651 - Freely Give - Matthew 10:8

How much of everything that you have, did you receive from God? 

Hi i'm Mike Henry Sr. with Follower of One. Thanks for joining me again today on the Follower of One Podcast. This is a daily devotional that we do. It's designed to help us as we prepare ourselves and go to work. We want to be ministers in our marketplace. And at Follower of One that's what we concentrate on. You can check out more about Follower of One on our website https://followerofone.org. 

Today, I'm finishing up a three part series on Matthew 10:7-8. And today we're concentrating on the last phrase of Matthew 10:8, which says "freely you received, freely give"

Jesus is challenging the 12 disciples to go into the Jewish countryside and to preach about the kingdom of Heaven is at hand. And He challenges them to go preach and heal. Those are those steps of what I would call everyday ministry. Our job as followers of Jesus in the workplace is the same job as we go, wherever we go, we live a life that says the kingdom of Heaven is at hand.

And our words back that up. And then we "heal the sick, raise the dead, clense the lepers, and cast out demons," We heal our world, we step into our world to make it better than we left it. Our job is not to be a consumer of the world, but rather to be a producer of God's grace in our world. To show the world that life comes from Jesus.

And the way we do that, Jesus closes this statement out by challenging us freely. You received freely give what did we freely receive? I believe we freely received everything now. I don't live this way as much as I'd like, I tend to consider my money is mine and I give Jesus some of it. I consider my time and my energy is mine, and I get frustrated when circumstances force me to give more of my time to something than I wanted. I act like I control everything that I have, that I did it on my own, but this passage reminds me that I received everything I have from God. 

Did you get anything that didn't come from God? I think we need to adjust our mindset in this area. Jesus is basically making a statement here that Paul makes in Romans. Romans 8:32 points out using a rhetorical statement that if God gave us His Son, how would He not give us everything else? God gave us the ultimate thing in the life of Jesus. Therefore, everything else that we have comes from God to. It's His breath and His life, His energy that we use to earn a living or to save money or to mow yards or to do anything else.

Our job is to execute the life that God gave us in the world. And so our stuff all ultimately belongs to Him. "Freely we received, freely give." Jesus is challenging us to give of everything that we have because we received it at no cost from God. It's a challenging idea, but the more we give away, the more likely people are to ask us.

Why are you doing this? And then we get to explain to them that we're doing it because we follow Jesus. We live in a different kingdom. We operate according to a different economy and therefore we freely receive the things that we have, and we've been challenged to freely give them, this is our opportunity and our universal call.

And it's why I believe that we are all full-time ministers. We're full time servants of the people around us and the people in our lives so that we can testify that the kingdom of Heaven is at hand. 

Thank you for being a marketplace minister. Thank you for making a difference with your faith in the workplace or wherever you are. It matters how we live and how you live makes a difference in the lives of the people in your family and your friends and the people that you work with. Thanks for making a difference. Join us in Follower of One and let's help one another live this life better and proclaim the kingdom of Heaven better. We experience joy when we step into that role. 

Thank you very much.