Today’s devotional: Spend your faith, don’t hoard it!
Do you view your Christian faith as a precious object to be preserved, kept carefully out of any situation that will challenge it? Chuck Swindoll relates an amusing anecdote from Oliver Cromwell’s reign to make a point about the true purpose of faith:
During the reign of Oliver Cromwell, the British government began to run low on silver for coins. Lord Cromwell sent his men to the local cathedral to see if they could find any precious metal there. After investigating they reported: “The only silver we can find is in the statues of the saints standing in the corners.”
To which the radical soldier and statesman of England replied: “Good! We’ll melt down the saints and put them in circulation!”
That brief but direct order states the essence of the practical goal of authentic Christianity. Not rows of silver saints crammed into the corners of cathedrals, but melted saints circulating through the mainstream of humanity. Where life transpires in the raw.
Swindoll goes on to describe the life of a “melted saint”—it means means living a God-honoring life amid the questions, challenges, and temptations of “real life.”
Is your Christian faith kept “safe and sound,” hoarded in isolation from the world? Or do you freely “spend” grace and love on those around you?
Yes i do spend my faith,grace and love on those around me. i think thats the only way to keep your peace and blessings while you walk through this world. It took me a minute to understand this, i grew weary of letting others control my emotional state. So by spending my faith, grace,and love coins i stay (or try to stay)in god’s will.
Yes!!! I believe, as Paul said, faith without work is dead. And if, we do hoard: faith in isolation. We are simple not doing what we suppose to do as Christians. So, I am spending my time to share with you in faith what God has been doing in my life. God has been a blessing in my life, not just giving what I have in life in general but more. I have more joy in doing what I do. I have peace in my heart in what ever life throws at me. And a clear mind in making the right decision as long as I pray, first to God and ask for direction. And of course sometime I have to wait for God to give me the answer, so I wait on Him. And many more!!!! So in spending my faith with other believers, today! A mutual strength is receive….God bless everyone.
I love God! He is so Eco friendly. Nothing goes to waste, as in this story, the saints were use in the plans of English history!! God is marvelous. He uses everything to accomplish His purposes. He doesn’t waste anything! He uses spoiled meat for flies to lay their eggs and a new generation is born! He uses waste to become nitrogen and other products for food and flowers to grow. All is important to God. Even our smallest needs are His concerns. His eyes are open and His ears are attentive to our prayers (2 Chron 6:43, Amp) He wants to hear from us and He wants to talk to us. And we can share the joy He has that our prayers are like incense around His throne! Pray for everyone, even the guy who cuts you off in traffic, maybe he is in need of your intercessory prayers and it is a blessing to our God to hear your prayers for that driver!!
Thank You God for all You have given us! Amen!!
If we do not share our faith or live our faith. We do not have faith. For faith is Jesus living in us.
Saints standing in the corner of any place, holy or not, is not shining the light of truth to a dark world. Faith is not grown without testing. As Jesus taught in today’s Daily Bread Mark 10: 17-23, entering the Kingdom of Heaven requires dependence on our faith which grows in trials that force us to depend on our Savior. Worldly security of the rich man in Jesus’ story made it difficult for him to have the faith to receive the gift of grace, since the man thought he had obeyed the laws and didn’t know how to trust, in faith, his Lord from heaven; instead dependent on his managing of his worldly treasures. He is in the darkness, and if saints stand in the corner of their world, they do not shine God’s love and life to the dark world, so, we must all get out of our security of our churches and be visible in the darkness of this world by staying surely faithfull to our Lord.
Faith is Jesus living in us, so let HIM work through you the way he designed you to be his servant.