Category: Devotional Thoughts

Be Faithful with Little

A few weeks ago I preached on the topic of stewardship—managing the resources God has blessed us with.

I based the first message on Matthew 25:14-30, the Parable of the Bags of Gold (more commonly known as the Parable of the Talents).

According to Jesus, those servants who faithfully managed their master’s resources were rewarded with greater responsibilities (vs. 21). This encourages me to be faithful in “little things,” and I passed this challenge along to our members.

A story in The Principle of The Path reminded me of this truth. The author recalls a story his father, Charles Stanley, used to tell him.*

Before I go any further, let me say a quick word about Dr. Charles Stanley (for those who may not be familiar with his ministry). He is the pastor of First Baptist Atlanta and the founder/president of In Touch Ministries. The reach of his ministry is international, and his preaching had a significant impact on my own spiritual growth during my teenage years. My late aunt was an active member of his church and would bring cassette tapes of his sermons to me by the box. There’s no telling how many hours I’ve spend listening to these tapes on my Walkman while mowing lawns.

But Stanley didn’t start out as a mega church pastor. One of his first churches, in fact, was a small church in the mountains of North Carolina. Each week he preached to twenty or thirty attendees, mostly farmers with little formal education.

He was tempted to cut back on his sermon preparation during this early phase of his ministry. It was a small church, after all, and his congregation probably wouldn’t notice if he put less than his best into his messages. The Lord challenged him to look at things differently:

“But every time I was tempted to wing it, every time I considered pulling an outline out of one of those mail-order sermon outline catalogs, I felt like God was saying, ‘Charles, don’t prepare with just this audience in mind. You prepare for the future. Prepare as if you were speaking to thousands of people, not dozens.’ So that’s exactly what I did.”

We should be faithful in “little” things, believing God is always preparing us for greater opportunities and responsibilities.

*Note: I am quoting Andy Stanley’s book here (which was a good read). Please do not interpret this as a wholesale endorsement of his ministry or doctrine.

In Sickness and in Health

Our apartment was filled with the familiar sound of my wife’s laughter this morning. Normally I wouldn’t give this a second thought, but this week has been anything but normal.

My wife got sick Tuesday—really sick. I took her to the Angeles University Foundation hospital that night because her fever spiked to over 39 degrees C (over 102 F). The doctor took one look at her throat, immediately diagnosed her with tonsillitis, and prescribed some antibiotics. We were back home within an hour with medicine in hand.

Her fever was gone by the next day, but she was still very weak and nauseated. She wasn’t able to eat much and I was concerned she may not be able to hold down the health-restoring antibiotics.

She is better today. She ate some ramen noodles and fruit this morning before dozing off in front of the television. I hate to see my wife sick, but it has been an opportunity to serve her in her time of need.

I don’t want to be overly dramatic here: my wife’s illness was not life threatening, and I’m not even close to being and expert on married life.

But this experience has me thinking about deeper things—things I’m not sure I could not completely understand as a single man.

The Bible often describes the Church as the Bride of Christ. A healthy, Christ-centered marriage should be a picture of Christ’s relationship with His people:

For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word. He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault. In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself. No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church. And we are members of his body. 
–Ephesians 5:25-30

This second week of marriage has brought new meaning to this and other biblical passages. I understand just how precious a bride is to her husband.

Never has another person’s well being mattered this much to me. Never has another’s suffering affected me so deeply.

Yet how much greater is God’s love for us? I am a beloved member of the body of Christ—what a privilege! I can’t fully fathom this, but today I appreciate more deeply than ever.