What are your priorities?

At a Washington, DC Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007. A man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time approx. 2 thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

After 3 minutes a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried to meet his schedule.

4 minutes later:  The violinist received his first dollar: a woman threw the money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk away.

 6 minutes: A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again. 
 
10 minutes: A 3-year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. Every parent, without exception, forced their children to move on quickly.

45 minutes: The musician played continuously.  Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace.  The man collected a total of $32.

1 hour: He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed.. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

 
 No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars.. Two days before Joshua Bell sold out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.

 This is a true story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, priorities.

Let us Pray!                                                                                                                                        ——————————————————

What are your Priorities in life?

Do you really truth God; Do you trust him with your Money and with your time

There is a story that Luke tell about a Rich man..

LUKE 12:16 The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. It brought forth plentifully. I don’t know what the crop was. It could have been wheat or figs or kiwis or even Okra.

His problem was that his barns were too small. If you have a very good crop and a very small barn what do you do?

What follows is what his mind told him to do.

Verse 18: I will TEAR DOWN my barns and build bigger ones. There will I store all my grain and my goods.   End of problem. Right? Wrong!

He forgot just one thing…. the uncertainty of life.

– He was considered a fool NOT because he was rich and successful.

– He was considered a fool Not because he was cautious & a careful planner

– He was called a Fool because he considered himself the OWNER of the goods which his farms produced.

He had the right Idea but the wrong priorities

In Verse 19–he talked to his SOUL(!); “Soul, thou has much goods laid up for many years, take thine ease, eat, drink, & be merry.

He should have talked with God. Instead he consulted with himself. That night his many years shriveled into a few hours.

At that point Jesus asked a question– When you die, who will take possession of your things?

Luke 12:20 “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?’

Have you ever gone to an Estate Sale or an auction of someone’s estate who you knew?  You see the ownership of the things they valued being transferred to someone else.

There is no such thing as a FUNERAL HEARSE WITH A U-HAUL TRAILER BEHIND IT.

Ownership implies control. At the best we can only control our possessions for a time.

See if you think this statement is true: WE ONLY OWN THOSE THINGS OTHERS ARE WILLING TO ADMIT THAT WE OWN.

Who own your House or you Car, do you own them or the bank, they only allow you to live in the house or drive the car, Stop paying on them for a few months and see who really owns them

On this earth we have conditional ownership.  

Only Jesus Christ has true ownership.

Christian stewardship is really a Relationship with Jesus.

If our farmer in this parable had recognized that he was just a steward and that God really owned the farm he would not have talked with himself.

His conversation might have been like this: “Lord, your FARM produced so bountifully this year under your blessing that your barn is too small to hold your harvest. Shall I tear it down and build a bigger one?  

Jesus might have replied: Leave the barn alone, it is big enough. ……So what are we going to do with all your surplus?

No problem. Just give it to My children who are in need. In fact, the Lord may have said something like this: I invite you to Enjoy what I enjoy,—

Do you know what God Enjoys?   “Giving”     THE PRIVILEGE OF GIVING.

Giving is a divine privilege. Giving from a heart that is in love with Jesus will produce more joy to the giver than to the receiver.

I was in Galveston Texas one time, as I came upon a poor man who looked like he was wearing all the clothing he possessed. As he sat there on the floor his hand was outstretched. I put some money in his hand and went on. He said God Bless You Mister! I thought about that man. It is not a divine privilege to sit there against that cold wall and beg. The divine privilege is to be the one who is able to place the money in his hand.

As humans we were given two divine privileges that God has:

1)– To give, this is a divine privilege!

2)– To forgive. Only God can forgive us. But we can forgive each other.

But giving is not only in Money, most importance it is in TIME

One problem that we have is that we try to equate material things with security. The more we have the better or the safer we are.

So we get more and more until at some point we depend upon a god we can see rather that a God we can’t see. If an accumulation of material things brings happiness why are so many rich folks so unhappy?

A man wrote about the late JACKIE GLEASON. There were two Jackie Gleasons he said:

The LIFE-IS-A-LARK Gleason who charmed his audiences by saying: HOW SWEET IT IS!, and the private man trying to drown his problems in alcohol.

Like Solomon, Gleason could have anything he wanted, and both could have said: all is vanity. They both had vast amounts of money.

But the problem was that they did not have dominion over their possessions, their possessions dominated them.

Their goods had become their gods. If you remove one of the two “o”‘s from goods you have gods.

If we truly understand stewardship we will recognize that God gives us the FREEDOM OF DEPENDENCE!

We like to think that freedom is INDEPENDENCE. But that is not God’s plan at all.

God Planned that we should have the freedom of DEPENDENCE.

In their ideal state, ADAM AND EVE had no housing problems, no clothing problems, no problems with weather, health, payments etc.

It would be a strange person who wouldn’t settle for such a situation today.

Then one day along came an ugly old snake in the leaves he said,

Look, God knows that the day you eat of the fruit you will be as gods, you’ll be INDEPENDENT. You will not need Him. What happened?

Everything went berserk.

They were evicted from their home, they had clothing problems, the weather changed, they needed band aids to deal with the thorns,

Eve knew pain as she gave birth, they needed health insurance, they needed death benefits, they had big problems.

They were better off when God owned it all and they were the managers.

If today you place everything you own on the alter and give the ownership to God you are better off.

Look at it this way IF A PERSON DOESN’T OWN ANYTHING,       HE IS NEVER SUBJECT TO LOSS

Job thought that way. That is why he could say “The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Job recognized Who owned everything he managed, therefore, God could trust him with 2X as much as he had before.

One day a church treasurer resigned. Finally the church asked the local grain elevator manager to take over. He agreed under two conditions:

That no treasurer’s report would be given for the first year. That no Questions be asked about finances during that whole 12 months.

The members were surprised but because he was known for his honesty they agreed. At the end of the year he gave the first treasurers report red:

*The church indebtness of $228,000 had been paid.

*The minister’s salary had been increased by 8%

*The Cooperative Program gifts had been paid 200%

*There were no outstanding bills.

*There was a cash balance of $11,252!

Immediately the shocked congregation asked: “How did you do it?” Where did all the money come from?

He quietly answered: “Most of you bring your grain to my elevator.

Throughout the year I simply withheld 10% on your behalf and gave it to the church in your name. I have your receipts here.

And none of you even missed it. Do you see what we could do for the Lord if we were all willing to return an honest Tithe to God, Who really owes it anyway?”

We Humans have been given possessions as a test to determine whether we can MANAGE eternal things.

If we can’t manage a few dollars down here, what would we do with a whole galaxy?

So this test here is given so there will be no possibility that a selfish person will get into heaven.

We have the divine privilege of giving. Job could say in JOB 29:15-16 “I was father to the poor, and the cause which I knew not, I searched out”

We should look for projects to give to, and not have to wait for appeals to be made. We should consider every NEED as an OPPORTUNITY.

In our parable today about the rich farmer who tore down his barns and built larger ones, the final outcome was not long in coming. LUKE 12:20 “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?’

The final verse says in verse 21 “This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.”

Don’t get me wrong it’s OK to store up things for ourselves but at the same time we need to be RICH TOWARD GOD.

We make a living through what we get,

We make a life through what we GIVE!!

You can take it with you!

By giving to the needs of God and His work right here we are depositing PEARLS into that vault in heaven.

In my 401K the company gives .35 to every dollar I put in, that is good free money, You would be a fool not to invest.

God said for every dollar you give I will match it 100 times 

You will see that your deposits have gained interest and there is quite an accumulation there. Why because you were unselfish here.

May God richly Bless you in your giving back to him what is already His.

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