Our first few nights in Tennessee this last fundraising trip we got the privilege to stay in a cabin on Roan mountain for free, thanks to Steffani’s parents’ very generous friends. It was absolutely wonderful. I decided to leave the phone back at her parents’ house so naturally didn’t get any pictures, d’oh! It was worth it though just to be disconnected for three nights.
While we were there I read a wonderful book titled He Walks Among Us by the president of World Vision and his wife. There were so many nuggets of wisdom in there I decided to write them down with the idea of writing blogs about them afterwards upon our return. This will be the first of those blogs.
The first one I really liked was “Jesus minus everything is still everything.” It was talking about a book by the title “Jesus plus nothing equals everything.” Both of those statements are true; I guess I just resonate more with the wording of the first quote.
Again, it’s that basic idea of contentment that I’ve written about before. If you lost everything today, would Jesus still be enough for you? There’s a song that was popular about a decade ago by Casting Crowns I believe that had the lyrics, “You give and take away.”
We are often tempted to think God only gives us gifts. Sometimes He takes those gifts away to test us. Sometimes taking away things from us is the gift He has in mind for us. This goes contrary to our American way of thinking, right? It’s easy to praise God when He gives us gifts we want. What about the times when He answers our prayers with a simple ‘no’ or ‘not yet’? Do we still praise His Name?
It reminds me of the story of Job in the Old Testament. One of the wealthiest men on the planet loses everything in the course of about a week or less. Yet He still refuses to curse God’s Name. Would we do the same? Are we that sold out for Christ? If we lost everything would we still praise God or at the very least not curse His Name?
I’ve never owned a lot of things, preferring experiences over material possessions. What if I wasn’t able to have anymore overseas experiences? Would I still praise Him? Would I still love Him? It’s hard to say. Living overseas has been such an integral part of my life and I am aiming at living overseas full time as a missionary going forward. It would certainly be difficult, but the most important thing is to live for Christ, no matter what else happens. Jesus minus everything is still everything.
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