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Week 3 Introduction
We now enter our final week in the 21 Days of Surrender.
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Many people, when engaging in a new discipline like exercise or diet or some other new habit, find week three to be the most difficult. But it is also the week when many are closest to a breakthrough.
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A surgeon from the 1950s named Maxwell Maltz noticed that many of his patients (like amputees) would take a minimum of 21 days to adjust to their new reality. This caused him to examine his own life, and he concluded it also took him roughly 21 days as well to learn or adjust to a new habit.
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So if you are getting a bit tired, or have been skipping devotionals here and there, this is the week to dig in. Because this is the week you are probably closest to surrendering more freely and honestly to God.
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So as you have hopefully been doing the previous two weeks, grab your Bible, and let’s consider how God’s Word can help us find fulfillment in Him through the discipline of surrender.
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And if you are fasting - keep going!
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Monday, Jan 15 - Surrendering Your Wallet
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DEVOTIONAL: “SURRENDERING YOUR WALLET"
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When the pastor at your wedding says, “You’re going to be poor, very poor…,” you shouldn’t laugh. (We naively did!) Rather, you should wonder what God is going to do.
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When Erin and I were missionaries in Venezuela in the early years of our marriage, God gave us the gift of learning about stewardship first-hand, experiencing that everything we have is truly His. Some long-term missionaries were on “home assignment” for a year, and we were asked to care for their things. This meant we lived in their house, drove their car, and even had their dog, all while living as if these possessions were “ours.” But those things in Venezuela in 1997 were no more “ours” than the current house, car, and dog in our care here in 2024. Everything we “have” is God’s, We are simply stewards of it.
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It wasn’t easy to put this knowledge into practice, though, when were part of a church plant in Colorado where Erin worked full-time, yet only received a part-time salary. We had a three-year-old daughter, a newborn in diapers, and a mortgage to pay, yet not enough income to make ends meet. Erin took on a second part-time job, yet we still found ourselves at the local food pantry receiving expired groceries far more regularly than we desired. But this is where we learned “God-math.”
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We discovered that if we skipped on giving a tithe to our church because we didn’t have enough money to pay all the bills, guess what? We didn’t have enough money to pay the bills! However, in other months, if we didn’t have enough money to pay the bills, but in faith, gave a tithe to our church first, somehow miraculously, even though the numbers on paper showed we didn’t have enough money, we were still able to pay for everything that month! And this happened more than once.
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Years ago, I heard an impactful sermon on 1 Timothy 6:17-19 that encouraged me to re-define “rich in this world.” Did you know that statistically, middle-class Americans are in the top 1% of the world in wealth? And if you have a “house” just for your car (most people call it a garage 😉), or an extra bed in your house no one sleeps in daily, you are rich! This perspective switch has helped me focus more on generosity, rather than gaining more.
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God doesn’t want me or you to be enslaved to the economic mindset of our day, nor lack faith that He can provide through God-math. Rather, He wants you to put first His kingdom (Matthew 6:33), give of your firstfruits (Proverbs 3:9), and give it cheerfully (2 Corinthians 9:7). But to do this, you have to surrender your mindset about money: to think like a steward who holds loosely the things of earth, so you might be “rich in good deeds, generous and willing to share”(1 Timothy 6:17-19). From experience, I can tell you this surrendered mindset will bring you greater joy than any earthly possession ever could!
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Heavenly Father, I surrender my wallet to you. My income is your income. My house is your house. My car is your car. My life is yours to use for Your glory. Help me be willing to use the funds and possessions you entrust to me to bless others and expand your Kingdom today, this year, and throughout my life.
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