Yesterday I related how a lady had written to me and mentioned that she’d made up her mind to commit suicide, but after reading my book, Miracle on Luckie Street, she decided to abandon that plan, and instead do as I did and look to Jesus Christ for hope. I didn’t mention yesterday that this letter had even more significance to me because she also sent me a photograph of her with one of her sons; (both her sons are currently in prison). She told me that she has lost nearly every possession she has to foreclosure while they have been incarcerated and she is old, sick, cannot find a job, and feels helpless, useless, and hopeless.
Many of you wrote to me advising me not to abandon my book promotion efforts, even though it is hemorrhaging money and far from breaking even. One person wrote, “How can you put a price on saving just one life?”
I agree and shortly after I wrote that WFTD yesterday I wrote my buddy and told him to extend the promotion another three months and I would just suck it up and finance it somehow.
Unfortunately the Williamson Family Foundation is running low on dollar fuel due to excessive demand and low supply. Hardly a day ever passes me by that someone doesn’t show up wanting money for this cause or the next. Most are good or even excellent causes, but at the end of the day there is just so much to go around.
I was discussing this problem with a friend yesterday and he asked me how I decided which causes to give to and which ones not. One time I gave over seven figures to a supposedly good cause and accomplished nothing with the money. It really hurt me to know that I’d squandered so much of God’s resources through my stupidity and it taught me a valuable lesson.
Today I take a long hard look before I leap. I give the overwhelming majority of the funds I have available to evangelistic causes including my own ministry that I can control. The Bible teaches that we will always have the poor and from my perspective there are so many of them, the meager resources that God has put under my management wouldn’t even put a dent in it, only God’s vast resources could solve a problem that large. Instead I focus on planting seeds of hope in Christ that will take sprout and result in souls being harvested for Jesus; (and that my friends will last forever).
I look at myself as being an interim manager for the resources that God has put under my umbrella. There is a parable in the Bible whereby three men were given money to look after for their boss while he was away. The master came back later and one had invested wisely and gained a big profit, the other a little less aggressively, but nonetheless still a profit, and the other had gained no profit. The one with no profit had his taken away and given to the others.
This was put in the Bible for a specific purpose. It tells me that we should invest our resources wisely for God or lose everything. Resources are not restricted to money or material possessions, but include your time and energy. God created you and me for HIS purpose and not our own.
I was asked, “How can you put a price on saving just one life?” I ask you the same question this morning along with a few more. What are you personally doing with the resources that God has afforded you to further His work? Do you regard those resources as being “your” possessions or “Gods”? How much of your time and money is allotted to God, versus your own interests? Realistically do you give much of anything to God, or is everything you garner being spent on you?
Most of the world is hell bent upon chasing material things that will disappear as soon as we die and cross that threshold of death that we will all surely cross. It is odd to me that so many are so short sighted and so few chase the one reward that we will be allowed take with us into the next life and that will last for eternity; (those good works that I just asked you about).
Think about it. Selah…
Have a great weekend and go to church this Sunday!
Matt. 25:16
The man who had received the five talents went at once and put his money to work and gained five more.