Devotion: Do Something

on October 5, 2011

What would you do with one million dollars? You could…

Spend it all and buy stuff you always wanted.
Put it in the bank and save it.
Take a look at all the needs around you and give some away.
Start your own business or invest it.
Do nothing with it.

Do nothing?! Who would do nothing with a million dollars?

Well, someone did in a parable that Jesus told. (You can check it out in Matthew 25:14-30.) Basically it’s about two servants who do well with their master’s money and one who did nothing with it. Nothing. So the master takes the talent from the third servant, calls him “worthless,” and casts him into the outer darkness where there will be “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

It sounds like a pretty extreme punishment for doing nothing. We could see it if the servant stole the money, or if he used it to buy a gun and rob a store and shoot somebody. But cast off forever in torment for doing nothing? Jesus uses a hard example to try to bring out the extreme value of what each servant had been entrusted with.

Let me ask you a question: What’s the most valuable thing you have been entrusted with? (Hint: it’s not money. Hint #2: Ephesians 2:8-9)

The most valuable thing you have been entrusted with is salvation, which comes about as a gift of God’s grace which you receive by another gift God has given you: faith. But notice the key word–entrusted. That word “entrusted” means that you are not the sole owner, the only one responsible for that life. God still has an ownership, an interest in your life.

We are “stewards” of our own lives, people who have been entrusted by another to care for His valuables. If you continue with the Ephesians 2 passage, verse 10 will tell you, “We are (God’s) workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

God’s design for our best life is to walk by faith. It’s to use our time, treasure and talent in line with the plan that He has for each of us. The cool thing is that God has done all the hard work for us: He has covered our sins through Jesus’ death, assured our future by Jesus’ rising from the dead and carries us in our present by the Holy Spirit. Our job is to take this life, this salvation, He has given us and live in a way that says “Thank you” to God. That’s living by faith–trusting in His grace and looking for ways to praise God with our actions.

For the next few weeks we’ll be looking at what it means to live lives that praise God. In the meantime, here’s your challenge for the week:

1) Is it MY life, or the life that God entrusts me with? What difference will it make this week with my time, energy and stuff if I am God’s steward rather than on my own?

2) Write Ephesians 2:8-10 on a 3×5 card and commit it to memory.

Published October 5, 2011