebration, and some may even drop him on the ground and walk away without noticing or caring; yet, to others in whose hands he is grasped, he will make all the difference. The coin will experience that over and over again, until he’s so worn that the date is no longer legible; then he’ll be melted and recast for still another purpose. I just wonder, if you were to add up each time he was spent for his full value, how many millions of dollars of commerce this tiny coin might have been responsible for generating. Insignificant? Trivial? Hardly…

Apply that same scenario to the collector car. Sure, it may wind up in a climate-controlled garage, only occasionally unveiled to a few curious eyes, but it will never bring to its master the “action and adventure” kind of memories that it could have if it were only useable. It will never go on a family picnic, never drive a pregnant wife to the delivery room, and it will never become the revered legend who beat so-and-so’s hot rod on that lonely stretch of highway just outside of town.

Knowing that our lives are temporary, and that even the best-kept of us could be gone like a vapor, wouldn’t you rather be remembered for what you did than for what you didn’t do?

We struggle sometimes with the issue of “surrendering all” to Jesus, so afraid He might place us in a horrible circumstance where we’re perpetually unhappy and unfulfilled. We envision the worst when instead, He has His best pursuits in mind for us…those things we were born to do! The work of the Kingdom of God isn’t doled out just to folks who don’t have a life, or who can’t do anything else! True, God has a very diverse family situated among the different walks of life and with different levels of skill. However, He places us all as salt and light wherever we are, to impact everyone around us…which means no staying in the spice rack and no hiding under a bushel! The one thing that He cannot use is a life that won’t be torn from its protective packaging. 

Scripture Of The Day: "As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace:" - 1 Peter 4:10 (ESV)