Tuesday April 8

Deuteronomy 32:28-52

Luke 12:35-59

Psalm 78:56-64

Proverbs 12:24

"When someone has been given much, much will be required in return; and when someone has been entrusted with much, even more will be required."

Luke 12:48

The summer after my first year of college, I had a full-time job working for the city. It was my first steady paycheck and I felt it was important to start giving back to God. It was easy, because I felt like I had enough to spare. When school started again in the fall, that job ended. I earned money by tutoring and by working in the records office at the college. I was making a lot less money and started to worry about having enough. So, I stopped giving to God.

A couple weeks later, I was called into the financial aid office and I was told that I could no longer work in the records office. This job was a part of my financial aid package and they said that I had been awarded too much by mistake. I was devastated. My already smaller income was getting much smaller. I spent quite a bit of time after this feeling very sorry for myself.

After this, I was in church on a Sunday morning and the pastor's sermon was all about being responsible with what God has given you. I was stunned and I knew God was speaking directly to me. In that moment I knew that the reason I lost my job was because I was not being responsible with the money that God gave me. I saw the job as mine and I treated the money I earned as mine and I looked to this income as my source of security. So God needed to teach me a lesson and the lesson was received. Immediately, I started giving to my church again. It only amounted to a couple of dollars a week, but that wasn't the point. God didn't want my money. He wanted me to be obedient and to rely fully on Him and to view everything I had as a gift from Him.

I think this experience would be pretty incredible even if it had stopped there. But it didn't. A couple weeks later, I was called into the financial aid office again and they told me that they had made a mistake. They were giving me my job back. I know without a shadow of a doubt that God gave me my job back because I had obeyed Him.

Reading the passage in Luke reminded me of this experience. Nothing we have is ours. Everything is God's and we are His servants and He has entrusted us with what He has given. It's our responsibility to use these gifts in the way He wants us to.