Good Morning Everyone,
Our theme for this month: “True Greatness”
Our Bible verse for today: “After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector named Levi (Matthew) sitting at the tax office, and He said to him, “Follow Me!” So, leaving everything behind, he got up and began to follow Him.” Luke 5:27-28 (HCSB)
Our thought for today: “Truly great men and women of God willingly make sacrifices for the cause of Christ on earth.”
In a previous devotional this month I told you the story of author Eugene Peterson and how, despite his increasing fame and the multiple offers he received to become the Pastor of some very large churches, he chose instead to stay for twenty-nine years at the same little church in Maryland. Eugene was more interested in faithful service than a high-profile position, even though it would have paid him much more.
Some of you know my friend Bud Lenz. Early in life he was a golf course architect in the Houston area, and he made a nice living. But he and his wife Laura sensed God calling them to serve in international missions. At that time they didn’t understand the full scope of the call, but they did obediently sell everything they owned and moved to the Andes Mountains in Peru. They have now spent more than twenty years in that land, raising their own nine children and running a Christian orphanage where they take care of and raise anywhere for forty to fifty Peruvian children at any one time.
In Luke 5:27-28 we read of Jesus calling the tax collector Matthew to leave his profession and become a disciple and key assistant to the Messiah. Without hesitation Matthew closed-up shop, walked away from that career, and never looked back.
Truly great men and women of God make sacrifices for the cause of Christ on earth. Sometimes those sacrifices are big, like those of Matthew, Eugene Peterson, and Bud and Laura Lenz. But more often they’re smaller more routine day-to-day things like sitting in the Emergency Room at two o’clock in the morning with a friend; or making a sacrificial financial gift to a worthy cause even though their own budget is tight; or stepping in to fill an important ministry position at church that no one else is willing to do.
A common character trait of the truly great men and women of God is that they willingly and eagerly make sacrifices, big ones and small ones, for the cause of Christ. Our willingness to make those sacrifices is a measure of our greatness in God’s eyes.
God Bless,
Pastor Jim
Oak Hill Baptist Church 