What Will You Do with Your Mites?
/
I've always been fascinated by the unnamed woman in Luke 21 who put two mites into the offering. Jesus tells us that in doing so, she gave all she had to the Lord. She kept nothing back.
What fascinates me most about her - beyond the fact that she would willingly give her life's savings to God - is the fact that she didn't consider the meager amount as being too small to be used by God. I'm sure she had no idea that her Savior was watching or that her story would be told in God's Word for thousands of generations to come. She simply obeyed in faith.
Last week, my blogging friend Jen shared that her family is facing serious medical trials which are resulting in a financial need. When she asked if I would be willing to donate anything to an online fundraiser, I truly wanted to help - especially since our own family and friends had put together a fundraiser to purchase Turbo's insulin pump a couple of years ago.
As I thought about what I had to offer, though, my excitement waned. I didn't really have much. I've only written one ebook, and it's not very long. Although I put my best effort into it, it seemed as if it were too small to be used by God. And so I hesitated.
In other words, I did the exact opposite of the widow with her two mites!
Thankfully, the Lord can work around our shortcomings and hesitancy. Another blogger with more capabilities than I have suggested that we all contribute to an ebook bundle to offer for the fundraiser. She put everything together, and now several of us can contribute more collectively than we ever would have been able to on our own! (Isn't that how the Body of Christ is supposed to work?)
Each of us is given different gifts, abilities, and talents. There are no two of us alike in capabilities. It's easy to convince ourselves that we don't have anything of value to offer or that because we're not as gifted as someone else, we can't contribute to a need. This is what I did when my friend first asked me about helping her family.
But God is greater than our limitations and isn't held back by what we can't do. Just as He worked it out for me to help my friend in a way that I never would have thought of on my own, He can use your abilities for His glory, too.
I did pray and ask the Lord to show me how I could help, but I didn't pray in faith. I didn't really expect Him to open up an opportunity, yet that's just what He did. Next time I want to serve someone, my goal is to pray in faith that God will make it possible.
Do you struggle to believe that the Lord can use you? Do you hesitate to offer help simply because you're unsure of what you can offer? We can ask the Lord to use our mites just as He used the widow's. As my friend loves to say, "we serve a loaves and fishes God." He can take the smallest offering and enlarge it to God-sized proportions.
What an amazing God we serve!
Related: If you have means and feel so led, here is a link to my friend Jen's fundraiser. (All proceeds go directly to the family's medical needs.) You can click through to learn more about her son's medical needs. Although this fundraiser is for a different son, one of her children also has Type 1 Diabetes, which, of course, is very dear to my heart! Please keep this precious family in your prayers, that God would grow their faith as a result of their trials, and that they would fully lean on Him.
