The Piggy Bank

I am writing this blog based on a devotional my Mom did for a ladies class.  Thanks Mom this one needs to be shared...

So when Mom was a little girl she was given a piggy bank, and all the time she was growing up she would drop her change into that piggy bank until the piggy bank was so full she couldn’t add to it any more, then she put it on a shelf and there it has sat for some 60 plus years.  That piggy bank has gone from West Texas to West Germany to Virginia to Kansas City to Colorado and back to Texas over the span of those years, and Mom has never taken a dime out of it.  Back when she was first married and Kara and I  joined her and Dad and Dad had been deployed to Vietnam, there where some tough financial times. The money in that piggy bank probably could have helped the ends to meet, but she never thought to pull from the reserve she had sitting on the shelf.

When we are baptized into Christ we receive the Holy Spirit, our baptism fills our spiritual piggy bank. Luke speaks of this in Acts when he says:

“...after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”
Acts 1:1-5 NIV

So we have a piggy bank full with the most special gift ever given to mankind, a helper that can get us through any situation we can get ourselves into. Christ speaks of this gift just before he is crucified as recorded by John:

“I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified. “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”
John 17:13-23 NIV

How many of us leave this wonderful gift sitting on a shelf collecting dust when we need help?  I know I spent a large portion of the 35 plus years I have been a Christian doing just that.  Self reliance was honored in the culture I grew up in, people would say “pull yourself up by your boot straps” meaning to succeed or elevate yourself without any outside help. This is so contrary to what the Lord tried to teach us when in the Psalms we read:

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;”
Proverbs 3:5 NIV

Folks, in the last few years I have learned one very important lesson, open up that piggy bank, rely on the Lord, I promise you this, never will you be able to empty the deposits put into that piggy bank:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”

John 3:16-17 NIV

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