That Which Cost Me Nothing

   2 Samuel 24:18-25

 David knew that he could not petition from the Lord based on what was given to Him rather than paid for.  We as a people of God need to be conscious of this principle.  You cannot acquire anything from the Lord unless you are willing to give up something to get it. This is a principle that is found in the Word of God from Genesis to Revelations. The principle  started in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve and continues today.  Cain and Able.  Cain slew Able because God accepted Able’s gift, but did not accept Cain’s.  God never wants us to give Him anything that we did not pay for. How do we not uphold this principle in our own lives?

 The bible speaks of the fact that God inhabits the praises of His people.  But, as much as God enjoys our praises, He gets real joy when we praise Him and it is a sacrifice to do so. Hebrews 13:15  In other words, what was the cost of your praise?  I am reminded of the woman with the alabaster box.  She paid dearly for her praises and God received them.  Is God receiving your praise?  Oh, I’m not talking about when you go to church and stand for the praise & worship portion of the service.  No, I’m talking about true praise when its just you and God and you lay prostrate before Him.  That which comes through your tears,  your groans and your coming to grips with the fact that despite what is not happening in your life, despite the unanswered prayers, despite the persecution, the challenges, you can praise God any how.  When you can praise God anyhow – that’s the praise that God receives.

We too often give what does not cost us anything or what costs us the least.  For example, let us look at our time.  We rarely sacrifice our time for the Lord.  We do what we want to do when we want to do it and give God the leftovers.  Think about it.  How many of us will sacrifice two, three hours a day to spend talking to God, but we spend more time than that watching TV or talking to our friends on the telephone?  When we weigh the time we spend working, eating, watching TV or socializing against the amount of time we spend in that same day with the Lord in either our prayer time, study time or worship time; God comes up short every time.

We can be in the middle of a very busy day and someone calls us to schedule some fun time and we get out our calendar right away and make time on our schedule to spend time with that person.  Let someone else call us with a request of something the Lord would like us to do and all of a sudden our calendar is full.  We just can’t squeeze in another thing.  Do you know how that grieves the Holy Spirit?God doesn’t want our leftover time.  He wants to be the top priority in our lives.  Before we schedule anything, we should check with Him to see if He has already allocated that block of time.  Even before we book that vacation, we need to ask God if it is in keeping with His plan and purpose for that time.  Before we make a dinner date, we need to check with God if He is going to need us during that time.  Most Christians don’t think like that.  We think if we gave him our fifteen minutes in the morning and five minutes at night and if we go to church on Sunday and stay for at least two hours and maybe a bible study or midweek service, well we’ve given God our all.  God gave you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 30 to 31 days a month and 365 days in a year and do you know what?  They all belong to God.  Why?  Because you belong to God.  Everything that you have and are belongs to God and we need to stop robbing God. 

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