Spend Your Pennies Well
“For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” (Matthew 6:32-33)
When discussing public speaking, Tim Pollard compares our brains to a child with a hundred pennies. Every fact, every statement, every joke costs a penny. When the pennies are gone, so is your audience. The same idea can be applied to our lives, can it not? We can only make so many decisions a day; we can only be concerned about so much. Our cares and concerns take away all of our pennies. What is left for God? The answer is: “not much.” Paul makes the same point when discussing marriage: “The married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided” (1 Cor. 7:33-34). Marriage is a gift from God, but marriage costs pennies. Now, add to that our children’s tuition, soccer games, the rising price of groceries, election season, what our neighbor said about us last week, the post we saw on social media, who will win the Mississippi State game, and the list goes on and on. Suddenly, we are out of pennies. What are we to do?
Let’s take a big concern – standing before God. Each of us will do it, and our consciences remind us often. We will keep a list of every good thing we’ve done and every bad thing we’ve seen in a futile attempt to prepare for that day. Eventually, we stop spending our pennies on it because we know it is pointless. What are we to do? Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Jesus has suffered and succeeded in every way for us. No longer do we have to use our pennies to appease God; Jesus has used His to please God for us. “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Rom. 8:32) In Psalm 103, the first benefit listed is the biggest benefit; the rest flow downstream from there.
Through the righteousness of Jesus Christ, we have opened to us a fount of living waters, a precious wellspring of life in the presence of our heavenly Father. He will care for us so that we can use our pennies to enjoy the richness of the kingdom of God. The famous opening answer to the Heidelberg Catechism summarizes it best: “What is your only comfort in life and death? That I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with His precious blood, and has set me free from all the power of the devil. He also preserves me in such a way that without the will of my heavenly Father not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, all things must work together for my salvation. Therefore, by His Holy Spirit He also assures me of eternal life and makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live for Him.”
Reader, are you wasting your pennies? Or are you entrusting them to your heavenly Father?
