He who is faithful in a very little

Oh boy I wanted to be something. To be used by God in a big way! For my church in the city, that meant being a preacher. All the theologically minded at our church wanted to be preachers, coincidentally of course.

I’m not sure what the rest of the guys were thinking, they had their reasons. But here were mine: I hated my job and had a bunch of free time. Why did I have all that free time? We were putting off having kids (shouldn’t have done that!). Was teaching in the city the only way to be a teacher? Certainly not. What do you think? Were these good reasons to be a preacher?

Alas, I needed the Scriptures. “He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much” from Luke 16:10. In other words, you need to be faithful with what you actually have; you can’t be faithful with what you don’t have (thanks to Joe Rigney for the paraphrase).

I should have been more faithful with my time when we had no children. Countless hours (and dollars) were spent on frivolous things. It hurts to remember. I should have been more faithful with my career. I spent more time trying to get out of teaching than becoming a better teacher.

Where am I now? Short of perfect, I’ve grown a lot by God’s grace. I started resting on Sundays (which meant working on Saturdays); this led to more fruitful time allocation. We only buy what we need for ourselves, which allows us to be generous with others. Lastly, I’m doing this blog (amongst other things) to try to be a better teacher. I can help and impact students outside the classroom with just a few more minutes of my time each week.

So, dear reader. Where could you be more faithful? Faithfulness now leads to faithfulness later. Do your best with what God gives you – relationships, time, talents, skills. Watch how those change over time. Be faithful with what you have; don’t fixate on what you don’t.