I love my leftovers. Chinese, Thanksgiving dinner, Ribs, and Pizza are a few of my favorites. Whereas I love leftovers, I am certain that God doesn’t enjoy them. Yet, there are times when we find ourselves offering our Great King stuff we have already devoured. It is easy for us to cut corners and offer God and others “leftovers,” “just enough” and shoddy service, isn’t it?

I think we get careless and reckless in our worship and service because we begin to question and doubt his love for us, we forget that he is the great King of Universe, and we become too familiar with handling holy things.

Man, I don’t want to be like the priests and people in Malachi (1:6-14), guilty of the evil crime of offering God sacrifices that a human superior would not accept. He is insulted when we just go through the motions, or when our devotion is turned into duty.

I have decided to live in this book for the next several weeks and let Malachi’s words wash over my heart. Join me in asking the following questions of the sacrifices of your body (Romans 12:1-2), your money (Philippians 4:14-18), your praise (Hebrews 13:15), your good works (Hebrews 13:16), and your witnessing to people who are far from God:

1. Am I giving my best?

2. Am I giving to God first?

3. Is my giving to God costing me anything?

I believe God is calling me to a conscientious spirituality – one that thinks about and changes the attitude and motives of my sacrifice and one that thinks about and increases the quality and cost of my sacrifice.

What other areas of sacrifice can you add to the list? When are you most tempted to offer God leftovers? Which of the five areas above do you need to evaluate and offer God a better sacrifice?

Popularity: 7% [?]

Humility is recognizing, admitting, and embracing my limits. Moreover, it is understanding what I don’t know and knowing who to go to and where to go to increase my knowledge base and capacity. But, we often pretend we are more exceptional and more skilled than we really are, and that we really don’t have limits or need anybody else to help us. We want to appear smarter, more well-read and well-informed than everybody else. We spend time posing, managing an image for people we think are important, wealthy, or well connected. We attempt to impress people with our capacity to know and do. This is far from embracing our limits. When we fail to recognize and embrace our limits, we run the risk of delusional living, thinking more highly of ourselves than we should, and we limit God’s promotion. I am learning to recognize, admit and embrace that:

I am not a messiah

I can’t and won’t save everybody

I can’t and won’t be at every meeting

I can’t and won’t meet everybody’s needs

I can’t and won’t please everybody

I can’t and won’t accept every speaking engagement

I won’t have all the right answers

I can’t and won’t fix every relational/marital problem  

I can’t and won’t say yes to everybody and everything

I fail often and make many mistakes   

I overcommit myself way too much  

There is not enough space to list the rest of my limitations, but trust me, there are many more.

If humility is recognizing, admitting and embracing my limits, then pride is the reluctance and refusal to recognize, admit and embrace my limits. This type of pride is never good and always precedes painful and sometimes public failure. I have had my share of these moments. Every day I am asking our heavenly Father to teach me what it means to recognize, accept and embrace my limitations.  

What about you? What are some limits you have refused to recognize, admit and embrace? Which ones will you begin admitting to God and others?

Popularity: 25% [?]

If you are a Twilight Zone enthusiast like I am (my wife and I watched the marathon on Christmas Eve and Christmas), you will remember the episode, Rip Van Winkle Caper. As the story goes, four thieves, led by scientist-mastermind, Farwell, stole $1 million worth of gold bricks. They hid in a secret cave, in the desert in suspended animation chambers, designed by Farwell. The chambers were set for 100 years, figuring by 2061, nobody would remember the robbery and the gang would be in the clear.  

When they woke up, that’s when things went wrong. One of the gang was already dead, a skeletal remain, because a large boulder shattered his chamber. Because of greed, the three remaining thieves turn on one another and two more thieves were killed. Farwell, the scientist-mastermind, was the last of the Rip Van Winkles. He walked through the hot desert and made his way to the highway, but collapsed before he got there. A futuristic car drove up and Farwell offered a gold brick to the couple inside in exchange for water and a ride to the nearest town, but Farwell died moments later. 
 
As the man got back in the car to report Farwell’s death, he curiously remarked to his wife, “Can you imagine that? He offered this (the gold brick) to me as if it was really worth something.” The wife vaguely recalled that it had indeed been valuable in the distant past. The husband replied, “Sure, about a hundred years or so ago, before they found a way to manufacture it,” and he tossed the gold bar away.
 
What a commentary on the church and us as Jesus followers! We have been asleep for too long in our suspended animated chambers of irrelevancy. While we slept, the world changed. Some of the things and programs that were once valuable, have become worthless. People are looking for real life, but we offer them the bitter waters of dead or dying programs. They say to one another,”Can you imagine that? They offered us this (lifeless programs, dead worship services, and inauthentic lives).
 
If the Church and Jesus followers are going to be relevant 100 years from now, we must be like the sons of Issachar (1 Chronicles 12:32): understand the temper of the times and know the best course for the Church to take (1 Chronicles 12:32). The best course for us to take is not to offer dead or dying programs, but to offer people Jesus, God’s unspeakable gift, whose value does not ever change or grow old; He is the same today, yesterday and forever.  
 
Our call is not to chase our own dreams, but to chase the Jesus dream of making life-giving disciples who will go out and make life-giving disciples.
 
Will what you are chasing still be valuable in the future? Under what circumstances might its value change? Might something you now consider worthless take on value in the future? 
 
Tell me what you think. 

Popularity: 9% [?]