What is God asking you to give up?

Good News Reflection
Tuesday of the Eighth Week of Ordinary Time
May 25, 2010
Today's Saint: Bede
Pray for a faith like Mary's:
http://wordbytes.org/saints/DailyPrayers/Bede.htm
Today's Readings:
1 Peter 1:10-16
Ps 98:1-4
Mark 10:28-31
http://www.usccb.org/nab/052510.shtml
USCCB Podcast of the Readings:
http://ccc.usccb.org/cccradio/NABPodcasts/10_05_25.mp3
What is God asking you to give up?
In today's Gospel reading, Jesus says, "There is no one who has given up home, brothers or sisters, mother or father, children or property, for me and for the Gospel who will not receive in this present age a hundred times more...."
Do you believe that God is more generous than you could ever be? As Christians, whenever we hold back from being generous, it's probably because we're afraid that God is not going to be generous to us.
I know. I’ve wrestled with this myself. Last August when I hired Mike, who had been laid off from his job due to the bad economy, I was both excited about hiring him and nervous. In my heart, I knew I could trust God to keep providing the extra funding this would require. But would more donors be willing to serve God by helping me with this added expense? Mike’s 30 hours of work each week as my office assistant has been a huge help, but the Good News Ministries bank account is shrinking. Soon I’ll have to do fund-raiser giving my readers another opportunity to serve God with their generosity.
What has God asked you to give up? Perhaps you're going to move to a new place and you'll have to leave behind family and friends. Perhaps you have children who are flying from the nest. Perhaps God wants you to give up certain acquaintances because they're infecting you with worldliness and immorality. Perhaps you see needs around you that you could do something about if only you would let go of some of your time or money. Perhaps you're being asked to give up a cherished ministry.
All letting go is hard. The root reason is this: We're afraid that God won't replace what we lose, yet he wants to give us even more! Or else we're insisting that we get back what we've lost, while God wants us to fill that hole with new, different blessings.
I began to learn this in the early 1980s when I was the leader of a prayer group and the editor of the monthly Charismatic newsletter for my diocese. God wanted me to give up both ministries so that I could take better care of my pregnancy, but that didn't make sense, because no one else in the prayer group was willing to lead and no one at the newsletter had the editorial skills that I had. After weeks of refusing to believe that God really did want me to quit, I noticed that the problems created by my NOT quitting were getting larger. I decided to trust God's advice.
As a result, my new-found free time evolved into writing articles that were published in Christian magazines. Just as I'd expected, the prayer group fell apart, but something new and better grew up in its place. And God sent a new editor to the newsletter who did a better job than I had done.
We need Spirit-filled discernment to identify what God wants us to give up when it's time to let go of it. Then we must trust Jesus as we accept the changes. Such trust always rewards us with new adventures, new paths, new friends, new ministries, and new blessings that are a hundred times better than what we've given up.
For WordBytes on finances, visit:
http://wordbytes.org/finances/
© 2010 by Terry A. Modica
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