We read the story of the widow’s mite and we think; “How noble. She only had two pennies and she gave them both. She gave all she had. When I am in that situation I hope to do the same.” But if you think about it, aren’t we all in that situation? All of us only have a widow’s mite to give God. If you have built up the biggest ministry on the block it’s still just a goofy looking crayon drawing with stick-figured purple haired folks when we compare it to the majesty of God. What makes our offerings mean something is if we give them with love in our heart. The reality of our life is that no matter how ’successful’ or ‘productive’ we are, it’s all just a meager offering to God. What matters is not “deeds of righteousness,” but to engage our hearts in love to God.
HAVE WE FORGOTTEN AGAIN?
Jesus said the first commandment is to love God, and the second to”love our neighbor. Why do we always forget that life is about love?
What parent has kids for the purpose of raising up good workers? By putting deeds in first place we go from sons to slaves and a bride to a maid. If we pursue works apart from love and relationship with God we are deceived. Jesus is not coming back for a pure and spotless maid.
OUR ‘MITE-Y’ WEBLOGS
If you are viewing your blog as a ministry - even in part - then how are you measuring your success as a blogger? Is it by the number of Page views? Comments? Feed subscribers? Or something else?
Have you tried measuring the success of your blog by the love in your heart towards God?
If you have 50,000 readers or 5 what does it matter? It’s all a widow’s mite anyways. God won’t care how big or neat your blog was. He will care if you gave love from your heart.
loud said:
(editthisout: you have an extra “a” before “spotless maid”, and you misspelled successful.)
Amen, dude! It’s like what C.S. Lewis says about sixpence none the richer. He owns us, anyway.
Posted on May 16, 2007 at 1:59 pm
Kurt Hurst said:
This is awesome. I have been praying about this for the past couple of weeks. I feel God calling me to “return to my First Love.” How easy it is to get distracted by unimportant things like blog stats, book sales, and a big “amen” from our Christian community. What matters most at the end of the day is loving God. If I can say with confidence that I loved God with everything I had today, then it was a good day.
Good post. Be blessed.
Posted on May 16, 2007 at 3:11 pm
Ducky said:
I’ve been thinking a lot about restoring the first commandment in my life and how to view all of my actions in that light. What with the sermon on Sunday and this post, I feel like the L-rd is really pressing this on my heart. I’m also proofing Marketplace Christianity … I have to skim the text, but it’s really good for my heart.
Posted on May 16, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Robin said:
“Jesus is not coming back for a pure a spotless maid.”
That’s a good one!!! Thank you for the reminder. You are such an encouragement!
Posted on May 16, 2007 at 5:41 pm
{Shawn} said:
@ Loud: Thanks for finding the typos, and I’ve never heard that C.S. Lewis quote. That’s excellent.
@ Robin: Truth be told, I stole it from Bob Faser when he preached on Sunday. But it looks like Ducky already figured that out.
Posted on May 16, 2007 at 10:39 pm
Jacob said:
a wonderful reminder
Posted on May 17, 2007 at 1:34 am
Ruth said:
That story is one of my favorites. It makes it really clear that Jesus measures the amount of love we give…
Posted on May 17, 2007 at 10:05 am