Profitable Living



Profitable. In business it's all about making a profit. A profitable business is a good business. It succeeds while a business that shows no profit fails. Let me clarify--I am not lumping non-profit businesses into this.

A coffee shop is not going to sell its product without taking in the cost of everything, from the cost of the beans, the cost of rent, wages, and so on. It is all calculated into the equation to determine the cost of your coffee so that they can make a profit off it. You are probably wondering where I am going with this. "Profitable" may seem like a strange word to focus on but trust me, it's not. It hit home with me one day and it seemed to be the word that God wanted to stick into my head and my heart.

That day I jumped into my daughter’s car to hit the road and head to a baseball tournament for my son. My daughter had taken her I-pod connection out of her car and forgot to turn the radio down. I turned the key and the speakers boomed with static. Being the easily scared mid-life domestic goddess I am, I was lucky I didn't hit the gas and run the car into the wall and into my laundry room. Pardon me--I have seemed to digress. I hit the tuner to get anything on but static and the first station it picked up was Moody Radio. God had something to tell me.

They were having a discussion about a politician who recently stumbled. I am not going to go into who it was or what he did because it is not the point I am trying to make. What the woman on the radio said that stuck out to me was that he didn't make a choice that was "profitable" to him. Hum, Profitable, I liked that. Did he gain anything from his choice, better yet when any of us choose to do something do we take the time to think if it is "profitable" to us?  Will it grow us closer to God or pull us into the darkness of sin?  Do we gain from it or will there be loss from it?  I wish I had caught her name. She made me really think. She said something along the lines that when we choose to look at porn, take part in sexting, or any other number of worldly things that we are faced with, we are not doing anything illegal. There is no law against it; so many times people think because it is not illegal it is all good. That is where we need to choose to make the profitable choice. We need to realize just because it is legal doesn't mean it is right and profitable to us. When we choose to cross that moral line we dishonor God, and how can we gain in doing that?

As I drove on, I listened to callers and the word profitable keep going around in my head. About an hour later into my drive there it was again. Moody Radio had a quick lesson that was a couple of minutes and there it was again, the word “Profitable.” I love how God gets his point across to us when he wants us to learn something. I laughed to myself; "profitable” seemed to be the word of the day.

As the next day came it was still rolling around in my head and I knew God was trying to get me to see something. If a business chooses to do things that wouldn't bring them a profit, they would go bankrupt and would end up shutting their doors. In a sense they would die. We are much the same when you look at the word “profitable.” If we don't choose things that are profitable spiritually we to will die by missing out on the eternal life that was promised to us.

When we honor God, our bodies, our parents, our spouse and our neighbors, we are being profitable. When we seek God with our hearts, when we press into his word and when we spend time in prayer, the reward is eternal life. Talk about being profitable!  When we choose to say to “no” sin, to be honest, and to do what is morally right, we gain the blessings of God. The whole idea of profitable living is kind of the same idea that we often see on bumper stickers, "WWJD.” When we stop to think what Jesus would do and we choose to do what is honoring to God and not what is socially acceptable we are living a profitable life. Corinthians 10:23, All things are lawful, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful, but not all things edify. I leave you with this one question: Profitable living or spiritual bankruptcy?  I know what I want. I want to make a profit!


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great word, Kim!