Receiving 100 times as much

Submitted by Helen…

My 30th birthday was this past week and I was so grateful to God for all the ways that God has been faithful in my life for the 30 years.  I can’t believe that I’ve been here for the past 12 years.  On Wednesday, when it was my bday, for the first part of my dt time i thought about the many ways that I am so richly blessed.  I was really overwhelmed.  I started to list out all my blessings, all the people that God placed in my life to mold me and shape me in to the person that I am today, all my peers, leaders, younger brothers and sisters God placed in my life to love and minister to, and I really gave thanks to God for protecting me and for His faithfulness.  I’m thankful to have so many relationships within this body that I can together run this race.  It’s so exciting.

In contrast to this, I thought about the tragedy of the rich young ruler.  In Matt 19:22 it says that “When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.”  I was thinking about how much I would’ve forfeited if I had chosen to cling onto ‘my own little gods’ and idols, to live a selfish life, to live a life just trying to please people and gain attention for myself rather than God, pursuing my own desires and accomplishments rather than choosing to do God’s will and serve Him.  As I live out my life as a Christ follower, I can testify that I have received ‘a hundred times as much’ through the surrendering of “houses,” “field,” “brothers or sisters or father or mother or children” for Jesus sake.  As I was listing out the blessings in my life and looking at how my life has been so blessed the past 30 years of my life, I had to give praise to God, and confessed to Him that indeed, it’s only when I let go that I can experience true riches.  The rich young ruler didn’t know what he was missing out on.  All he could focus on was the material things that he had.  How sad.

“It is always true that the Christian will receive far more than ever he has to give up; but what he receives is not new material possessions, but a new fellowship…. A new fellowship with God, with the people of God. For me personally, it’s a new fellowship that exists between me and my spiritual leaders, my co-workers in Christ, the people that I’m ministering to.  The picture of the rich young ruler was a warning to me.  I don’t want to have my life result in sadness because I can’t let go of the material possessions of this world, whether that means things or people.  I want to continue to let go of my possessions and my wants, my agendas so that I can experience a rich life serving God and fulfilling the purpose that He has for my life.