Our devotion this week, I’m In, was provided by Life.Church and is available on the YouVersion Bible app.
I’m Invested.
Investing is taking a risk to entrust what you have to someone or something else, with the expectation that it will return something greater.
When church people start talking investment, sometimes it gets weird. It doesn’t have to.
Yes, God asked for some financial buy-in. You’ve probably heard it referred to as a “tithe,” which is a tenth of our income returned back to God’s work, through His Church. You may have even thought about the tithe as an investment before. You give 10 percent and God turns it into so much more. It’s true—God does do that. And yes, if you’re giving God all of your life, you might as well give Him 10 percent of your money (since it really all belongs to Him anyway).
But there’s something so much greater happening. You are an investment.
God looked at something He had (Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Cosmos, life itself), He entrusted you with it, and He fully expects God-sized returns.
- Before you walked the earth, God invested His unlimited creativity and resources to make it the only known planet in the Cosmos where human life can thrive.
- When you were just an idea to God, He invested His thoughts and imagination into creating you.
- Before you were born, God invested into your lineage, your heritage, and your DNA.
- When you gave your life to Jesus, you received the return on the investment He made when He gave His life for you.
- When the Holy Spirit filled you, you received His friendship and His gifts invested in you for others.
Actually, the word investment originally comes from this idea of being clothed. Specifically, being clothed in the official robes for a particular role. To be clothed in authority. Like the person in bright green whom we immediately trust to direct traffic. When God invested Himself in you, He didn’t do it just on the off chance that He’d get 10 percent of your money back one day. He clothed you in the official robes of your role so that you, and everyone around you, could know who you are: His child.
No wonder He wants you to put on the armor of God. No wonder He has big plans for you. No wonder He gave up so much to give you a way back to Him. No wonder He wants you to go into the world telling everyone what He’s already invested in them. No wonder it’s no big deal to give a little bit of our money back to His work in our world. No wonder He expects such great things for you. He’s clothed you as His kid.
You get to decide to store up His investment—or pour it out through your life as a God-sized return of worship back to Him.
Read Isaiah 61:10.
10 I delight greatly in the Lord;
my soul rejoices in my God.
For he has clothed me with garments of salvation
and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness,
as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest,
and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
Read Matthew 6:19-21.
19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Read Luke 12:16-21.
16 And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. 17 He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’
18 “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. 19 And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’
20 “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’
21 “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”
Read Malachi 3:10.
10 Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.
Read Isaiah 53:12.
12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,
and he will divide the spoils with the strong,
because he poured out his life unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.
Consider: If I believe I’m invested in by God because I am His kid, how will that change what I pour out into others and into His work around me?
A Different Way
The Gospel of Matthew shines light on what it means to say “I’m in” to God’s way. It’s worth taking the time to read the whole book soon. Matthew is the first book of the New Testament: God’s new commitment with the world through Jesus. It’s the story of why and how anyone, not just the Jewish people of the Old Testament, but anyone can find the way to God because of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.
In Chapter 10, Jesus sent out His followers (us). He gave us His authority, promised us His power, and then reminded us of our importance to God. As you read it today, pay special attention to verses 29-31. Jesus told His followers that we might even run into people who will try to kill us, but, “Don’t worry,” Jesus explained, because we’re of more value than a bunch of sparrows.
Huh? Okay, Jesus, what? That’s not really doing it for me. Birds? Specifically sparrows? You couldn’t pick eagles? Like how many sparrows? We must be missing something, right?
The words more value come from the Greek: diapherō. The root, dia, basically means through. Like a channel which something can travel through. Pherō means to carry or bring forth. To carry through? Kind of. Jesus’ specific use here is consistent with other uses in Greek that would translate more like: to carry differently, or to carry through a different way.
No wonder we’re so valuable to God. Each one of us is a custom-made channel crafted by God to carry Jesus a different way. No wonder He sent His only Son, not just to save us, but to send us with Jesus to next person in front of us.
Our world tends to value people not unlike how we value meat, by weight. Not like waist size, but the weight we carry in relationships, in money, in stuff, in an organization, or in society. But God’s way is different. It’s diapherō. You’re not valuable because of the weight you carry; you’re invaluable because of the way you carry Jesus.
Don’t get all worked up because you messed up or because you’re different. Being different is what makes all this work.
Paul, the guy who hated Jesus so much that He murdered His followers, finally met Jesus on the road and then spent the rest of his life growing the Church and writing a lot of the New Testament. In His letter to the church in Corinth, he wrote about how we, the Church, are one body, with many parts and all different functions.
Paul realized he could only carry Jesus the way a guy who used to kill Jesus’ followers could carry Jesus. A way which so far has carried Jesus all the way through Corinth to you. How do you carry Jesus? Who will you carry Him to?
Read Matthew 10:1-42.
Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.
2 These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon (who is called Peter) and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; 3 Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; 4 Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.
5 These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. 6 Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel. 7 As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ 8 Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.
9 “Do not get any gold or silver or copper to take with you in your belts— 10 no bag for the journey or extra shirt or sandals or a staff, for the worker is worth his keep.11 Whatever town or village you enter, search there for some worthy person and stay at their house until you leave. 12 As you enter the home, give it your greeting.13 If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you. 14 If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet. 15 Truly I tell you, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.
16 “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. 17 Be on your guard; you will be handed over to the local councils and be flogged in the synagogues. 18 On my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles.19 But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, 20 for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.
21 “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. 22 You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. 23 When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another. Truly I tell you, you will not finish going through the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.
24 “The student is not above the teacher, nor a servant above his master. 25 It is enough for students to be like their teachers, and servants like their masters. If the head of the house has been called Beelzebul, how much more the members of his household!
26 “So do not be afraid of them, for there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. 27 What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs. 28 Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. 29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care.30 And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. 31 So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.
32 “Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. 33 But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven.
34 “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to turn
“‘a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—
36 a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’
37 “Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.38 Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me.39 Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.
40 “Anyone who welcomes you welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. 41 Whoever welcomes a prophet as a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever welcomes a righteous person as a righteous person will receive a righteous person’s reward. 42 And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is my disciple, truly I tell you, that person will certainly not lose their reward.”
Read 1 Corinthians 12:12-27.
12 Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. 14 Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.
15 Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19 If they were all one part, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, but one body.
21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” 22 On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, 24 while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it,25 so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26 If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.
27 Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.
Pray: Jesus, I’m in. Show me what I can do to act on the unique life experiences I have to carry You a different way as part of Your Church body. Amen.
