My Ninth Blog - Zero Times a Billion Equals Zero

These are the blogs of my last month in youth ministry and some lessons and things God has taught me:

ZERO TIMES A BILLION EQUALS ZERO

As a stock broker or financial advisor or retirement counselor or whatever you want to call me it would be pretty silly if someone came into my office and said the following: “Keith I want to retire in 25 years. I need at least 2 million dollars to make that happen. Now I don’t have any money to give you right now and I honestly can’t see myself ever giving you any money down the road but make it happen! I hear you’re the best so I look forward to traveling when I retire on those couple million bucks you’re gonna make me!!!”

First of all let me say this…I am the best :). Now that that is out of the way I can continue!! See the problem with my friend above is that he had great intentions and great plans and great dreams and great goals! What average person wouldn’t want to retire with two million in the bank? The problem is that my friend doesn’t want to give me any money now, and he doesn’t want to give me any money later. How would it ever be possible to turn zero dollars into two millions dollars? Well it isn’t possible.

Isn’t the above scenario just like us Christians today? We want God to pour out His blessings upon us and provide for us and prosper us in unbelievable ways. We want Him to give us a great mate that we can spend the rest of our lives with and to just live the American dream. But…what do we give God that He can actually invest for us? We want to be comfortable and have money but we won’t even give Him His proper tithes. We want Him to give us fun times and bless all the time in our life yet we won’t even give Him His time and get up out of bed to go to church on Sunday morning. We want Him to give us this great boy or girl that will one day be our husband or wife but right now when we’re single and not in a committed relationship and have more time to give to God and work on our relationship with Him, well we don’t do it because time with our friends is more important.

How can God bless us like we want if we never give Him anything to bless like He wants? How can we expect a financial blessing when we never give Him an offering that He can take and multiply? How can He bless our time when we never show up at church and honor the Sabbath and keep it Holy or give Him time by reading our Bibles or praying? How can we expect God to give us a mate when He already isn’t the object of our affection even when we’re single?

If you wanna get you gotta give. It’s as backwards a concept as there is out there but it is 100% true. And it is an absolute joke to think that God needs 10% of my paycheck to keep His ministry going and that He needs my life to keep His Word out there. I’m nothing. (So is my 10%!!) But for some reason He wants me. And He asks for and wants my time and my money. And He doesn’t ask for it because He needs it Himself. He asks me to do it and give it…that’s right…for me. You see we can never ever ever ever out give God. He will take what little we give, bless it and multiply it, and give it back to us. But He won’t take the nothing that we give Him and turn it into what we desire. When Jesus fed the 5000, He didn’t start with nothing. He most certainly could have but He didn’t. He actually had something in the five loaves and two fish to start off with. And with that little bit, he turned it into a lot.

Could you imagine if we ever decided to give Him everything?